LP REVIEW: PETULIA

"The beautiful people in a beautiful film, with a score by England's John Barry, the composer who conjured up 'Goldfinger' and 'Born Free.' Now, with 'Petulia,' he tops them. Smashingly."

-- from the back cover of the Petulia LP.

Petulia was based on John Haase's 1966 novel Me and the Arch Kook Petulia, in which divorced L.A. surgeon Archie Bollen is romantically pursued by a young woman named Petulia Danner, whose screwball antics mask an unhappy marriage to physically abusive David Danner, the unemployed scion of a wealthy family. The narrative is framed by a series of psychiatric sessions between Archie and an old college friend-turned-therapist, a device omitted from the film.

Barbara Turner, mother of Jennifer Jason Leigh and future writer of Georgia and The Company, wrote the first draft (and ultimately received "adaptation" credit), but Lester claims he didn't use any of her script and brought in his favorite screenwriter, Charles Wood (Help!, The Knack, How I Won the War) for the new draft, which was reworked by Lawrence B. Marcus (a 1980 Oscar nominee for The Stunt Man), who ended up with the sole "screenplay by" credit.

Both the book and the film resemble a screwball comedy taken to its logically dark psychological extreme. Petulia is a madcap like Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, whether saddling Archie with an unwanted tuba or installing an expensive greenhouse in his apartment, but her motivations are quite different. While the novel's cover describes it as "uproarious," an odd adjective for a story whose heroine is physically abused by her husband, the film takes the characters into even darker directions. A little boy in the book who turns out to be Petulia's kid brother (shades of Breakfast at Tiffany's, one of the classic screwball romances of the sixties) is turned in the movie into a Mexican boy who, uninvited, hitches a ride with the Danners from a trip to Tijuana, and whom David develops an unhealthy fixation on (For Richard Chamberlain, a teen heartthrob of the era whose real life homosexuality was not made public until decades later, to play a wife beating gay pederast was a remarkably brave decision, and Lester would later cast him in perhaps his best movie role as Aramis in the Musketeers films). One of the most chilling scenes has Archie coming home to find Petulia unconscious on the floor of his apartment, bloodied and beaten nearly to death by David.

Julie Christie, a recent Oscar winner for Darling, was cast as Petulia with the script making only discreet allusions to her British accent. Though the studio would have preferred Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra or James Garner for the role of Archie, Lester opted for George C. Scott, whose effortlessly powerful performance dominates the film. Lester chafed at the attempts at studio interference and continued his own atypical filmmaking methods, using actors from San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater and the comedy troupe The Committee in improvised small roles in a fashion which portended Robert Altman's later style -- supporting actors Roger Bowen (as Polo's new boyfriend) and Rene Auberjonois both appeared in Altman's M*A*S*H (as Col. Blake and Father Mulcahy, respectively) -- and Christie gave one of her most acclaimed performances in Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. In some ways Lester can be seen as a more comical Altman, and one with a more generous view of humanity (but then pretty much every filmmaker has a more generous view of humanity than Altman, except Kubrick and Lars Von Trier). Lester had his editor, Antony Gibbs, work in a cutting room in Sausalito near the film's San Francisco location (changed from the book's Los Angeles) to keep the studio at bay, and the complicated, elliptical editing mixes past, present, future, and the imagined in a style influenced by the European films of the era, and which would be continued in the films of Nicolas Roeg (who was Petulia's cinematographer) and Steven Soderbergh's The Limey.*

Petulia was the second of three Lester films scored by John Barry, and the trio demonstrates the composer's impressive range and variety of styles. The Knack was a lively comedy score which wonderfully evoked the energy and atmosphere of "Swinging London" -- the film is one of the defining artifacts of that period. Robin and Marian, the final Lester/Barry collaboration, was a less happy musical experience for Lester, who said that the Barry score is one of the few things about Robin and Marian that dissatisfied him, though Barry's bittersweet romantic adventure score is a favorite among film music fans. Lester had originally hired his Three Musketeers composer Michel Legrand,** but producer Ray Stark was unhappy with Legrand's classical approach and hired Barry for the replacement score, and even parts of Barry's score were ultimately re-worked by composer-arranger Richard Shores, and ultimately there's one cue in the film that doesn't sound like the rest of Barry's score at all, and which wasn't included on Silva's re-recording.

Petulia is one of Barry's finest albums, a deeply moving and almost unbearably melancholy work which shows the depths of his emotional gifts. The album is a very different musical experience from the film, featuring several cues not included in the movie, and even some of the cues that were included were partially dialed out or mixed so quietly as to be nearly inaudible -- overall the musical approach of the film is much more European than Hollywood. The Petulia score is dominated by a simple main theme, a variation on a four note motif, which (especially given the tone of the film) is more of a loneliness theme than a love theme. (If you really tried, you could sing the name Pe-tu-li-a to the theme, but given the nature and tone of the film, the lyrics would likely be incredibly depressing). Barry himself was quoted in the book John Barry: A Life in Music (by Geoff Leonard, Pete Walker and Gareth Bramley) as saying of his score that "the interpretation was cold and icy, but worked in a strange way." Barry would win his third Oscar for another 1968 score, The Lion in Winter, and though the film Petulia was not a success at the time, its reputation has soared over the intervening years, now regarded by some critics as one of the finest American films of the sixties.

