Next Stop...Willoughby:
Film Music Voyages in The Soundtrack Zone 1998

Film Music Voyage #2--Sojourn Across Time

by Kerry J. Byrnes

Previously on Film Music Voyages

As Film Music Voyage #1 noted, time travel has been a recurring plot motif in television shows and Hollywood films over the last 50 years. In the "time-travel" genre, voyagers travel back to the past or forward to the future without necessarily intending to book a time-travel trip. While numerous films and television series point to time travel's apparent popularity as a plot motif, time-travel films and their original scores have not been the subject of "scholarly" debate in soundtrack collector or film score magazines. Most soundtrack aficionados could quickly identify landmark films and composers in several genres, including so-called biblical epics, silver screen swashbucklers, Hollywood westerns, and Italian "spaghetti westerns."

However, do time-travel films and their scores comprise a distinct genre? This article proposes as its thesis that the time-travel film genre subsumes three sub-genres, with each sub-genre (more simply, genre) placing its own unique demands on the composer who receives an assignment to score a film within a given genre. To explore this thesis, this article is surveying films and films scores across the three time-travel genres, providing an empirical basis on which to compare major trends in how composers approached scoring films from one genre to another. Based on this survey, have film composers approached scoring films in one time-travel genre differently than they have approached composing scores for films in the other time-travel genres?

In the first time-travel genre, Sojourn Across Space (discussed in Film Music Voyage #1), a film's protagonist is confronted by the challenge of moving through space, encountering that he or she has accidentally traveled to another place in the past or future. In the third genre, Sojourn Across Death (to be discussed in Film Music Voyage #3), the protagonist faces the ultimate challenge--overcoming death. The plot hook in this third genre is the human desire to transcend time and space, the motive often being to recapture a love lost as the result of a loved one's death. A touch of romance also figures as a key plot element in our second genre, Sojourn Across Time, the focus of Film Music Voyage #2. In this genre, protagonists are challenged to overcome time by finding a way to go back to the past or forward to the future, this achieved by building a machine or employing another device with the intention of using it to facilitate the protagonist's purposive travel through time. Sojourn Across Time, our second entry into The Soundtrack Zone, takes us on a voyage from 1960's The Time Machine to 1997's Contact.

The Time Machine - Russell Garcia

In 1960's The Time Machine (D: George Pal), George (H.G. Wells played by Rod Taylor) is a self-described "tinkering mechanic" in 1899 London. He builds a time machine to travel to the distant future (802,701 A.D.!) where the Morlocks, a cannibalistic race of loathsome mutants who live underground, threaten the Eloi, the mild gentle race living on the earth's surface. George meets and falls in love with a beautiful Eloi, Weena (Yvette Mimieux). When his time machine is stolen by the Morlocks, George must risk capture himself in order to save Weena and the Eloi and rescue the time machine. When he is forced to return to his own time, he decides to go "back to the future" and Weena.

The Time Machine, scored by "unsung Hollywood legend" Russell Garcia, did not have a soundtack album release when the film first appeared. Following destruction of the score's parts by the production studio (MGM, boo!), Garcia reconstructed the score from conductor sketches that fortunately still were available, making possible a re-recording of the score and the release of a soundtrack CD (GNP/Crescendo GNPD 8008). A sample of the CD's cues conveys the richness of Garcia's score as well as the film's plot: "London 1900," "The Time Machine," "Quick Trip Into The Future," "Weena (Love Theme)," "Fight With the Morlocks," "Time Traveler," "Trapped In The Future," and "Love And Time Return."

In scoring The Time Machine, Garcia employed an innovative technique--collecting taped sounds (percussion instruments, gongs, temple blocks, a saw struck with a soft mallet, a table knife vibrating, crinkling cellophane paper, and even a straw blown through gelatin); running the sounds through feedback echoes, backwards and at different speeds; and then writing the sounds into the score as if they were instruments, adding the sounds to the recorded orchestral score in the dubbing session. Although taking an unconventional approach to his scoring assignment, the final product was a romantic score that is rich in melody, expressing human emotions ranging from fear to love. In a 1987 interview, Garcia discussed receiving the script from the film's director, George Pal, who asked:

The Time Tunnel - John Williams

Irwin Allen's The Time Tunnel ran on U.S. television for only the 1966-67 season. A decade later, in 1976, Allen's Time Travelers (D: Alexander Singer) attempted, as Leonard Maltin suggests "to resurrect [Allen's] flop series, [The] Time Tunnel." While borrowing the basic concept of transporting people back in time, 1960's The Time Tunnel incorporated a new spin:

Over the show's 30 episodes, scientist Tony Newman (James Darren) and his scientist partner Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) visited Pearl Harbor just before the Japanese attack, the exploding volcano Krakatoa, Custer's Last Stand, the Biblical Jericho, Gettysburg during the Civil War, and a million years into the future. Along the way, these scientists met such notable figures as Billy the Kid, Merlin the Magician, Rudyard Kipling, Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte, Helen of Troy, Robin Hood, and outer space visitors.

