German Film Music?
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CLOUD ATLAS has a great score by Tom Tykwer & Co and is probably the most expensive German movie ever produced. I love the movie (it is based on my favorite novel of this century) and the music fits.
I also like Terrence Malick’s A HIDDEN LIFE AS, which was a German/US co-production I think, with an excellent score by American composer James Newton Howard.
I guess we need to distinguish… Do we mean film scores by German composers (such as Zimmer, which we excluded because everybody knows him anyway), or German movies, which of course may have non-German composers (like THE NAME OF THE ROSE). I guess it’s more German composers for now.I mentioned PERFUME in the first post, and to me, that is still Tykwer (& co.)’s best score, in addition to LOLA RENNT. I think he had a new score out recently, name escapes me at the moment, but it wasn’t very impressive.
Christian Bruhn was mentioned earlier, still with us at 90. I just realized he scored the pirate series JACK HOLBORN, which I remember from my childhood when it was shown on Norwegian TV in the mid 80s, a few years after its German 1982 premiere. I think it was part of a regular children’s programme called “Sommerkino” (“Summer Cinema”), which was a thing for a few summers there.
Love that series, especially one scary sequence where he dived down to a sunken ship and encountered a skeleton or some such thing(?).
Did JACK HOLBORN ever get a soundtrack release?
Over here that was one of the Christmas mini series. Great fun score. Yes, there was a release: https://www.discogs.com/release/3211107-Christian-Bruhn-Jack-Holborn-Die-Musik-Von-Christian-Bruhn-Aus-Der-Gleichnamigen-Fernsehserie
I thought it was still available digitally but seems not so. But you find parts on Youtube.
On Amazon I found a CD album of his score for “Silas” and the animated series “Sindbad”. But Jack Holborn seems not to be available anymore.
Thanks! Great that it has a release, but yes — it seems absolutely impossible to find on the internet, outside maybe a track or two on YouTube. Shame.
After the great success of JACK HOLBORN awhile back, I’m finally giving Christian Bruhn’s famous CAPTAIN FUTURE a go. Wasn’t aware it was funky space disco! I dig it. Of course, it also makes me think of former member Captain Future, who was the first person to post on this forum, but then disappeared forever.
I mentioned PERFUME in the first post, and to me, that is still Tykwer (& co.)’s best score, in addition to LOLA RENNT. I think he had a new score out recently, name escapes me at the moment, but it wasn’t very impressive.
Last score I remember from Tom Tykwer was The Matrix Resurrections, but that’s a couple of years old now.
After the great success of JACK HOLBORN awhile back, I’m finally giving Christian Bruhn’s famous CAPTAIN FUTURE a go. Wasn’t aware it was funky space disco! I dig it.
Yeah, great fun score. I heard the original japanese version and while its not bad it cannot compete childhood memories 😉
I’ve now reached a string of three German composers named Philipp in a row in my collection walkthrough.
First off is Philipp F. Kölmel’s large and symphonic adventure score for RUBINROT (2013). Then follows Philipp Noll’s equally oldfashioned TRAUMFABRIK (2019). Finally, there’s RECYCLING LILY (2012) by Philipp Schweidler and Moritz Schneider, which is very eclectic, but also delightful.
Not sure if any of you are familiar with any of these, but they are all recommended. You have much to be proud of in Germany (even though I dislike the work of Volker Bertelmann….so let’s keep him out of it for the moment).
I think I heard Philipp F. Kölmel’s RUBINROT (part of a teen fantasy filn series if I recall right) and liked it. I don’t have it. I think I saw watched TRAUMFABRIK but I neither recall score or movie in detail. Of the other two I have not heard including the movie.
I have my problems with Bertelmann as well. But I know far too few scores to really have really fixed opinion.
Today the German film composer Peter Thomas would have turned 100. Here his probably most famous theme to the series RAUMPATROUILLE (SPACE PATROL) with the original series intro (but without German voiceover):
Raumpatrouille is about as old as Star Trek and shares many similarities with that show (the name means “space patrol”, but of course it didn’t have the budget of Star Trek (though Roddenberry never thought Star Trek had an adequate budget), but made up for it with inventive set design (like using an electric clothes iron for spaceship navigation) by Rolf Zehetbauer, who was later responsible for the set design of such movies as Das Boot and The Neverending Story.
Peter Thomas’ music was one of the most outstanding features of the show. For me, the show will always be unforgettable because of its ludicrous and totally silly dance choreographies.
Take into consideration that it was a science fiction show at a time when no one really knew how to do a science fiction TV show or what it could be or do. So they tried to make everything “futuristic”. The main characters (who often race through space with the spaceship “Orion”) regularly relax in a Casino (which was under the sea!… talk about a place less suitable for casual evening visits and drinking alcohol if you have to steer a submarine/spacehip to get there and leave!), and there they had the most hilariously funny dance scenes in the background. I guess the idea was they couldn’t use classic dances like “waltz” etc, because it is “the future”, but also not just 60s dance movies (that’s the present), so they made up totally ludicrous dances. I don’t know to this day how the actors could do these scenes with straight faces, but it’s just great. The music, of course, was always by Peter Thomas.Here is an actual scene from the show:
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