Between Two Worlds: Erich Wolfgang Korngold

This documentary has the most a beautiful soundtrack; it's filled with the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

For anyone who only knows those 18 sumptuous scores that constitute his film music, this documentary shows where that creative talent was born and nurtured. Korngold was a child prodigy who amazed composers such as Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. Although Korngold prized his concert work over his film work, through interviews with key people we learn, and hear, how each body of work shaped the other.

Home movies, historical footage, and clips from the films, are interspersed with soloists and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra playing Korngold's themes in an inspired fashion.

The interviews are with people whose names are familiar from the credits on the back of my CDs and liner notes: reviewer Rudy Behlmer, Korngold's biographer Brendan G. Carroll and two who helped bring his music back to life from the archives: John W. Morgan and William T. Stromberg.

I love Korngold's music and I love his wit. This superb documentary is full of both, but they missed one of Korngold's cleverest exchanges, which I have read in a number of places:

Korngold and Max Steiner worked for Warner Brothers and they were friends who occasionally ribbed each other.

One day Steiner said to Korngold, "Erich, we've both been working at Warner's for ten years now and it seems to me your music has gotten worse whereas mine has gotten better and better- now why do you suppose that is?'

Korngold replied, 'That's easy Max; it's because you have been stealing from me and I have been stealing from you".

There was nothing quite like Korngold's music in cinema. He gave film the symphonic score; he influenced many composers especially in the revival of symphonic music in film scores during the 1970s.

However Korngold felt when WW2 was over that he'd left his true calling and was somehow embroiled in motion pictures. He said, "50 is a very high age for a child prodigy. I must make a decision now if I'm not going to be a motion picture composer for the rest of my life".

Korngold's opera "Die tote Stadt: The Dead City", has a special place in the documentary, it has a haunting quality reflecting what Korngold felt when he returned to Vienna after the war; it was for him the city of the past. His return to Europe was not a success and this film tells why.

Korngold ignited my love of movie music. I was in a record store in Sydney back in the 1980s when my wife lifted up "The Sea Hawk", the first in the Charles Gerhardt series, saying, "You love all those movies why don't you try this?" I did, I was hooked. Then I became a familiar face at soundtrack racks and in second hand stores.

Fortunately I gave up smoking about the same time, I couldn't have afforded both addictions. That first Korngold opened up a world of appreciation that allows me to still enjoy his "Kings Row" but also Justin Horwitz's "Babylon".

There's no need to recommend this compelling documentary to film music buffs, but a warning to those who aren't, be careful, it's like being handed that first little pill at a party; it seems harmless enough, just this once...

But relax, it's an addiction that is actually life enhancing; I've never wanted a cure.