The Time Tunnel's colorful opening animated titles featured a man being buried in the sand inside an hourglass, with John Williams' score providing a wavering, "ticking" flute figure followed by a staccato trumpet figure over a dynamic, mechanical-sounding rhythm in low brass and strings. In the series' pilot, Rendezvous with Yesterday (scored by Williams), the "time transfer" motif is most recognizable. This theme, heard as Tony runs into the "time tunnel," falls through time, and lands aboard the Titanic, is scored for flutes, harp, vibes and chimes identifying the strange colorful slow-motion limbo that Tony and Doug tumble through each week. In contrast, the Titanic's fateful collision with an iceberg is scored for percussion and brass; a sadness pervades the score as the women and children fill the lifeboats just as the ship begins to sink.

John Burlingame, in TV's Biggest Hits (Schirmer Books, 1996), notes the roster of "Time Tunnel" composers as including Lyn Murray (Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief, 1955), and George Duning (Richard Quine's Bell, Book and Candle, 1958). George Duning scored The Death Merchant, the last "Time Travel" episode to receive an original score, subsequent episodes being tracked with music previously scored for the series. In The Death Merchant, Niccolo Machiavelli (Malachi Thorne), in a fluke of the time transfer process, is pulled from 1519 Florence to 1863 Gettysburg during America's Civil War. Duning composed action and chase music for the various battles that Tony and Doug witnessed or in which they participated. Duning's highly dramatic music, which may also be heard on The Time Tunnel CD (GNP/Crescendo GNPD-8047), incorporates a small string section and an organ. One reviewer described the score as containing a moving Americana love theme along with an effective brass fugue for the climatic battle sequences (Jeff Bond, Film Score Monthly, #69, May 1996, p. 19).

Time After Time - Miklos Rozsa

The plot of 1979's Time After Time (D: Nicholas Meyer) is based on three "what if" premises: (1) What if H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) actually invented a Time Machine? (2) What if Jack the Ripper (David Warner) stole that machine to travel from 19th Century London to 20th Century San Francisco? (3) What if Wells, in pursuing the Ripper, had "a very romantic encounter with a very liberated lady" named Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen)?

We might add a fourth premise--What if Time After Time were scored by Hollywood legend Miklos Rozsa? The proof of this last premise is available in the Time After Time soundtrack CD available on Southern Cross SCCD 1014. Time After Time is "typical Rozsa, ... with his rich, Hungarian sound..., ...a vivid and powerful score, at times driving, at times romantic" (Lukas Kendall, Film Score Monthly, #35, July 1993, p. 14). But before we get to the romance, the film also is full of suspense. A reviewer of Rozsa's Time After Time score stresses the importance of the composer's use of the interval called the "tritone" (e.g., c--f-sharp), "an unstable' interval because it wants to resolve itself upward to a perfect fifth (c--g) or downward to a perfect fourth (c--f-natural). Rozsa uses it often to depict menace." (Frank De Wald, Pro Musica Sana, Vol. VIII, No. 4, Fall 1980, PMS 32, pp. 5-6). The tritone prominently figures in virtually every theme of Time After Time; thus, it is a strong but subtle unifying device for the development of the score and helps to maintain suspense as the film's plot unfolds.

Key to Rozsa's Time After Time score are three time-travel themes ("motives"), including "The Time Machine," "Time Travel," and "Vaporising Equalizer." The latter, first heard as H.G. describes the device (a key) that activates the time machine, "is an isolated' motive, i.e., it is heard only with direct reference to the object it "represents"' and is never developed or combined with other motives. What relates it so strongly to the rest of the score is the ever-recurring tritone. The principal elements of its eerie orchestral background are string harmonics and celeste" (ibid., p 6). For H.G.'s journey through time itself, Rozsa's "Time Travel" theme provides "a complete but very modest sonata movement based on the time machine theme, with the musical pace perfectly snychronized to the visual one" (ibid., p 9).

The score's love theme ("Redwoods") is introduced as H.G. and Amy walk through the woods and have their first "serious" discussion. Fearing to express their growing feeling for each other,

Later, to prove he has come from another time, H.G. takes Amy to the museum to demonstrate his time machine. When Amy asks about the key's purpose, the "Vaporising Equalizer" is briefly heard. Still not believing that she has traveled through time, Amy spots a newspaper and picks it up to see the date.

