Soundtrack
Has anyone else noticed that the main theme of KINGS ROW and STAR WARS are nearly identical???
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MovieChat Forums > Kings Row (1942) Discussion > Soundtrack
I taped the film this week from TCM's tribute to Ronald Reagan. Being an amateur musician, I just listened to the theme of King's Row, and yes, both themes are similar in structure, dynamics, and phrasing. Good catch!
shareThere is a striking similarity to the "Star Wars" soundtrack. After reading these comments, I was able to get to a site that had a brief snippet of the "Kings Row" track. Without telling my husband about the previous comments on this particular board, I played the music for him. He also commented immediately that it sounded like "Star Wars".
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I noticed the similarity immediately when watching this movie. It bothered me throughout. I'm surprised that someone posted this as I thought I was the only one that would notice it. I guess we should all say that Star Wars sounds like this soundtrack, not the other way around.
shareExactly, even to the use of orchestration and certain dissonances (minor 2nd passing tones in the brass). Another part of the King's Row melody, which features the leap of a major seventh degree, is also very similar to Williams' "Superman" theme. What did they say? "If you have to steal, steal from only the best."
I also can't stop thinking of a closeness between parts of Korngold's score and the theme from Waxman's 1957 score to "Peyton Place." Maybe it's just the similar subject matter.
Greg
I barely passed Music Theory in college so I won't comment on the details of chords etc., but I've been saying all along that John Williams both steals from other composers as well as recycles his own stuff a lot. Among other things, he stole the Star Wars theme from Korngold, then recycled what little original stuff he added to it for ET: The Extraterrestrial. His March from 1941 stole heavily from Jerry Goldsmith's theme from MacArthur as well as recycling his own theme from The Cowboys.
On the other hand, Elmer Bernstein stole heavily from Williams' March from 1941 for his theme for Stripes. Turnabout is fair play!
It 's weird, I caught this on TV recently and noticed that the music was almost exactly Star Wars... Another thing about Williams: A director told me that the theme to Raiders of the Lost Ark is the jingle from an old cigarette commercial (I understand they used actually have these) from a cigarette called Kent or Trent or something. For all I know maybe Williams wrote the cigarette ad too.
shareWatched a showing of "Kings Row" on Turner Classic Movies tonight and Robert Osborne, the TCM host, directly commented on the similarities referred to in this thread. In fact I think I heard him say that John Williams has openly admitted lifting some of the themes for his "Star Wars" score. There's no mistaking the almost note-for-note references, I believe.
shareI like to enhance my watching of a film by coming to this website and getting insights from others. Im not that much of a "Star Wars" fan, and by no means a music expert, but I was amazed that I wasn't too far off, when I noticed some of the soundtrack sounded like the music from Superman.
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Star Wars has a lot of obvious derivations from all kinds of things. I also know that George Lucas used temp tracks when scoring the original Star Wars (1977) film, before he brought John Williams in. Without a doubt Williams also mirrored the temp tracks. I think its great. A lot of the themes also sound similar to the themes in Holtz's The Planets.
I actually posted a question about this in the main boards "film general" category.
Compliance!
I can't understand why people are so eager to "spot" lifts from other works in filmusic. I remember when Superman was released there was a great hue & cry in some circles over some similarity between "Can you read my mind?" and Richard Strauss' Death & Transfiguration & Herrmann's love music from Vertigo has a certain similarity to Wagner's Tristan & isolde. God forbid we examine the works of James Horner! If Williams was inspired by the music of Korngold, then, I say more power to him! He composed a brilliant score for Star Wars. And in doing so, reinvented film scores.
Dale
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I always thought ,when hearing it after Star Wars,that some of The Sorceror's Apprentice sounded similar as well.
shareSurely you mean Korngold was the greatest film composer of all time? Then who better to lift from? Williams quite openly admitted that he set out to write a Korngold type score for STAR WARS as Lucas wanted. And it's a blessing he did for in doing so he brought back movie music to what it used to be before the "rockers" totally ruined it.
shareSomeone argued that the themes from *Lawrence of Arabia*, *Born Free* and *Star Wars* are the same song.
There are similarities!
John Williams has a reputation for recycling other composers themes.
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