Michel Legrand, a three-time Oscar winner and composer for the Orson Welles films F for Fake and The Other Side of the Wind, died on January 26, 2019 at his Paris home. He was 86 years old.
http://www.wellesnet.com/film-composer-michel-legrand-dead-at-86/
Michel Legrand, composer of 'F for Fake,' 'TOSOTW'
Re: Michel Legrand, composer of 'F for Fake,' 'TOSOTW'
Wow. Legrand's death really underlines how miraculous it was that (1) he was still alive and working at such a high level in 2017-2018 and (2) that he was able to complete his beautiful score for "Wind."
Re: Michel Legrand, composer of 'F for Fake,' 'TOSOTW'
I wrote this upon hearing of Legrand's death: "Michel Legrand was not only a great film composer with 206 films and television programs to his name but also a key member of VISTOW (Volunteers in Service to Orson Welles). Legrand's score for F FOR FAKE — such a daring and avant-garde film, perhaps the best-edited film ever made — perfectly captures the playful yet profound spirit of Welles’s experimentations with narrative and the elusive nature of art. When Gary Graver and I were trying to jumpstart the completion of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND in the late 1990s, I thought Legrand would be the perfect person to score another extraordinarily complex Welles film on the nature of art — his testament about his craft. So I asked Gary to see if Legrand would be interested in scoring OTHER WIND. He said, ‘I always thought I would.’
"I didn’t know until much later that during the making of F FOR FAKE — which took place in a relatively short period in the early 1970s, in the midst of the shooting of OTHER WIND — Welles had asked Legrand to score his ambitious work-in-progress about Hollywood and that they had discussed ideas for the score together.
“So I was delighted when Frank Marshall, Filip Jan Rymsza, and Peter Bogdanovich enlisted Legrand to score the completed OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. Legrand perfectly understood the intricacies of the dual storylines and the other avant-garde elements of Welles’s feature. With his extensive background in jazz, Legrand was especially in tune with the loose, fragmentary, seemingly improvisatory but actually rigorous nature of Welles’s shooting and his and Bob Murawski’s brilliant and unorthodox editing. I thought Legrand managed to blend the two threads of the film brilliantly and that his music was especially valuable in making the film-within-the-film work so smoothly and memorably in the fabric of the overall construction.
“Legrand was eighty-six when the score was completed and recorded for THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, and he was not in the best of health when he vigorously tackled the difficult task, but like the film itself, his score seems like a young man’s work — free and lively and adventurous — but also suffused with the wisdom of age. Legrand told Ellen Segal, the music editor for OTHER WIND, that his score was a ‘requiem.’ It now stands as a requiem for Welles, for Jake Hannaford, for Hollywood, for movies, and for Legrand himself.”
"I didn’t know until much later that during the making of F FOR FAKE — which took place in a relatively short period in the early 1970s, in the midst of the shooting of OTHER WIND — Welles had asked Legrand to score his ambitious work-in-progress about Hollywood and that they had discussed ideas for the score together.
“So I was delighted when Frank Marshall, Filip Jan Rymsza, and Peter Bogdanovich enlisted Legrand to score the completed OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. Legrand perfectly understood the intricacies of the dual storylines and the other avant-garde elements of Welles’s feature. With his extensive background in jazz, Legrand was especially in tune with the loose, fragmentary, seemingly improvisatory but actually rigorous nature of Welles’s shooting and his and Bob Murawski’s brilliant and unorthodox editing. I thought Legrand managed to blend the two threads of the film brilliantly and that his music was especially valuable in making the film-within-the-film work so smoothly and memorably in the fabric of the overall construction.
“Legrand was eighty-six when the score was completed and recorded for THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, and he was not in the best of health when he vigorously tackled the difficult task, but like the film itself, his score seems like a young man’s work — free and lively and adventurous — but also suffused with the wisdom of age. Legrand told Ellen Segal, the music editor for OTHER WIND, that his score was a ‘requiem.’ It now stands as a requiem for Welles, for Jake Hannaford, for Hollywood, for movies, and for Legrand himself.”
Re: Michel Legrand, composer of 'F for Fake,' 'TOSOTW'
My condolences on your loss. Thank you for sharing your memories.
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