Phrases of the love theme on cor anglais are echoed by bassoon as the music begins quietly and then blossoms into a full-blooded treatment of "Redwoods" in the strings as the date appears on screen and Amy realizes that H.G. is telling the truth. This is the first time that Rozsa cuts loose with the "love theme," and its innate romanticism comes to the surface. ... but the music ceases abruptly as Amy sees something that apparently horrifies her. ... The cor anglais resumes with "Redwoods," but it is now puzzled and unconfident. ...as the audience realizes that what has frightened Amy is the news of her own future murder, the music becomes more lowering, with an ominous tritone spewed forth by the horns. To end the sequence as calmly as it began, a sorrowful solo violin plays a variant of "Redwoods" when H.G. tells Amy they must go back to the present time (ibid., p. 16).

When H.G. decides to return to his own time, he boards the time machine, only to hear Amy's fateful decision:

"Herbert, you wait for me," and the violas begin "Redwoods," echoed by the celli. H.G. comes back for her, and the Time Machine theme...is heard for the last time as the machine begins its final journey. ...then we reach the score's glorious epilogue: a rapturous, full-blooded rendition of Redwoods,' including extensive development and countermelodies not heard before, in which the horn section of the orchestra plays a prominent part. This is the lush, free-wheeling moment we have been waiting for, as if all the pent-up love between H.G. and Amy is finally let out, and the score concludes with an uplifted and joyous feeling (ibid., p. 18).

Overall, Rozsa's "old-fashioned symphonic scored applied to a contemporary film and served the picture well. ... Rozsa's music cast a darkly romantic sheen over the whole film, an out-of-place, dignified European score for an out-of-place, dignified hero" (Lukas Kendall, VideoHound's Soundtracks, 1998, Visible Ink Press, p. 441).

Somewhere In Time - John Barry

In 1980's Somewhere in Time (D: Jeannot Szwarc), unhappy playwright Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) is approached at a college party by an old woman who asks him to come back to her. Looking into the matter, Richard discovers and becomes obsessed with a 70-year old portrait of a beautiful young actress, Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour). Richard's obsession with the thought of somehow being able to go back in time to meet Elise leads him to use self-hypnosis to will himself back in time to meet her.

The beautifully nostalgic and romantic score for Somewhere In Time was composed by veteran film composer John Barry. Barry's score for Somewhere In Time originally was released on LP (MCA- 5154) but subsequently reissued three times on CD--1985 (MCA MCAD-5154), 1992 (MCAD 31164), and 1993 (gold MCAD-10954 Ultimate Master Disc). The score's main theme, arranged for strings and woodwinds, is heard in "Somewhere In Time." Particularly noteworthy is "The Old Woman" that features the solo violin. Richard's desire to go back in time, and the music accompanying his return to the past is the haunting "The Journey Back In Time."

While Barry's own main theme stands alone as an original composition, it blends nicely into the "Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini" (Rachmaninoff) that helps to define the era in which Elise lives and in which Richard will first meet her. Their encounter is scored by "Is He The One" and "The Man Of My Dreams." Richard's time-travel voyage to find Elise is terminated abruptly ("Return To The Present") when he spots on his hotel room floor a penny minted in 1980. The realization of this object from the future from which he came breaks the spell and yanks him back to the present day.

Nearly two decade's after the film's release, the film's soundtrack album is still available. As one reviewer noted: "There are 'classics' and then there are classics. John Barry's score for Somewhere in Time is one of those instances where film music completely transcends the movie it originates from, and takes on a life of its own outside of its original context" (Andy Dursin, VideoHound's Soundtracks, 1998, Visible Ink Press, p. 409).

The Terminator - Brad Fiedel

1984's The Terminator (D: James Cameron) brought a new approach to the time-travel genre as an emotionless cyborg killing machine--part mechanical, part organic--arrives in 1984 from the future (Los Angeles, 2029). Described as a "terrific action picture [that] never lets up for a minute" (Leonard Maltin), Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast as the Terminator, whose mission is to assassinate a seemingly innocent woman, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother of John Connor. John, later in time, will become the leader of an army that is opposed to the Terminator's creator, Skynet, a self-aware computer that has taken control of the world. Sarah's flight from the Terminator is aided by a soldier, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), who volunteered to travel from the future to protect the mother of his commander (John Connor) against the Terminator. Reese, who already is in love with Sarah, fell for her before he had even met her through a faded Polaroid that John Connor gave him some years earlier.

