THE NEW AGE, PART ONE

By Scott Bettencourt

This is undoubtedly the best time yet to be a soundtrack collector. Nearly every new score gets a soundtrack release (and sometimes, when no release seems forthcoming, a score will appear in CD stores unexpectedly a few months after its film's release, as with When a Stranger Calls and Slither). Several major soundtrack labels compete to exhume the studio vaults, releasing beloved scores from Golden and Silver Age composers alike -- not only the sure-selling, 800-pound gorillas of film music like Herrmann, Goldsmith and Williams, but even scores by perennially underappreciated composers like Fielding, Small and Conti.

But the era when I started buying soundtracks and noticing scores, in the mid-'70s (specifically 1976), was arguably the best time to be a film music fan. Though Korngold, Waxman and Steiner had passed on, Tiomkin had retired, and Raksin and Friedhofer were shamefully underemployed, Herrmann, Rozsa and North were all still active. It wasn't long after I heard my first Bernard Herrmann scores (The Day the Earth Stood Still and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) that he was taken from us, but even after his death there were two new Herrmann scores to enjoy in 1976 -- the overpoweringly romantic Obsession, and the change-of-pace Taxi Driver, which 30 years later is one of his most respected films.

Despite the trends toward pop/rock oriented music in film scoring -- from the Simon & Garfunkel songs in The Graduate to the funky sounds of Shaft and the enormous success of the Saturday Night Fever album -- even as old-fashioned a composer as Miklos Rozsa, one whose melodic gifts and romanticism embodied all that was so wonderful about Golden Age scoring -- had a few projects like his rousing Golden Voyage of Sinbad and his lyrical Providence, and even managed to experience a mini-renaissance in the late '70s, with three films released in 1979 alone.

Alex North as well had an impressive output during this era, earning Oscar nominations for Shanks and Bite the Bullet. Like many of his peers, he worked in television as well -- the mid-'70s saw the creation of the miniseries (the first major one, QB VII, was billed as "An ABC Novel for Television)", and the format gave North the opportunity to write two epic small screen but epic-length scores -- Rich Man, Poor Man and The Word.

By the mid-'70s, the projects Jerry Goldsmith was scoring were no longer quite as prestigious as before -- his first four Best Picture nominees spanned 1963 to 1974, and he wouldn't score another Picture nominee until 1997's L.A. Confidential -- but the films he was scoring were largely in the action and sci-fi/horror genres and were a particular treat for film music fans. Even a film as trashy and forgettable as The Cassandra Crossing earned a clever score with thrilling action cues, and as through most of his career, he was dauntingly prolific -- 1978 saw the release of six Goldsmith-scored films (five with score LPs released), all with elements of science-fiction and horror, and most of them with memorable action cues -- Capricorn One's main title is probably the most exciting action cue ever written for a non-action scene. (His output for 1979, including The Great Train Robbery, Alien and Star Trek, deserves a series of columns all to itself.)

Despite having a stunning assortment of features and scores in the '60s -- The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird and Hawaii being just a few of the highlights -- Elmer Bernstein's mid-'70s output was something of a comedown, at least career-wise -- only one Oscar nomination (Best Song, for Gold), no classic films or blockbuster hits, but a surprise smash toward the end of the decade helped turn his career around. While there is still, frustratingly, no score album of National Lampoon's Animal House, his deftly deadpan score (and the film's deserved boxoffice success) made him a top composer of comedies for nearly a decade.

After a five year separation following the failure of Darling Lili, Henry Mancini renewed his collaboration with Blake Edwards in 1975 with The Return of the Pink Panther, which began with a welcome return of the composer's most famous instrumental theme (not heard in A Shot in the Dark nor the Peter Sellers-less Inspector Clouseau) and followed with a heist sequence scored with Mancini's typical elegance. Though best associated with the offbeat jazzy sound of scores like Bullitt and Dirty Harry, Lalo Schifrin demonstrated particular variety during this period, ranging from the striking effects of Magnum Force to the warm classicism of The Four Musketeers. And while he was no longer scoring Oscar bait projects like Becket and The Miracle Worker, Laurence Rosenthal was doing some of his most satisfying and accessible work, with lively scores for The Return of a Man Called Horse and The Island of Dr. Moreau.

The major European composers were also maintaining a major foothold in Hollywood scoring. Though Maurice Jarre's '70s output didn't produce any universally recognizable tunes like his themes for Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, his creative partnership with the late Christopher Palmer helped produce some of his most satisfying scores in the late '70s like Crossed Swords. Georges Delerue managed to balance Hollywood and European careers during this period, earning an unexpected Oscar for 1979's A Little Romance, while Ennio Morricone, earning his first nomination with 1978's Days of Heaven, became a more familiar presence in American cinema.

