
Michel Legrand’s score to The Other Side of the Wind was honored by France’s Union des compositeurs de musiques de films on April 25, 2019. Benjamin Legrand accepted the award as composer Béatrice Thiriet, secretary general of UCMF looked on. (Olivier du Jaunet | Twitter photo)
The late Michel Legrand has been honored by the Union des Compositeurs de Musiques de Films (Union of Composers of Film Music) for his score to The Other Side of the Wind
His music for the Orson Welles film was selected as best feature film score by UCMF members over fellow nominees Girl (Valentin Hadjadj), L’Île aux Chiens (Alexandre Desplat) and Le Retour du Héros (Mathieu Lamboley) at the fourth annual awards ceremony in Paris on Thursday, April 25.
Family member Benjamin Legrand was on hand to accept the award, which was presented by Béatrice Thiriet, secretary general of the composer’s union, according to Olivier du Jaunet, director of Frances’s Scriptoclap.
Legrand, 86, died at his Paris home on January 26.
The score for the completed The Other Side of the Wind was one of Legrand’s last cinematic works. He was chosen by producers Frank Marshall and Filip Jan Rymsza, who noted that Welles talked in the 1970s about having Legrand compose the score for the movie. Both men have praised Legrand’s work and enthusiasm for the project.
Legrand, who had scored Welles’ F for Fake, had said of his work on The Other Side of the Wind:”I knew him very well. I tried to write what I thought that Orson would ask me to write for the movie.”
The film was featured at the Venice, Telluride and New York film festivals last year before its global streaming by Netflix on November 2, 2018.
A five-time Grammy Award winner, Legrand was active in all musical fields, composing classical works, stage musicals, arranging and recording albums, playing jazz piano and conducting orchestras in concert, as well as scoring for movies and television.
Legrand, who scored some 200 films and television programs, was known for such classic film songs as “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “You Must Believe in Spring” and “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”
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