The film's sequel, 1991's Terminator 2: Judgement Day (D: James Cameron) continues the story when John Connor is in his early teens and the cyborg (Schwarzenegger), reprogrammed in the future to be a protector, returns to protect Sarah and her son John, the soon-to-be savior of humanity, from being destroyed by a rival terminator, the T-1000, an advanced prototype cyborg that is made of a living metal organism that can flow into any shape it desires.

These films' original soundtrack CDs appear on The Terminator - The Definitive Edition (Edel 0029022EDL) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Varese Sarabande VSD-5335). Fiedel approached scoring The Terminator by developing a tone that is strictly mechanical in nature. As the plot is entirely driven by the mechanical actions of the Terminator and Skynet, Fiedel felt it was important to remind the audience of this through the use of musical motifs sounding more mechanical than human. Excepting the "Love Theme," Fiedel's underscore has a "strictly, machine-like quality." As described by David Hirsch in the Edel CD liner notes, the "Terminator Theme" is basically comprised of

Of particular note are the following CD cues: "Main Title," "The Terminator's Arrival," "Future Flashback/Terminator Infiltration," and "Theme from The Terminator." But the only emotionally charged theme is the bittersweet "Love Theme," played by piano and oboe in "Conversation By the Window/Love Scene." This theme also is incorporated into the "Main Title" theme and, later, in the sequel would become the the theme representing the hope for mankind's future.

Back To the Future - Alan Silvestri

The approach taken in scoring the previous films reviewed generally provided an original score to accompany a film's story line, with three exceptions. In 1978's Superman, the vocal "Can You Read My Mind" tells us what is going on in Lois' mind that she can't express in words to Superman. In 1986's Peggy Sue Got Married, the reality of the time period (the 50s) to which Peggy is transported is punctuated by that era's rock'n'roll songs. In 1993's Groundhog Day, a generous sprinkling of pop vocals provides wry commentary on the plight of Weatherman Phil. However, in 1985's Back To the Future (D: Robert Zemeckis), Alan Silvestri's lavish symphonic score must share double billing with a mix of rock songs. While Silvestri composed 45 minutes of original score for Back To the Future, the soundtrack CD (MCA MCAD-6144) has only two Silvestri-composed cues, both re-recordings: "Back to the Future" and "Back to the Future Overture," the balance being rock songs such as "The Power of Love" and "Back In Time" by Huey Lewis and the News.

Assisted by the crazed scientist Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd), 17-year old Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) accidentally travels in the scientist's souped-up DeLorean 30 years back in time from 1985 to 1955, before he was born. He meets Lorraine Baines (Lea Thompson) who begins to fall in love with Marty; however, Lorraine will not become his mother (Lorraine McFly) unless Marty arranges for her to meet and fall in love with his father, George McFly (Crispin Glover)--or else Marty won't exist! Marty locates the one person who might be able to help, the young Doc Brown. Pointing out how dangerous time travel is, given that he could inadvertently change the future, Doc Brown urges Marty to go back to the future immediately. As the car is out of nuclear fuel, Marty must blend into his surroundings until an alternate power source can be found. Meanwhile, Marty discovers that he already has changed the future, his own. Marty's attention now must turn to attempting to reconcile his parents so that they will get together and still conceive Marty in the future.

The late David Kraft, who attended Back To the Future's recording sessions, wrote that Zemeckis wanted a "big" score that would give the film large size and scope since the film lacked exotic locations or overly elaborate visuals, and that Silvestri should emphasize the film's time-travel aspects. The CD's "Overture" features all the score's main themes, including the main title, bristling action motifs, and a tender love theme. One reviewer described the overall score as "vividly symphonic with...rousing orchestration" and hailed the shorter "Back to the Future" (3:17) cue as "a powerful piece which really dramatizes the power of Silvestri's 96-piece orchestra" (Randall Larson, CinemaScore, No. 13/14, Winter 1984/Summer 1985, pp. 63-64).

Leonard Maltin described Back To the Future as a "wonderful, wacked-out time-travel comedy" that "takes its time to get going, but once it does, it's a lot of fun, building to a frantic climax." While the plot is moved along by the rock songs (not necessarily Silvestri's choice), what really powers the Delorean's capacity travel through time, helping ensure the essential audience suspension of disbelief, is Silvestri's driving "Back To the Future" theme. The DeLorean's power to make the jump Back To the Future comes as much from Silvestri's arrangement of the main theme as from the fortuitous lighting bolt that strikes the town clock just in the nick of time.

Zemeckis and Silvestri collaborated in two sequels--1989's Back To the Future Part II (CD: MCA MCAD-6361) and 1990's Back To the Future Part III (CD: Varese Sarabande VSD-5272). Silvestri scored each of these films only with original compositions, avoiding the practice of allowing the film's soundtrack to be little more than a rock song-filled compilation in an effort to make an extra "buck" from the future.

