ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one of the decade’s most popular actors, Montgomery Clift, and theorises how the music with which an actor is scored connects with the actor’s body as it is written on and written by cinema. The intensely physical and emotional nature of Clift’s performances was often matched by composers who tried to musicalise both his physical actions and his characters’ psychologies. The scores for films such as A Place in the Sun, From Here to Eternity (1953), and I Confess (1953) all reflect Clift as the sensitive centre of turbulent, emotional films. These scores when matched with Clift’s physical and vocal performances demonstrate the richness and variety of Hollywood film scoring beyond the standard ‘classical’ model of mood music and leitmotivs, and offer a new perspective on musical characterisation.
