American Cinematographer - May 1990 - 40

cally lush musical score would be at odds with the
leanness they had achieved in the visuals and dia¬
logue. With this in mind they commissioned Aaron
Copland, a leading New York composer whose only
previous venture in film scoring was a
documentary, The City. Copland favored an astrin¬
gent orchestral sound diametrically opposed to the
Romantic European tradition espoused by most
specialists in motion picture music.
The Copland score adds a "class" icing with
its definite American idiom. Its spare orchestration
meshes well with the pervading themes of loneli¬
ness and
longing, and there is a remarkable se¬
quence in which the rhythms of harvesting ma¬
chines are stated musically rather than with natu¬
ral sounds. It could be argued with justification that
Copland's sometime stridency is obtrusive more
Above: Mae finds
Lennie

grieving over
his dead puppy. Be¬
low: Mae, an unwit¬

ting menace.

Arrangements were made to rent William
Randolph Hearst's ranch near Agoura, about 40
miles north of Hollywood, and build the ranch
buildings there. The movie-loving publisher
charged them $25 a day. After examining the site,
Remisoff built a tabletop model of the nine build¬
ings.
After Milestone and Steinbeck okayed the
design, Remisoff and his crew built the actual sets
in eight days. The buildings were constructed sub¬
stantially for practical use and expertly weathered
with a patina of simulated years and a look of hav¬
ing been lived in by several generations. The ranch
was stocked with horses and mules, cattle, sheep,
chickens, ducks and a goat. In the movie the build¬
ings look lived in and so does the wardrobe. So
impressed was Milestone that he secured Remisoff
for a half-dozen other productions during the en¬
suing 20 years.
Cast and crew lived like farmhands during
the weeks of work at Agoura, soon accustoming
themselves to the way of life on a barley ranch. This
lends considerable verisimilitude to what could
have come across as a bunch of slick New York and

Hollywood types play-acting in alien surroundings.
The most elaborate of the studio sets was a
simulated exterior representing the river bank ren¬
dezvous where the final scenes were staged. To
sustain the dramatic intensity of these scenes de¬
manded absolute control over lighting and sound.
The set covered two temporarily connected sound

than once - or at least was so to audiences in 1940,
when film scoring was seldom strident.
To further

point up the fact that Of Mice and
something out of the ordinary Roach had
the release prints sepia-toned.
The movie version opens with a pre-title
sequence, something commonplace in the post-tele¬
vision era but very unusual at the time. Rabbits
feeding in a field become frightened and scatter out
of the way of the running feet of two men - George
and Lennie
with an angry mob in close pursuit.
The fugitives hide in a creek under overhanging
grass as the possemen splash across without seeing
them. Next the fugitives run toward a passing
freight train. George clambers aboard a boxcar while
Lennie runs alongside until George can drag him

Men

was

-

aboard.
When the door slides shut the
moves

and fallen leaves completed the illusion.
Principal photography was scheduled for
40 days and actually finished one day ahead of
schedule. An additional four days was added for
pick-ups and retakes. The negative cost was - to
everyone's amazement - right on the money.
The producing partners agreed that a typi¬

Cinematographer

camera

paraphrased quotation from Robert

grafitti glimpsed through blowing wisps of smoke.
The technical expertise for the titles was provided
by Roy W. Seawright, a cartoonist turned special

grasses

American

a

Burns that some hobo has chalked on the door: "The
best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray." The
words fade away excepting those comprised in the
main title. The credit titles then appear as boxcar

stages and was designed to appear as unpremedi¬
tated as any work of nature. Large sycamores were
transplanted to create an irregular arbor over the
sluggish stream and lights were arranged above the
branches to cast patterns of shade. Native plants,

38

in to

May 1990
American Cinematographer - May 1990

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