Word: pianos
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...frame houses was a field of splintered wood, with undamaged household articles sticking out incongruously. Two rescue workers diverted themselves from the grim task of searching through the debris for bodies by staging an impromptu open-air musicale. One weary young man sat down at an undamaged piano and picked out a tune; a second snatched a toy trumpet from the wreckage of a nearby house and tooted an accompaniment...
...Busonl Intentional Piano competition in 1969 and the Avery Fisher Prize...
Henry "Hopper" Nash, (Sean Penn), the film's protagonist, is a James Dean facsimile who struggles to win the heart of a supposedly wealthy schoolgirl, Caddie (Elizabeth McGovern), by leaving her flowers and playing tunes for her on the piano. When not occupied with thoughts of Caddie, Hopper--Nash's affectionate nickname--work as a pin boy at the local bowling alley, pals around with his high school buddy. Nick (Nick Cage) and romanticizes about going off to battle and blowing up Japs...
From the movie's opening scenes in which Hopper practices piano in a distinctly American living room, the film sets itself up as a voice of patriotism and loyalty. Although Hopper defies his crotchety piano teacher by playing jazz instead of classics and hangs out with the shiftless and disreputable Nicky, the director emphasizes Hooper's innate goodness. He doesn't put on airs to woo the snooty upper class preps who ridicule him at the bowling alley and even when he discovers that Caddie is an upper class "Gatsby girl," he takes pride in his humble, yet honorable, origins...
Certainly the play's atmosphere should be gloomy and oppressive, but the production's musical effects are extraneous and downright silly. At the close of each scene, the lights dim, and the family exits with Mary creeping off in her ghostly white gown. A spooky cadence of piano notes smooths the transition to the next scene. Whatever this discordant clanging is meant to represent--Mary's crippled hands, crippled hopes?--it diverts the audience's attention from the play's fluidity and haunting themes...