Saturday, September 5, 2015

Seeing as I’ll be bringing The Big Picture back to New York on October 14th & 18th and to Europe in November, I thought I would share a few thoughts on why I chose each of these particular films for this project that is very special to me.  In short, each of the films chosen relates to Judaism (and therefore to my story) either directly in terms of content or more philosophically in terms of sensibility. Both the CD and the show start off with these two pieces of music:

1) Willkommen (from Cabaret)

I saw Cabaret when it first came out, and was so moved both by Liza Minelli's performance and the powerful message of the film that talks about the rise of Fascism in the early 30s. And of course, what better way to start a show (in this case The Big Picture) than by saying "Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!"

2) La Vita e Bella (from Life is Beautiful)

The theme for this gorgeous movie really captures the innocence of childhood‎. For me it was interesting to musically combine that sense of innocence in the theme with the dark elements of the plot  (ie. The Holocaust) that are not brought out explicitly in the version of that music that's used in the film.



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