Having posted on candy and composers this morning, I am suddenly reminded again of a question that has long burned in my mind.

You no doubt recall the scene in the original Willy Wonka movie in which Wonka opens a door to one of his sekret candy-making rooms by playing a couple of bars on a musickal lock?  Of course you do! And you also see now why my prior posts brought this back to me.

Anyway, after Wonka “plays” the combination, Mike Teevee’s mother says, with a smug look on her face, “Rachmaninoff”.  There is then a fleeting shot of the others rolling their eyes slightly.

In fact, the musick that Wonka plays is the first couple bars from the Overture to Mozart’s Le Nozzi di Figaro.

What I have always wondered was this:  Is the audience just meant to get that Mrs. Teevee is a musick snob or that she is, in fact, a spectacularly stoopid musick snob?  The Overture to Le Nozzi, in addition to being quite famous and recognizable, isn’t even remotely close to anything Rachmaninoff ever composed.  Only someone who hadn’t the faintest idea what they were talking about would make such a terrible mistake. 

The movie came out in 1971.  My guess is that the joke on Mrs. Teevee was probably meant to be understood by the audience, or at least a healthy percentage of it.  These days I don’t expect that such a cultural reference would even be tried.