FRIENDS OF THE EVERGREEN (2:05) is one of the few score cues from the LP which is prominently mixed in the film. Plaintive horns play over strings as Petulia rides a city bus, flashing back on a scene with her husband. When she gets off, a seven-note variation on the Petulia theme plays, and Archie travels to Chinatown to return a tuba (with COMPANIONS OF THE EVERGREEN written on the side) which Petulia has inexplicably given to him. Flutes play one of the main motifs of the score, a kind of call-and-response consisting of two pairs of notes, as Petulia unpacks the groceries she brought to the home of the Mendozas (the couple who are looking after Oliver, the Mexican boy), and the cue ends with a long held note as she sees Mrs. Mendoza and Oliver staring at her.

HIGHWAY 101 (2:31) is a peppy, uptempo source cue, so danceable, energetic and downright infectious that it's nowhere to be found in the film Petulia.

A LITTLE OLD-FASHIONED NOSTALGIA (2:50) is a stand alone cue for a scene where Archie and his friend Barney's wife Wilma watch slides of Archie and his ex-wife Polo. (Kim Hunter was originally cast as Wilma but had to bail because the movie she was working on went over schedule. When Lester found out that the movie was Planet of the Apes, he wondered why she didn't just let her agent wear the monkey suit for the day. Mike Nichols suggested a replacement actress whose performance Lester was unhappy with, so Kathleen Widdoes ended up playing Wilma). The cue features a haunting melody played by an echoing piano over strings, with the strings becoming more agitated as menacing horns are heard. In the film, only the last part of the cue is heard, the sinister finale playing over a close-up of Polo's eye projected from a slide.

The source cue MOTEL (4:48) is played when Archie and Petulia, shortly after their first meeting, go to a futuristic, automated motel (the receptionist, played in an early appearance by Richard A. Dysart, appears only on a video screen) but end up not sleeping together. The cue is reminiscent of some of the source music from Diamonds Are Forever, dominated by cocktail piano jazz and a horn solo.

PETULIA (3:00) is a relaxed version of the main theme but isn't featured in the movie. The horns play the main theme over a piano, with a saxophone playing intermittent counterpoint, and a trumpet solo plays a new jazzy, melody before the cue returns to the main theme.

Side Two also begins with a cue entitled PETULIA (3:21), and like the previous one this isn't featured in the film either. The score overall is one of Barry's more Herrmannesque efforts, and this cue begins with an explicitly Herrmann-ish motif, the mournful, jazzy sound suggesting his final score for Taxi Driver. A saxophone plays the Petulia theme over cocktail piano, with the bass becoming more prominent over the course of the cue. The Petulia theme is then played on strings, alternating with the Herrmann motif on horns.

COMPREHENDO? (1:58) is a score cue for the flashback scene where David first kicks little Oliver out of the house, then weepily tries to get him to stay as Petulia rushes the boy out. (The fractured time structure of Lester's film makes the narrative much easier to follow on a second viewing -- only by mentally putting the pieces together can you figure out that Petulia first saw Archie when he treated Oliver for his injuries after being hit by a car, and that this is what inspired her to pursue him romantically). An agitated theme, not heard anywhere else in the score, plays on strings and later on horns as the tension builds musically.

BORDER GATE AT TIJUANA (2:38) is a lively source cue for Mexican percussion and brass, played on a radio and a PA system. The first part plays for the flashback when the Danners meet Oliver during their driving trip to Mexico, and the cue resumes soon after when Oliver gets into their car just before they cross the border into the United States.

ONCE HAVING BEEN LOVERS (3:05) is one of the most memorable and emotionally painful scenes in the film, as Polo (Shirley Knight) visits Archie in his bachelor apartment, brings him homemade cookies, tells him about the new man in her life, nearly has sex with him, and tells him she'll need more money from him. One of the most startling moments in the scene comes when Archie throws the bag of cookies at Polo's back -- the scene was planned though unrehearsed, and Scott's fury and Knight's shock couldn't feel truer. The music is mixed very low in the scene, and Barry scores the underlying pain and tension with a slow version of the call-and-response theme played on strings.

EAT TOPLESS (3:27) is yet another source cue, mixed so quietly it's nearly inaudible (at least on the Warner Home Video VHS version -- the film has yet to receive a much deserved DVD release, which if nothing else would help one greater appreciate Roeg's cinematography), for the scene (which gave the film its early R-rating) where Archie and Barney (Arthur Hill) visit a topless bar. The cue begins with a bass and features horns over piano, with a saxophone entering to play variations on the theme.

In the novel, Archie and Petulia end up together, but in the film Petulia stays with David, and sees Archie one more time as she's lying pregnant in the hospital. The album's final cue, END TITLE: PETULIA (5:00), scores this scene, with Petulia asking Archie "Did I change you?" A slow version of the Petulia theme is played, first by the horns and then by strings. In the film's heartbreaking final moments, Petulia is going under anesthetic and feels the hand of a doctor, asking him "Archie?" as the film fades to black. THE END appears and the credits roll with a recap of the main title music, ending with the siren theme.

The following is the film order of the LP cues (at least those which were actually featured in the film):

MAIN TITLE - PETULIA
MOTEL
EAT TOPLESS
FRIENDS OF THE EVERGREEN
ONCE HAVING BEEN LOVERS
BORDER GATE AT TIJUANA
A LITTLE OLD FASHIONED NOSTALGIA
COMPREHENDO?
END TITLE - PETULIA

-- Scott Bettencourt

** Even though I've loved Lester's Musketeers films since I first saw them in a re-release 28 years ago, it wasn't until working on this review that I felt a real pang that Three composer Michel Legrand didn't return for Four. Not that there's anything especially wrong with Lalo Schifrin's score for Four -- it's just that it would have been wonderful to hear how Legrand reworked his charming, lighthearted themes from Three for the darker more tragic plot turns of Four. Imagine someone besides Howard Shore scoring Return of the King and not using any of Shore's themes and you get the general idea.

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