What blew me away during the Sochi Olympics closing ceremony last night was neither the humorous reference to the snowflake mishap (pictured above), nor the nostalgic tribute to Misha the Bear during the 1980 Moscow Olympics, though both were enjoyable. No, what surprised me happened in the first few moments of the ceremony, as the performance began and the music started playing. I recognized the music.
What was remarkable was the choice of music. It was the score to "Giant", a 1956 film starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean - some of the major movie stars of the period. "Giant" tells the story of a woman from the East (Elizabeth Taylor) who marries a rich cattle rancher in West Texas, and their life together. Quite progressive for its time, it tackles issues of racism, poverty, and sexism. It is, in my opinion, one of the best movies ever made. It is epic in every sense of the word, in its story, length, theme, and its score. It is also notable for being the last of James Dean's three films; he died in a car accident shortly after filming.
That aside, why on earth would a score from a movie about Texas be playing at the closing ceremony of the Olympics in Sochi, Russia? As it turns out, Dimitri Tiomkin, the composer for Giant's soundtrack, was born in the Ukraine (at the time of his birth, part of the Russian empire). He was from a Jewish family, and studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He supported himself by playing piano accompaniment for Russian silent films. After the Russian Revolution, he organized two revolutionary mass performance shows (think: North Korea's Mass Games) celebrating the Bolshevik Revolution. In spite of his political sympathies, however, work for musicians was scarce in the newly formed Soviet Union, and he ended up moving to Berlin, then Paris, and then to New York where he and his friend performed in the vaudeville circuits. He also gave a piano recital in Carnegie Hall, which was a great success and resulted in a tour to Paris.
After the 1929 stock market crash, Tiomkin and his wife (a ballerina whom he had met in his vaudeville days) went to Hollywood. His first major film score project was "Alice in Wonderland" (1933), but the film score that gained him significant recognition was that in Frank Capra's "Lost Horizon" (1937). During the remainder of the '30s, he collaborated with Capra on several more films, including "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1938) and "It's a Wonderful Life" (1939).
Tiomkin was well-known for his film scores to Westerns, such as "High Noon" (1952, starring Grace Kelly and Gary Cooper), "Giant" (1956), "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957), and "The Alamo" (1960). The song he wrote for "High Noon" was considered to have saved the movie, initially feared to be a flop.
He also wrote scores for four of Hitchcock's movies, including "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943), "Strangers on a Train" (1951), "I Confess" (1953), and "Dial M for Murder" (1954).
Tiomkin was nominated 17 times for an Academy Award for the "Best Music, Original Song" and "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" and won 3 Oscars. He is, up until modern times, the only Russian who has become a Hollywood film composer.
Obviously, Tiomkin has an incredible legacy, but I'm not sure how much of that has been lost to history. I only know him because I'm very familiar with the film "Giant", but I'm not sure how well-known he is among people my age and younger. After I'd established that the song played during the closing ceremony was the score to "Giant", my husband commented, "Whoever chose this music, I don't know what kind of deep knowledge of music he must have to know about a composer from a half-century ago who didn't even live in Russia for most of his life." I hope that this blog post can at least help enlighten my friends about this remarkable and incredibly talented composer.
You can read more about Tiomkin here and visit his official website, where you can also listen to snippets of his film scores.
Here's the opening score to "Giant" (seriously, if you click on anything in this post, click on this! It's beautiful!):
As a side note, my husband's great-grandparents on his maternal grandfather's side are from the same town in the Ukraine where Tiomkin was born. His aunt's husband's ancestors are also from the same town. So...could they be distant relations with Tiomkin? One can only guess!
