Conclusion

Understanding the musical collaboration behind Selznick’s films does not require embracing every one of the producer’s decisions—some missed their mark. But Selznick’s productions do invite a re-evaluation of dominant prejudices in film-music discourse regarding, the involvement of a non-musicians in the scoring process, the sharing of compositional duties among multiple personnel, and film music’s relationship to commercial interests. These factors are crucial to understanding music’s function in Selznick’s films and its success within films and beyond. Although Selznick’s emphasis on film music reflected priorities born of prestige filmmaking (and literary adaptations in particular), his musical ideas spread far beyond these categories in the hands of other filmmakers. A concluding section shows that the mosaic-like construction of scores for Selznick presents not a crisis of authorship, but rather an opportunity to assess the dynamic and messy collaborations that produced some of Hollywood’s most memorable scores.