CD Reviews: The Conversation and Affair of the Necklace
The Conversation *****
DAVID SHIRE
Intrada Special Collection Volume 2
14 tracks - 37:19
In Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 thriller The Conversation, Gene
Hackman plays a surveillance expert, a voyeur with a microphone who specializes
in recording the private things people say to one another. Worried that
his work might hurt a young man and woman, he begins to listen to his tapes
obsessively, spending long hours transforming electronic noise into understandable
information. The process wears on Hackman's sanity, however, and soon his
need to control the recordings controls him.
Few movies ask so much from their audience's ears. The film's anarchic
sound, designed by Walter Murch, constantly shifts from dialogue to noise
to David Shire's jumpy score. A woman's troubled voice dissolves into static,
for instance; men scream at each other through a haze of jazz music; city
noises choke out the sound of singing voices. Relentless, this sonic montage
augments the feeling of unpredictable danger which constantly threatens
the film's characters, and without it, chances are good that Coppola's
film couldn't succeed as it does. At the same time, it seems unlikely that
the sound track could succeed without the haunting score. But how does
Shire's music sound when separated from the contexts of the screen and
Murch's editing? Twenty seven years after the movie's premier, Intrada
has made the original score available for the first time, releasing a collection
of 14 jazz-stoked tracks, re-mastered for stereo with their beginnings,
middles and endings intact.
So, does the music work? You bet. The album starts with a brilliant
spray of piano notes and soon the main melody materializes. Skulking like
a cat along the top of a fence, Shire paces the theme quickly, then slowly,
switching its tone from joy to melancholy, across the first three tracks.
On "Blues for Harry (Combo)," the collection's fourth track, he replaces
the solitary piano line with a bop band that swings around a sax, evoking
the swagger and fun that made mid-century Greenwich Village jazz so great.
Then, in the middle of the album, electronic distortions seep in, fusing
ugly, broad, urban sounds into the dancing piano rhythms, a technique that
counterbalances the intense prettiness of the tracks which come before
and after these numbers, expanding the album's emotional range significantly,
as well as recalling and reinforcing the film's preoccupation with unpleasant
contrasts. As the score nears its conclusion, another Charlie Parker-type
song titled "Harry Carried" appears, and then the album's double coda,
the gorgeous "Finale and End Credits," and "Theme from The Conversation
(Ensemble)," a song which, according to the liner notes, didn't make it
into the movie. Lacking the intense anxiousness that characterizes the
other material, this track integrates the piano and combo jazz motifs,
running the main melody through the saxophone in a way which sounds rich,
elegiac and almost calm. A denouement of sorts, this piece cathartically
relieves the score of its earlier tensions, and it is also a rarity: a
bonus track that doesn't sound tacked on.
One of the great mysteries of life has to be the way in which the movie
industry abandons many of its brightest lights long before they want to
abandon it. Such is the case with David Shire. The music man behind big
hits like All The President's Men, Norma Rae and Saturday Night
Fever lost his privileged status decades ago. (For reasons why, take
a look at Jason Foster's Diamond in the Rough series, which Film Score
Monthly ran in 1999.) And what a terrible shame, because, as this score
indicates, Shire's talent is somewhere in the genius range -- the sort
that warrants fame, exultation and frequent assignments. -- Stephen
Armstrong
The Affair of the Necklace ***
DAVID NEWMAN
Varèse Sarabande 302 066 318 2
21 tracks - 40:04
David Newman manages a small hat trick with The Affair of the Necklace,
scoring a period romance without it sounding like the umpteenth combination
of Bach harpsichords and 19th-century bombast. (The score does have both,
but sparingly.) Newman's ability to craft lovely melodies is still very
much in effect; his "Jeanne's Theme" captures a sense of yearning romanticism
without overkill. If the score doesn't exactly fall together in an album
format, Newman at least deserves credit for leaving you with the impression
that you've heard a skilled and varied approach to a somewhat dry genre.
Dark and light moments mix smoothly together as the first portion of
the album unfolds, with "Rohan's Arrest" shifting the album's tone from
that of gently melodic intimacy towards a feeling of grander scope and
aggression. "In Court / Childhood" mixes haunting choral patterns with
a more beatific, jaunty section for flutes and plucked strings, before
taking an abrupt shift towards more threatening territory. The delicate
primary theme is what keeps the album focused, even through the sturm-und-drag
stylings of cues like "Feast of the Assumption" and "Rohan Meets with Fake
Antionette." (The latter cue does have a terrifically rhythmic combination
of harpsichord stylings, synthesized backbeats and choral patterns.)
Newman's more modernistic flourishes seem at first a little out of place
next to the more straightforward orchestral writing, but he uses them just
sparingly enough so that they fit into the score's framework. (Newman is
certainly not as gleeful about being anachronistic as, say, Craig Armstrong
was for Plunkett and Macleane.) "Going Home" is a particularly delicate
cue, with the primary theme getting fleshed out and developed in rewarding
ways. The album eases down slowly, with the choral material of "Antoinette
is Finished" and "Arrival of the Necklace" serving as the climax of the
score's more bombastic elements. "Jeanne Reads Her Memoirs" rehashes the
primary theme and sends the album out on much the same note as it began.
All in all, Newman's music is a slight cut above what you might expect
from such a film; the chances that the score takes are what makes it stay
in your memory. -- Jason Comerford
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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