Faith & Thought

Beautiful Music Made Me More Sensitive to God’s Creation

Writing this series of columns about beauty has made me a little more sensitive to the beauty of God’s creation and a little more sensitive to how some talented artists have captured some of that beauty in their art. Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins proclaimed a profound truth when he wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

I have confessed in this series how I am trying to fill some gaps in my education concerning beautiful music. I am just not as sensitive as I wish to be to the power of music to touch us deeply and to open us in a special way to experiences of beauty. I also feel very ignorant about the beauty that can be found in paintings.

I have no idea if my columns have helped readers to be more sensitive to the presence of beauty in their experience, but writing the columns has helped me to be more sensitive to the presence and power of beauty. Giving my course on philosophy and film at St. John’s University has helped me to notice the power of music in a film. When the music in a film is well done it is almost like a character in the film.

All the films that I show the students I have seen several times and this gives me the opportunity to pay attention to the background music in the film. Paying attention to the music has been a really interesting and enlightening experience. This past semester, I noticed the importance of music in two films.

One was “Double Indemnity,” which starred Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson, and Barbara Stanwyck, and the other was “On the Waterfront,” starring Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, and Karl Malden. Perhaps writing these columns on the mystery of beauty has helped me to appreciate the role that music can play in a film. There is a scene in “Double Indemnity” in which the music is exceptionally effective. Stanwyck and MacMurray have just murdered Stanwyck’s husband, and MacMurray is walking alone down a dark street toward his apartment. The music on the soundtrack as he is walking is literally thrilling, almost frightening. It is as though the music is underlining or emphasizing the cold-blooded murder that MacMurray and Stanwyck have just committed.

The scene is powerful even though we know how the film will end from a confession that we have heard MacMurray make in the first five minutes of the film. How can we find the scene both thrilling and disturbing when we already know how the film will end? I guess that illustrates the magic and mystery of great art. I find it amazing that music can so influence us to be frightened and experience suspense even though we know what is eventually going to happen in the film.

There are two scenes in “On the Waterfront” that I think are near-perfect examples of music forming a perfect marriage with what is happening on the screen. One scene, a scene which I think is deeply touching takes place early in the film. I think it is one of the most touching scenes that I have seen in any film. The beauty of the scene is due not only to Brando’s and Saint’s
marvelous acting but also to Leonard Bernstein’s music.

Brando and Saint are at a table in a bar- restaurant. Brando knows who murdered Saint’s brother, but he feels his relationship to the mob and his guilt about the role he played in the murder prevents him from helping her discover who murdered her brother. She notices that he is upset, and she asks him what is wrong. He says to her “I am sorry that I can’t be no help to you.” She puts her hand on his cheek and says, “You would if you could,” and Bernstein’s music at that point makes the scene, I think, one of the most touching scenes in any film.

The screenwriter Budd Schulberg, the director Elia Kazan, the camera person, Brando, Saint, and Bernstein hit a home run. The other scene is the one in which Brando and Saint are running down a dark alley trying to escape from a truck racing after them, an attempt arranged by the mob to murder the two of them. At one point, it seems as though the truck will run over them. No matter how many times I have seen this film, I find this scene both thrilling and frightening, mostly due to Bernstein’s music. His music, at this point, is a perfect accompaniment to the scene.

Though I have probably seen “On the Waterfront” more times than I have ever seen any other film, the scene still frightens me. The more I reflect on great art, the more I feel grateful for what artists do.


Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.