Beautiful, Heartbreaking Theme and Score

I've only seen Sophie's Choice once, back when it came out. It was a hard watch and I'm not certain it had the overall elements to be a "classic" movie. But no one who has seen it can forget the actual scene about Sophie's choice. And Meryl's Oscar was deservedly won(while setting a perhaps unfortunate precedent for her taking on so many accented roles.)

That said, what I loved the first time I saw Sophie's Choice...and what I've always remembered to this day, is its musical theme.

I don't know enough about music to detail it, but it starts with one instrument, and then flowers into a larger orchestral orchestration and...its beautiful. Sweet and sad and aching for its nostalgia on the one hand(New York City in the late forties) and its horror on the other (Poland under Nazi rule in the flashback forties.)

The theme is also a love theme of sorts -- but for who? Sophie and her mad lover(played by Early Kevin Kline) or Sophie and her aching admirer(played by early Peter MacNichol)

No matter. The movie is what it is, but the theme is something unto its glorious self. I suppose it could have been placed over any movie and raised its emotional temperature many fold.

And this: The theme is by Marvin Hamlisch, who -- 9 years earlier in a different era for film -- had won BOTH the Adapted Score AND the Original Score for two seminal 1973 films(both with Robert Redford): The Sting(which set 1973/1974 car radios awash with Ragtime) and The Way We Were -- which enveloped moviegoers with the melancholy nostalgic romance of "Stresiand and Redford Together!" and gave Streisand a radio hit of her own. (And a Best Song for Hamlisch, too.)

1973 was Hamlisch's big year that got him his big Oscars but...1982 has the lesser known "Sophie's Choice" and it is a hell of an achievement, too. And it was nominated for Best Original Score.

Too bad "ET" came out the same year with ITS overpowering emotional score....