Kurt Weill'sThe River Is Blue: “Film-Opera” and Politics in 1930s Hollywood

Abstract

AbstractIn early 1937, Kurt Weill and playwright Clifford Odets collaborated on a Spanish Civil War film that they hoped would lead to a new kind of political–musical picture. Originally titledThe River Is Blue, the film was eventually released in 1938 asBlockadewithout the involvement of either Odets or Weill, but recently uncovered archival material of the abandoned project reveals new facets of Weill's musico-dramatic thought. The discovery of Odets's first draft of the screenplay shows an extraordinarily close collaboration between composer and screenwriter as the shot numbers in the script align exactly with numbers in Weill's score. Read together, these two documents show Weill attempting to combine different paradigms of film scoring that were popular in the 1930s. There are moments of typical Golden Age–style scoring with mickey-mousing and leitmotifs, but there is also evidence of older practices such as the use of popular songs. Weill's score also displays the influence of the Popular Front, elements of Eisensteinian montage, and anti-Wagnerianism. These show Weill working toward what he termed “film-opera,” not a filmed version of an opera but an entirely new genre that combined elements of musical theatre and movies.