In the mid-'70s, John Barry was also balancing feature and TV work, scoring the two Eleanor and Franklin miniseries, and while his feature career was experiencing a less prestigious spell -- he didn't receive a single Oscar nomination between 1971 and 1985 and he was only scoring every second James Bond film -- his work showed his distinctive energy, variety and melodic skill, and he scored some of his biggest boxoffice hits during this period including King Kong, The Deep, and Moonraker.

And while major composers from the '40s, '50s and '60s were still working, new composers were doing impressive work during the mid-'70s. David Shire was the rare composer to balance work as a Broadway songwriter with a career in film scoring, and his scores of the mid-'70s showed unusually impressive variety, ranging from the serial funk of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three to the bluesy noir of Farewell My Lovely to the classically tinged suspense of The Hindenburg. Another composer with a Broadway background, John Morris, was writing expert comedy scores for Mel Brooks and his collaborators like Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman.

Michael Small was also at a career peak in the '70s, and the distinctively subdued sound of his suspense scores like Klute and The Parallax View, combined with the moody but naturalistic cinematography of Gordon Willis, helped define the cinematic style of Watergate-era paranoid filmmaking.

One of the most in-demand composers of the period was Bill Conti, who became an A-list composer with the smash hit Rocky films but also scored such critical successes as Paul Mazursky's Harry & Tonto and An Unmarried Woman. Though the audience pleasing pop of the Rocky movies kept him from getting the acclaim he deserved, his work from the late '70s and early 80s included such rousing scores as F.I.S.T., Gloria and Victory.

But that was thirty years ago (and this brief summary omits such inimitable talents of the era as John Addison, Richard Rodney Bennett, Jerry Fielding, Leonard Rosenman, and Nino Rota) -- where are they all now?

Michael Small scored an intriguing variety of projects through the start of the new century, but never again reached the peak of his '70s output. His last scores were for the Nero Wolfe TV movies, and he died on November 4, 2003.

John Morris has retired from film scoring, and his scores are shamefully underrepresented on disc. David Shire continued doing fine feature scoring, especially his striking score for Return to Oz in 1985, but ultimately began concentrating on TV movie work, as well as stage musicals such as Big. (The Internet Movie Database claims he's scoring David Fincher's Zodiac movie -- oh, if only this were true, but I fear it's the usual Internet B.S.).

John Barry hasn't scored a feature since Enigma (which was briefly released in the U.S. in 2002, but is staying active with projects like his Brighton Rock stage musical and non-film orchestral works.

Ennio Morricone hasn't scored an American film since 2000's Mission to Mars (perhaps his experiences getting largely dialed out of Bulworth and rejected on What Dreams May Come soured him on Hollywood) but is as prolific as ever in European (and Asian) film and television.

Georges Delerue became a full-on Hollywood composer, balancing feature and TV scores and earning a fifth Oscar nomination for Agnes of God. He died on March 20, 1992, immediately after recording the score for Rich in Love.

Remarkably for a composer with such an idiosyncratic style, Maurice Jarre managed to stay on the Hollywood A-list through the '80s and into the '90s, earning a third Oscar (for A Passage to India) as well as scoring such megahits as Fatal Attraction and Ghost (both the rare genre films to receive Best Picture nominations). Like Barry, he has seemingly retired from film scoring.

Laurence Rosenthal, like Morris and Shire, moved from features to television, and his last score was in 2002. Lalo Schifrin is still scoring the occasional feature, especially for director Brett Ratner, but devotes most of his creative energies to his jazz and concert albums. Henry Mancini died on June 14, 1994, and fittingly his final score was for Blake Edwards' last Pink Panther movie.

Alex North died on September 8, 1991, and Miklos Rozsa died on July 27, 1995. And even the Silver Age came to an end, in the summer of 2004...Jerry Goldsmith maintained his prolific output for over four decades, and his final years included the critically acclaimed L.A. Confidential as well as such satisfying scores as The Mummy and The Sum of All Fears; he died on July 21, 2004. Elmer Bernstein's deliberately and beautifully old-fashioned Far from Heaven, like Miklos Rozsa's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, managed to end that composer's career with a satisfying and apt score that summed up its creator's musical history; Bernstein left us four weeks after Goldsmith, on August 18, 2004.

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com