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Baker's Dozen

Films for Big Eyes: Charlemagne Palestine’s Baker’s Dozen
David Moats , August 22nd, 2019 15:52

Former Film Editor David Moats is brought out of retirement for Charlemagne Palestine’s Film Bakers Dozen They discuss his Jewish heritage, lucky breaks and vomit vision.

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Quo Vadis – Mervyn LeRoy, 1951
Well, I love the way Peter Ustinov [playing Emperor Nero] sings and plays the harp. I love that and that it’s such a crazy story, and a real story of the fall of Rome. But Peter Ustinov especially is just so incredibly insane and then the enormous spectacle of the film itself and the music.

I noticed when I was reading about this, that the music is apparently an attempt to approximate Roman music, which we don’t have a record of, by combining Greek melodies and Jewish melodies.

Ah, and who was the composer?

Miklós Rózsa

Yeah he did a lot of great music. No I didn’t know that. Well like I said, a lot of my choices are intuitive so, I mean, I'm not surprised. There is something sort of Slavic Jewish in there; a lot of music, like Shostakovich for example, used Jewish melodies too.