Field Of Dreams - James Horner

In 1989's Field of Dreams (D: Phil Alden Robinson), based on the W.P. Kinsella book "Shoeless Joe," an Iowa farmer, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), hears a Voice in his corn field say "If you build it, he will come." Despite the reservations of Ray's wife Annie (Amy Madigan), Ray plows his corn under and builds a baseball field, with lights and bleachers, hoping baseball's legendary Shoeless Joe Jackson, whose career was cut short by the Black Sox scandal, will come to play. Not only does Shoeless Joe (Ray Liotta) walk out of the past and onto the field from a neighboring corn field but also his teammates.

James Horner's Oscar-nominated score for Field of Dreams was described by Leonard Maltin as "lovely," while a second reviewer saw Horner's score as his "most old-fashionedly sentimental work, even if much of it is electronic" (Guy Tucker, Soundtrack!, Vol. 8/No. 31, September 1989, p. 10). Yet a third reviewer observed that Horner "flawlessly masters the emotion of a moment and uses his craft to...even manipulate the audience," no film better demonstrating this than Field of Dreams (Elmo, http://www. west.net/~elmo/ Horner/ scores/sketches//Field_ of_Dreams_s .html).

Maltin summarizes Field of Dreams as a "story of redemption and faith, in the tradition of the best Hollywood fantasies, with moments that are pure magic." Part of this magic is that the story is an unconventional time-travel fantasy in which Ray builds a device (a ballfield) not to travel to the past or future but rather to bring the past (Shoeless Joe) into the present. To help make this time-travel fantasy believable, Horner subtlely employs a most traditional approach, repopularized since John Williams' score for Star Wars, a series of leitmotifs where individual themes can be associated with ideas and/or characters (Elmo, ibid.). These leitmotifs include a Baseball theme ("The Cornfield" on CD Novus 3060-2-N), the Voice's theme (a synthesized motif underscores as the Voice whispers "If you build it, he will come."), and a Night-time motif (heard in "Night Mists") which is a dreamy, ethereal piece beginning with the Voice's theme.

Three additional themes are introduced in the CD's second cue ("Deciding To Build The Field"): (1) " Moonlight' Graham" theme--when Ray first meets Doc Graham (Burt Lancaster), Doc presents the idea that we do not realize when the most significant moments in our lives pass before our own eyes; this theme represents the conflict between taking the risks necessary to seize the moment and being passive and letting it slip away; (2) John Kinsella theme--this theme for Ray's father, John Kinsella, may be interpreted as the sense of loss when one of those significant moments passes by and there's nothing we can do about it; and (3) Shoeless Joe theme--this theme may be interpreted as the reward in not having let an opportunity slide away. In this second cue, these three themes are all heard in turn, starting with the "Moonlight Graham" theme in keyboard as Ray and Annie discuss the ballfield. Ray laments his father's passivity as the John Kinsella theme is heard in keyboard and wood flute. As Annie gives her support to whatever Ray feels he needs to do, the Shoeless Joe theme is played in piano and bassoon (Elmo, ibid.).

One sub-plot in Field of Dreams is underscored by the CD cue titled "The Timeless Street." Interpreting the Voice's message to "Go the Distance," Ray and Terrance Mann (James Earl Jones) travel to Minnesota to look for "Moonlight" Graham but find they've been chasing a ghost:

While Graham played that inning in the majors, he knew he was going to be sent back to the minors; so he decided to leave baseball in favor of going back to school to earn a medical degree.

Horner's Field of Dreams score, to this point heavily electronic and synthesized with some acoustic instruments (piano, flute, and guitar, among others), becomes more fully orchestral near the film's end. When Ray's daughter Karen lies unconscious just outside the ballfield's baseline, Horner's underscoring again serves as a musical time-travel device as the cue "Doc's Memories" begins. As Karen lies on the ground, a loud "sh-pump-mp!" is heard. Archie Graham, the young incarnation of Doc Graham,

As Ray starts to say goodbye to Shoeless Joe, he reminds: "If you build it, he will come." Joe looks over to home plate, where a young catcher is removing his gear. As we begin to hear the Baseball theme in violin harmonized with cello, Ray recognizes the catcher is his father, John Kinsella, younger than he would be when Ray was born. John thanks Ray for building the field so the ballplayers could come out to play. Introducing himself as John Kinsella, he extends his hand for a shake, as bells or chimes play a small motif which is the Reconciliation theme (Elmo, ibid.) that underscores the reconciling of a years-old estrangement between father and son. As John notes the beautiful sunset is, he asks if this is heaven,

As the film closes, we see that the many lights approaching in the distance are clearly car headlights as far as the eye can see, those most near pulling into the Kinsella property, thereby bringing to fruition Terry's prophecy that "People will come, Ray; people will most definitely come"--just as now occurs on the Iowa farm where Field of Dreams was filmed and where the ball field built for the film yet stands as a tourist attraction. "If you build it, they will come."

