Thursday, November 17, 2011 - submarine time

Two excellent movies about submarines are the Hunt for Red October

and Crimson Tide. They also have outstanding musical scores. Below are the themes from YouTube that I enjoy listening to, with some images from the web to illustrate the stories.

In Red October it is Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin who carry the movie with great support from actors Scott Glenn, Sam Neil, James Earl Jones and Stellan Skarsgård.

The theme music is by composer Basil Poledouris (1945-2006), American-born of Greek descent heavily influenced by his ethnic background.

I will have more of his work in later postings, including the opening ceremony music of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. He composed the music in a number of films, a handful of which are The Lord of the Rings (1978), The Blue Lagoon (1980), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Red Dawn (1984), Conan the Destroyer (1984), Iron Eagle (1986), RoboCop (1987), The Hunt for Red October (1990, Flight of the Intruder (1991), Free Willy (1993), The Jungle Book (1994), Free Willy 2 (1995), Under Siege 2 (1995), Les Misérables (1998), For Love of the Game (1999), and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001).

Sean Connery played the role of Commanding Officer Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius who is trying to defect to the United States with a brand new Soviet submarine designed to run silently. Alec Baldwin played the role of Jack Ryan as a CIA analyst who tries to convince his superiors that the Soviet sub is not approaching the USA to attack, but to defect, in this film version of Tom Clancy's novel "The Hunt for Red October." The film was released just after the Soviet Union had collapsed so part of the film was changed to show that it was during the cold war in the 1980's, and the advertising emphasized the film as a thriller rather than as a political statement.

Stellan Skarsgård played the role of Captain Viktor Tupolev commanding a Soviet submarine on a mission to sink Red October before it reaches the USA.

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Another outstanding film about submarines is Crimson Tide with Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington. The music is by Hans Zimmer, one of my favorite composers (another favorite is John Williams).

As you listen to this music you can detect similar elements as in the score in The Rock which was also composed by Hans Zimmer and starred Sean Connery and Nicholas Gage. It will be featured on another posting. I love it!

Near the end of the score at around minute 5:56 is the hymn "Eternal Father Strong to Save." This hymn was written in the 1800's in Great Britain and is famously used by both the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy in a variety of variations. In Hans Zimmer's version the music is somber and the chorus is so haunting that you can imagine watching an old, black and white, World War II sea battle and visualize the ship slowly sliding under the water to the bottom of the sea - very moving. Here is another version with just the hymn...

It is hard to understand the words that are sung so here is the text for the hymn they are singing:

Eternal Father strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidst the mighty ocean deep,
Its own appointed limits keep;
O' hear us when we cry to thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
Amen.

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Here is another version of the hymn that has been made in honor of all navy personnel who have served. I would like to dedicate this piece in memory of the crews of the two U.S. nuclear submarines, the U.S.S. Thresher (SSN-593) and the U.S.S. Scorpion (SSN-589). The Thresher sank off the coast of New England during deep sea trials on April 10, 1963 with a loss of all 129 officers, crew, civilian and military technicians. It has been found to be resting on the sea floor at a depth of 8,400 feet. The Scorpion was lost on or about June 5, 1968 with 99 crew members. It sank under mysterious circumstances and rests at a depth of 9,800 feet on the ocean floor several hundred miles southwest of the Azores in the Atlantic ocean. 228 Americans - rest in peace.