Borrowed soundtrack

[Johnmof]

In the film Gladiator, during the opening battle scene with the German tribe, they've slotted in part of the soundtrack from Zulu. I couldn't find any acknowledgement of this in the credits. Is this legal?

[tonymclark]

Don't know the music, but is it a classical piece ? They wouldn't need to credit another film that also used a piece of music not composed for that film.

[JohnPPotts]

It's also possible that they're both produced by the same film company, so they might be the copyright holder in any case.

[Johnmof]

Sorry, I may have misled you when I said soundtrack. I didn't mean the music - it was the chanting by the warriors as the moved up to attack. It's the same bit of sound in both cases. I'll check the film companies tonight, but I don't think they were the same. If not, it's a bit cheeky to say the least.

[tonymclark]

It was probably dubbed on by the same sound effect house.

Many dubbing sites or film studios build up a collection of sound effects that are used again and again.

[africaking]

I know exactly what you are on about, I was shocked to hear it in another film, but it is legal, as Germanic tribes did chant when going into battle as did the Zulu's, it may be shear coincidence that the chants both sound alike, or it may have been that one of the Crew members from the Zulu film might have been working on the Gladiator film too and it may have been done on pupose to either pay homage to this crew member or another similar reason.  In the end it is perfectly legal.

[padre]

There is no coincidence here. The small snippet of zulu chanting from the movie Zulu is clipped neatly from the movie. It consists of a long 'hooo' sound followed by a tight little chant of four or five beats repeated twice.

On the question of 'legality' I have no opinion. In the movie Zulu there was fairly good research into contemporary weaponry and battle tactics. Famous Zulus who took part in the battle scenes included Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi (a modern Zulu politician) as one of the contemporary Zulu kings. The film script was written by an American writer who had been blacklisted in the U.S. during the McCarthy era for his political leanings. The tendency in the film is not to portray a simple story of 'good guys' in red versus 'bad guys' in leopard skins. One actually learns something about the battle and the tactics on both sides.

One must assume, therefore, that the Zulus were consulted on what would likely have taken place - what weaponry was used, what tactics were employed and what sort of chants, war songs, taunts would have been employed at the battle by the Zulu attackers. Given this, I assume that the traditional chants would have been very old and quite traditional and quite possibly in the public domain. You can copyright music. Can you copyright somebody else's traditional war chant?

The battle scene at the opening of Gladiator is one of the truly great battle scenes to be found in movies - it ranks with the opening scenes from 'Private Ryan', the charge at Little Round Top from the movie Gettysburgh and the battle scenes from Zulu. To include a reference to the movie Zulu like a little gem in the midst of another movie would be nothing like theft - it would be more like homage.