Forever Young - Jerry Goldsmith

In 1992's Forever Young (D: Steve Miner), Captain Daniel (Danny) McCormick is a 1939 B25 test pilot. Despondent whether his girlfriend Helen (Isabel Glasser) will ever come out of a coma after being hit by a car, Danny volunteers to be frozen in a cryogenics experiment, his scientist friend Harry Finlay (George Wendt) promising he'll wake Danny once Helen comes out of the coma. For Forever Young, a film that is both time-travel fantasy and romantic comedy, Jerry Goldsmith delivers an awesome score.

The cues on the film's soundtrack CD (Big Screen Records 9 24482-2) are sequenced with the film's story line, leading with the "Love Theme from Forever Young." This beautiful theme is the "backbone of the music...and Goldsmith manages to give this a timeless quality so that it is still as effective when used for the modern day sequences of the film as it is when supporting the earlier year's action" (Mike Jenner, Music from the Movies, Issue 2, Spring 1993, p. 99). The chase and fight scenes are scored with "some heavy-duty rhythmic orchestral material, similar to some of the pounding, percussive chases in the earlier Total Recall" (Jeff Bond, VideoHound's Soundtracks, 1998, Visible Ink Press, p. 153).

"The Experiment" tracks Danny's motivation for volunteering to be frozen as well as the scene in which Danny is placed in the "high tech" cryogenics capsule, where he dreams of embracing Helen as the camera lens pans upward to the sky to follow Danny's plane flying out to sea accompanied by a refrain of the "Love Theme." Immediately the camera pans back to the ground, the audience soon realizing that the film's setting has jumped over 50 years into the future to 1992. Accidentally thawed out, and still a young man, Danny becomes involved in the lives of a young boy, Nat Cooper (Elijah Wood), and his mother Claire (Jamie Lee Curtis). When Danny learns that Helen may still be alive ("She's Alive"), his efforts to reach her are challenged not only by the efforts of the government to capture him but by his growing realization, as he experiences accelerating aging, that Harry had not perfected the cryogenics technique. In the end, Danny finally is "Reunited" with Helen.

One reviewer who found the CD's cues repetitive and coming up short compared with the film yet praised Goldsmith's score: "On the surface, this was one of the year's dumbest movies. So why did I sit through it with such a silly grin on my face? Because it works, and Jerry Goldsmith's score is one good reason why" (Guy Tucker, Film Score Monthly, #30/31, Feb/Mar 1993). One of the score's effective techniques is Goldsmith'use of Billie Holliday's "The Very Thought of You" (heard five times during the film) which helps the viewer to link events from 1939 to the present day. Another theme central to moving the film along is a flying' motif, heard over the Main Title and when Daniel, cramped into Nat's tree house, is teaching Nat how to fly ("Tree House").

Another positive review of the Forever Young score saw it as "valentine for Goldsmith's listeners" for which the "Love Theme" could be part of an orchestral medley with the love theme and main title from Goldsmith's scores for The Russia House and Chinatown, respectively. The "action cues soar over the broad orchestral palette that The Blue Max once toured. These comments are not meant to suggest a lack of originality but merely that Forever Young is in exalted company. ... The "Reunited" finale moves into a graceful coda featuring strings, flute and piano which may be the most heart-felt of Goldsmith's cues" (Stephen Taylor, Film Score Monthly, #29, January 1993, p. 7). No wonder this most engaging film "tugs at your heartstrings" as Goldsmith hits just the right notes each and every time, bringing a tear or two to the viewer's eye as Daniel and Helen "embrace to the tear-in-eye music" of high register strings (Dirk Wickenden, Legend, Issue 18, Summer 1995, pp. 35-37).

Timecop - Mark Isham

In 1994's Timecop (D: Peter Hyams), Max Walker (Claude Van Damme), a 2004 Time Enforcement Commission "timecop," witnesses the death of his wife Melissa (Mia Sara) in a fiery explosion of their home. An unexplained time-travel process allows travel back in time and return to the present. This technology, of course, is being used by criminals to travel back to the past where they can use their knowledge of the future to profit from money-making interventions in the past--in 1863 the illegal time-travelers rob gold from the Union Army, in 1929 they invest to exploit the stock market crash, and in 1994 they try to eliminate any trace of Walker and his wife Melissa. Now Walker must also travel back in time to try and save Melissa and prevent history from being adversely affected by further criminal meddling.

