The most precious collaborator I have ever had, I say it straightaway and don’t even have to hesitate, was Nino Rota — between us, immediately, a complete, total harmony … He had a geometric imagination, a musical approach worthy of celestial spheres.
If I were asked to lay my finger, in a map of the world, on the spot of the world’s surface which contained at this moment the most singular concentration of art-teaching and art-treasure, I should lay it on the name of the town of Verona.
I believe that music has a most important part to play in the art of cinema, which is a separate art form, only the cinema does not yet recognise the fact. Just as drama plus music made opera, so film plus music will make - what? I do not know, but I feel sure it will be something vital to us, something new.
Listening to Beethoven’s sonatas played by Isai Dobrowein at the home of Y. P. Peshkova in Moscow one evening, Lenin remarked: “I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to it every day. What astonishing, superhuman music! It always makes me proud, perhaps naively so, to think that people can work such miracles!” Wrinkling up his eyes, he smiled rather sadly, adding: “But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things and pat the heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty.”
Which would you prefer, a piece of chocolate or a book?
