Max Steiner

(On Cable TV, December 2022) One of the wonders of digging into older movies is witnessing how modern filmmaking conventions emerged—the sometimes-tortuous way standards were defined, how visionaries created things that now seem obvious, and the creative influences that quietly defined their own areas. So it is that Max Steiner: Maestro of Movie Music sets out to prove that Austrian-born Steiner defined the art of the film score. Taken at face value, the documentary makes a compelling case for his role in creating movie scores—someone who wasn’t just there at the dawn of sound movies, but had the necessary background to compose and direct orchestral scores to accompany the updated art form. His exemplary work at RKO became the template throughout which film scoring was defined, and the rest of the industry went in the same direction. I don’t have enough knowledge of early talkies scoring to say who else contributed to the development of that facet of filmmaking, but the list of the 300 movies on which Steiner worked from 1929 to 1965 is eloquent: it includes a number of all-time classics (King Kong, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca… all the way to The Searchers and beyond) and Maestro of Movie Music gives a whirlwind overview of his greatest hits. As a documentary, it errs on the traditional side of the form—narration over old photos, talking-head interviews, and many excerpts of his work. Still, that’s not a bad way of portraying the argument—the music takes centre place and often speaks for itself. Maestro of Movie Music should be interesting even to those who don’t really think about film scoring by itself—part of its success is being unnoticeable, as viewers focus on other areas of the film. Steiner, perhaps earlier than anyone else, quickly figured out the way to influence emotions without calling attention to itself.