Mark Isham's Timecop score (Varese Sarabande VSD-5532) is highlighted by the wistful Melissa' providing "a few brief moments of romantic reflection" amidst "a solid action score with...plenty of raw, ear-shattering, brass-led energy" as in Blow Up' and Lasers and Tasers' (Howard Maxford, Music from the Movies, Winter 1994/95, p. 46). This, noted a reviewer, is "pretty much what I expected--a straightforward action score with jazzy interludes" (Lukas Kendall, Film Score Monthly, #50, October 1994, p. 17). Defending his Timecop score, Isham noted that there is nothing "musical" about the score because

Peter Hyams didn't want it to have any consistency, except for the love theme. So the music is exploding for 50 minutes. That's the toughest kind of score for me to write, because it's practical instead of melodic. You're dealing with a lot of math to hit Van Damme's kicks, and I could only try to go back and put melody into the film's rhythmic structure. ...Timecop is an action picture, and you don't mess with the genre (Daniel Schweiger, Film Score Monthly, #50, October 1994, p.11).

Contact - Alan Silvestri

1997's Contact (D: Robert Zemeckis), scored by Alan Silvestri, takes Dr. Eleanor Arroway aka Ellie (Jodie Foster) on a trip across the galaxy to System Vega, where she encounters an alien civilization who appear to her in the guise of her father, Ted (David Morse), who died of a heart attack when Ellie was a child. Contact reunites director Zemeckis and composer Alan Silvestri from the Back To the Future trilogy and Forrest Gump. Based on the novel of the same name by the late Carl Sagan, Contact is the story of a free-thinking radio astronomer (Ellie) who discovers an intelligent signal from deep space. Once the signal is deciphered, it provides detailed instructions for building a mysterious device that may spell the world's end or help humans to grow beyond superstition. As the device is built, who will board it to rendezvous with the unknown? By film's end, Contact leaves us asking whether Ellie has traveled across the galaxy to System Vega or only through the device, whether her voyage through time and space was to the past or future, and whether that voyage was relatively long or short.

Silverstri's score for Contact (CD: Warner Bros. 46811-2) was described by one reviewer as "very much in the mystery vein of [the Silvestri-scored] The Abyss with delicate synthesizers and gentle piano melodies, sometimes performed by the harp" (Philippe Blumenthal, 8/22/97 FILMUS-L e-mail). Early in the film, in "Awful Waste of Space" a French horn over tentative strings provides a mysterious outer space motif that reappears several times during the film, while the film's latter portion is scored with "warm, rich melodies" in the style of Silvestri's score for Forrest Gump.

Another reviewer described Contact's score as having "driving action cues, incredibily effective atmospheric music and beautiful themes. One of them is an innocent line for the piano, which jumps notes like a child skipstepping down the street. Its childlike quality adds a quiet beauty to the aliens" (Kjell Neckebroeck, Soundtrack!, Vol. 16/No. 3, p. 20). In "The Primer," low strings and electronic effects provide the underscore for the scenes involving the mysterious billionaire backer S.R. Hadden (John Hurt). Brent Bowles, reviewing Contact's score, noted that Silvestri provides "some clever mixing scattered throughout, as darting strings are kept to the distant background, echoing the unique sound of the alien transmission, in both "Ellie's Bogey" and "Good to Go"--the former is a steady scherzo as Arroway races to record the alien transmission, the latter builds in intensity and urgency as she prepares for contact" (Film Score Monthly, Volume 2, Number 7, September 1997, p. 29). However, Bowles found that the score's

Contact "isn't so much about Space and Aliens as it is about...faith and [Ellie]" (Randall D. Larson, Soundtrack!, Vol. 16/No. 3, p. 18). Silvestri approached the score by going first to the scene on the beach with Ellie and her father, stating: "I really didn't know what I was going to do there, but I somehow knew that whatever I did in [the] film had to resonate with this as the payoff. So I watched that scene over and over again and began improvising, ...little by little, this thematic material started to appear...this little kind of almost childlike melody" (Randall D. Larson, Soundtrack!, Vol. 16/No. 3, p. 18). Silvestri elaborates:

While Contact's score includes considerable electronic music, Silvestri used this music simply as another section of the orchestra to provide certain moods, textures, and sounds. But, Silvestri adds, "the electronic side of things never carried any scenes in the film. You always had this full orchestra there, which I just think is irreplaceable for the emotional impact of the film" (Soundtrack!, Vol. 16/No. 3, p. 19). Yet Contact also contains moments where there is no music, where ambient sound is more important than music as when Ellie is dressed and on the catwalk "walking the plank" into the pod.

