Score to Screen with Alexandre Desplat (Little Women)

Award-winning composer Alexandre Desplat is the featured guest on this Score to Screen podcast. Desplat reflects on how he crafted the modern score for Little Women by drawing on personal memories with his sisters, utilizing two pianists and four hands to represent the women in the film, and recording in New York City with various esteemed musicians. Little Women is written and directed by Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) and draws on both the classic novel and the writings of Louisa May Alcott. In Gerwig’s take, the beloved story of the March sisters – four young women each determined to live life on her own terms – is both timeless and timely. Portraying Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth March, the film stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlen, with Timothée Chalamet as their neighbor Laurie, Laura Dern as Marmee, and Meryl Streep as Aunt March. Composer, orchestrator and conductor Alexandre Desplat is one of the most worthy heirs of the French film scoring masters. A true cinephile, his approach to film composition is not only based on his strong musicality, but also on his understanding of cinema, which allows him to intimately communicate with directors. Inspired by the works of Maurice Jarre, Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota and Georges Delerue, he expressed his desire to compose for cinema early on but really made his decision after listening to John Williams’ Star Wars score. After scoring fifty European films, with legendary French directors such as Philippe de Broca and Francis Girod, in 2003 he burst onto the Hollywood scene with his evocative score to Peter Webber’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. In 2007 he received his first Academy Award nomination for Stephen Frears’ The Queen which earned him his first European Film Award. The same year he won the Golden Globe, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award and the World Soundtrack Award for his score to John Curran’s The Painted Veil. In 2010-2011 Desplat scored David Yates' films Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part I and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. In 2018, Desplat won an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA for Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water. He was nominated in 2019 for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs, and in 2020 for an Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA for Little Women. The Score to Screen podcast series is produced and hosted by Crossover Media's Max Horowitz. Listen to the full Little Women Soundtrack here. Listen to the official Alexandre Desplat Spotify playlist here. To learn more about Sony Soundtracks visit: https://lnk.to/sonysoundtracksPD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices