Subject: RE: Songcatcher
From:
katlaughing
Date: 12 May 01 - 01:23 PM
My SO heard something about this last year, I thnik on NPR and said it sounded really good. He's very picky about movies, so it's something for him to think that sight unseen. I found a couple of things about it on the web:
I'm a storyteller and old-time banjoplayer in Dallas, TX, with a particular interest in Songcatcher. Judging from the reviews I've read, the movie seems to based on the book, "Songcatcher in Southern Mountains," by Dorothy Scarborough, AMS Press, June 1937, ISBN: 0404055699.
Although I have seen no mention of the book in the reviews or the credits, there are some very interesting similarities to consider. Scarborough was an English instructor at Columbia University when she researched and wrote her book. She did her Appalachian songcatching in the 1920s and 1930s, rather than the movie's 1907 setting, however. One movie reviewer notes an episode in which two vehicles cannot pass on the region's narrow roads. Scarborough described a similar event in her book. There is also a reference in the same review to the difficulty of transporting a phonograph through the hills. Again, Scarborough's book discusses the same problem on several occasions. At one point in the Asheville, NC, area, she was aided in her songcatching by Bascam Lamar Lunsford (sp?), a well-known lawyer, jack-of-many-trades, amateur folk music collector, fiddle and banjo player. (He wrote "That Good Ol' Mountain Dew.")
Unfortunately, Scarborough died before her book was published. A colleague at Columbia did the final editing. She had previously published "On the Trail of the Negro Folksong" and "The Wind" which became a successful movie.
I can't wait to see the movie, and hear the music. I hope "Songcatcher" is as good as Scarborough's book.
Dan Gibson, Storyteller/banjoplayer
Dallas, Texas
AND,
Boldly and authentically American in every way, SONGCATCHER reveals the discovery of some of this country's most treasured cultural foundations. But the film is also a skillfully woven tapestry of three separate love stories, as well as the portrait of a community and a landscape on the cusp of radical change. Working at the top of her form and with precise attention to period detail and the nuances of speech and song, Greenwald and her production team have created an intimate yet hardly utopian community in the rugged mountains of Appalachia.
It is 1907, and doctor of musicology Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) escapes her stifling career in the male-dominated world of academia, taking a trip into the mountains to visit her sister (Jane Adams), who runs a rural school. There she discovers a fount of ancient folk songs – the roots of much of today's American popular music, encompassing country, fold, bluegrass and even rock and roll. As she goes about documenting her discovery a whole world is opened up to her and to us.
McTeer gives a tremendous performance as Penleric, while Aidan Quinn and Pat Carroll deliver memorable turns as fiercely independent – and fiercely proud – mountain people. Seekers of new talent should keep an eye out for 13-year-old Emmy Rossum, who makes an understated, indelible debut and fans of American music should look for cameos by Iris DeMent, Hazel Dickens and Taj Mahal. One of the most significant Mansfields's vast knowledge of traditional American music informs just about everything we hear in the film, from ballads to bluegrass to Mansfield's own hauntingly romantic score. Emmylou Harris has recorded new music for the film. SONGCATCHER is produced by Ellen Rigas Venetis and Richard Miller.
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