Buchsbaum noted Silvestri's Contact score "does something that most others do not: Its quiet nature provides a foundation for speculation and exploration. The Contact score is thinking man's music---and that's what makes it one of the most important scores of the year." (Soundtrack!, Vol. 16/No. 3, p. 21).

Instant Replay

In "Sojourn Across Time," the second leg of our film music voyage, a film's protagonist built or created a machine or device to travel across time. Compared with the heavy outer space-oriented science fiction emphasis in the Sojourn Across Space time-travel genre reviewed in Film Music Voyage #1, the films in this second genre take place on earth, with the possible exception of Contact, where the reality of Ellie's travel to System Vega is a moot point. Compared with the first time-travel genre, the second is less action-oriented, more oriented to emphasizing drama and human relationships, with a slightly heavier emphasis on love gained or lost as a result of travel across time, as seen in half the films--The Time Machine, Time After Time, Somewhere in Time, Forever Young, and even the heavily action-oriented Timecop, although Contact's love interest between Ellie and Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) hardly rises above a sub-plot. There is, in contrast, relatively little emphasis on romance in the films in the Sojourn Across Space genre, although Groundhog Day and Superman more prominently feature a love interest than The Final Countdown and StarGate.

This shift in the plot structure of the films in the first (Sojourn Across Space) as compared with the second (Sojourn Across Time) time-travel genre, with the latter's heavier emphasis on romance as compared with the former, provided composers of films in this second genre with a broader canvas to compose scores containing not only action or suspense music but also beautiful love themes as in Garcia's The Time Machine, Rozsa's Time After Time, Barry's Somewhere in Time, and Goldsmith's Forever Young. Indeed, the emphasis on relationships even moved James Horner to create an original score for Field of Dreams that would inspire just about anyone to take an interest in if not have a "love affair" with baseball.

In neither genre are the original scores based on popular or rock'n'roll songs, the latter being used in the first genre only in Peggy Sue Got Married to define the 1950s to which Peggy Sue was transported, and in Groundhog Day, where popular songs cleverly comment on the unfolding plot. Generally, in both genres, contemporary music is not heard except for a disco-type song in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (disco music still in vogue when Phillips scored this film), and a new age (light jazz) song in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (new age music was catching on when Rosenman scored this film). In the second genre, all the scores generally are devoid of popular songs except Goldsmith's use of Billie Holliday's "The Very Thought of You" as a musical time machine to assist in transporting Daniel and the viewer from the past into the present.

If we look at how composers have approached scoring films in Sojourn Across Space as compared with Sojourn Across Time, films in the latter genre generally required the composer to shift from scoring for action heroics, with time travel incidental to space travel, to scoring more for drama and human relationships in films where time travel was an intention of protagonists who purposively sought to embark on a time-travel journey. Films in the Sojourn Across Space genre are heavily action-oriented and, it might be said, hardly needed music to describe or amplify the action on the screen. However, the right original score for such actions films certainly can add to the film experience by going beyond what can be told through mere image and dialogue alone. This is best illustrated by Jerry Goldsmith's Planet of the Apes score which was not meant to be

Scoring films in the Sojourn Across Time genre is premised less on action per se and more on the dramatic situations and human relationships (in some cases, romantic relationships) being faced by a film's protagonist(s). This additional dimension presents a composer with new scoring opportunities and demands. Specifically, the typical story line of films in the Sojourn Across Time genre has, beyond simple action, the additional dimension of a protagonist purposively seeking to travel across time to the past or the future. While these films have an explicit action dimension, that action takes on a more significant introspective dimension that requires the composer's score not only to complement the action we can see on the screen but also to illuminate or bring out the protagonist's internal emotional state that we may not be able to "know" even through the film's visuals and dialogue.

In effect, the shift a composer makes in approaching how to score a film in the Sojourn Across Space genre as compared with scoring a film in the Sojourn Across Time genre might be described simply as the difference between the challenge of scoring an action-oriented "outer space" film (e.g., Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) and that of scoring a romantic fantasy of the "inner mind" (e.g., Somewhere in Time). Indeed, in the Sojourn Across Time genre, introspective scoring is best heard in Barry's Somewhere in Time but also in such films as Horner's Field of Dreams and Silvestri's Contact. Interestingly, each of these films has its own strong but uniquely different focus on the power of love as a motive force.

Our final journey into The Soundtrack Zone, appearing in Film Music Voyage #3, features a third genre of time-travel films and their scores, a genre that spans 52 years from 1944's Laura to 1996's To Gillian on her 37th birthday. Next stop...Sojourn Across Death!

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