Program Notes

Following the 20th Century-Fox fanfare, Hemingway’s Adventures’ title sequence opens on what looks like a pastel sketch of the familiar, grey-bearded “Papa” Hemingway. In Waxman’s music a dramatic flourish in the horns and strings initially lands on a D major chord, only to repeat, but this time providing a harmonic surprise by moving up to a chord in E major, the key of the music’s main theme. Before we hear that theme, however, Waxman provides another surprise, this in the form of the “Flight” theme, a series of up-and-down runs in the very high piccolo and, playing an octave (?) lower, a celesta, periodically interrupted by a rising figure in the harp and ?. Two things stand out here. First of all, even though Waxman’s music is highly tonal, that shift from D to E major takes our breath away just enough to heighten our emotional reaction to the sumptuous but autumnal main theme. Secondly, the E-major chord could have led directly into the main theme. Instead, however, Waxman audaciously defies the musical conventions of the big-budget romance/adventure film by momentarily reducing the orchestral forces mostly to two ingeniously paired instruments playing in the stratosphere well above the expected amassed, mid-range forces of the full symphony orchestra. I would add to this that the “Flight” theme does not immediately associate itself with anything we see onscreen, and we have to wait until we’re into the film proper to see the beautiful hawk that the theme no doubt evokes. Although the music can be said to fly high, so to speak, it is anything but Mickey-Mousing. Rather than mimicking the flight of the hawk, Waxman offers a musical interpretation of the bird that captures not only the entire creature itself, including its flight, but also its surroundings. It also captures, of course, the desire to strike out on his own that will impel the flight from home of the film’s main character, Nick Adams (Richard Beymer, who would later acquire a certain amount of notoriety playing the character of Benjamin Horne on the David Lynch’s Twin Peaks TV series), the semi-autobiographical “young man” who appears in 24 different stories written by Hemingway, 10 of which were adapted by A. E. Hotchner for Hemingway’s Adventures.

Those surroundings, located in Wisconsin and spectacularly captured by veteran Lee Garmes’ widescreen, color cinematography, represent the Lakes region in Michigan, where Hemingway’s parents had a summer home, and where the author would spend at least one summer once he returned to the United States in 1919 from driving an ambulance in Italy in World War I. As the film dissolves from the Hemmingway portrait and the “Flight” theme begins, we see a long, aerial shot of what is probably the end of a lake inlet. The trees on either side are in their glorious start-of-autumn foliage. Along the right bank Nick is romping with an Irish setter. As dog and young man run off screen left, Waxman’s music transitions into its main theme. Again, the composer offers something of a surprise, as the melody, although long-breathed and sumptuous, is played in the extremely high, unison violins (a characteristic of the composer’s romantic style, as we have seen), starting on a B two octaves above middle C. An extra beat (?) allows an almost bluesy pause on an F sharp over a chromatic accompaniment before the theme concludes its cycle by landing on the expected E. As the score, including a haunting bridge theme that begins in the oboe over a wistful accompaniment in the harp, moves forward the sequence offers a montage of one breathtaking image after the other, some including Nick, his father (Arthur Kennedy) and the dog, always in long shots, doing various outdoor activities, including, of course, fishing. Other shots simply show pristine, glorious nature, including an expansive lake that opens up beyond the fall foliage or is enclosed by it. As the title sequence draws to a close the music returns to the “Flight” theme while the visuals, at one point, briefly cut away to establish the tiny, fictitious town of Sidess, Michigan, starting with its railroad station, which will be the point of return for Nick Adams by film’s end.

The title sequence of Hemingway’s Adventures stands as a piece of pure cinema, all music and visuals without a single ambient sound and with only the slightest hint of the narrative to follow, starting with the father/son relationship. But this is also where it all starts before a single one of the young man’s “adventures” begins. The enveloping presence of nature in the visuals, along with the father/son camaraderie, creates a sense of the innocence that will soon, as the fall foliage suggests, be left behind. The music, on the other hand, evokes not so much that original innocence as nostalgia for it, aching memories of both places and people that seem to grow out of that bluesy F sharp or that quiet figure in the harp, not to mention, of course, the theme itself, which seems to want to expand into a piece of pure romanticism but inevitably gets muted by the autumnal sadness somehow inherent in the subtleties of Waxman’s score. Quiet music continues as the title sequence transitions into the film while, accompanying helicopter shots of the orange and green trees and the surrounding water, we hear a voiceover narration written for the film by Hemingway, who was supposed to do the narration but committed suicide before production began (the actor reading the narration has not been identified). “In the place where you are born,” Hemingway’s words begin, “you begin to learn the things that all men must know. Although they are the simplest things, it takes a man’s life, really, to know them.” As the film now moves into its principal action, showing Nick and his father in a rowboat towing some stray logs, Waxman does something quite ingenious with the music: the main theme returns; but instead of appearing in the amassed violins of the symphony orchestra, the composer now gives the theme to the high, solo piccolo, thus bringing together both the nostalgia and the desire for flight. And, for the first time, we see the hawk. A variation on the “Flight” theme returns and then suspends on a wistful, repeated figure that reaches a cadence as the hawk is shot dead by Nick’s father. Sad, but this is, after all, the universe of Ernest Hemingway….

– Royal S. Brown