- Smile when your heart is breaking
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Smile when your heart is breakingSmile when your heart is breaking. スマイル Smile 歌詞の意味・和訳
by Paul Zollo March 17, , pm. Was he even a songwriter? In fact, Chaplin did write the song, indirectly. Michael Jackson said often it was his favorite song, and recorded it himself in a beautifully reverent, orchestral version. His brothers performed it in his honor at his funeral. Most recently came a rendition by the iconic comic Jimmy Durante, known more for his big schnozz than his music, which was used in the movie Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix.
Charlie Chaplin not only wrote, directed and starred in his own films, he also composed their scores. And for silent films, which had no dialogue, these were lengthy scores. The song itself was the brilliant creation of the songwriters John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, who adapted that melodic theme from the movie, changing it somewhat, and turned it into a song. Yet there was another contributor who is forever overlooked when this song is discussed, and that is David Raksin.
After retiring, he taught film-scoring at USC, UCLA and spent many years writing his immense auto-biography, The Bad and the Beautiful: My Life in a Golden Age of Film Music. I had the good fortune to interview Raksin in for my book Hollywood Remembered.
But his job was saved, he said, by none other than the legendary film composer Alfred Newman, the uncle of Randy Newman. He retained credit for writing the music, but we wrote it together. What happened is that Harms Music invited me to work with Charlie on the score of his new movie. The first time I met him was at his studio at La Brea and Sunset. There used to be a house right next to it.
It was a very nice part of town then. My first impression of Chaplin was that he was a very, very marvelously dressed little guy. A wonderful suit and shoes that had tops like spats. Really a dandy! I had never seen him as himself in the photos, only as the Little Tramp. He seemed like a different person at first from the Tramp, but then you could see it in him, you know. He was funny sometimes offscreen, but not a lot.
We worked at the studio. We plunged right in working the first time we met. He was still editing the film a little bit when we started. He showed me the film first. I thought it was wonderful. He had little notions for the music. Sometimes he would play these little three-fingered chords, sometimes just the melody. I would take notes and sometimes make suggestions, and I would tell him what I thought. After a week and a half of that, he fired me.
I said I had to have a session with Charlie in private. Because what I had to say to him, if I said it in front of his employees, it would have jeopardized his standing.
You are already up to your ears with them. And he liked that. We would work at the piano together. He would play with two fingers at the piano. He knew a lot of music. He had no concept of key or anything. He learned to accept my suggestions and he was very grateful for them. We talked about orchestration.
He was like a magpie. He learned everything, and he understood the orchestra and had some pretty good ideas about the orchestration. Even the opening phrases were something we wrote together. The guys that made the song out of it [John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons] were very clever guys and really knew what the hell they were doing. The theme in the picture is somewhat different from that. The song is not in the picture, and the lyrics were written later.
I am really the co-author of that score [ Modern Times. I was credited as arranger and orchestrator. though I did all the sketches. When you were the arranger, you were sometimes asked to compose. Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log In. For the latest songwriting tips, reviews, podcasts, and more.
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