What’s up Doc? (Peter Bogdanovich, 1972) must be the musicologist’s favourite movie, Withstanding the Test of Time.
Dr Howard Banister (Ryan O’Neal), earnest scholar of the musical attributes of ancient igneous rocks at the Iowa Conservatory of Music (whither I hope the film has drawn numerous students), is at loggerheads with unscrupulous Yugoslavian musicologist Hugh Simon (Kenneth Mars) as they compete for a major grant from the suave yet impressionable Frederick Larabee (Austin Pendleton). In the gendered dichotomy of its time, Howard is distracted from his straight-laced fiancée Eunice (the magnificent Madeleine Kahn) by the trouble-magnet Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand).
I’m not exactly saying that these characters bear any precise resemblance to real participants at musicological conferences. However, the film may strike an (igneous) chord.
The dénouement of the final chase is the most elegantly-wrought silent slapstick:
It’s a backhanded tribute to Croatian musicologist Dragan Plamenac (of blessed memory), and a reminder about those who have built their reputations on plagiarism from obscure books that have been translated, without acknowledgement. Librarians know.
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