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This is gonna sound weird, but now I can finally get rid of I.Q.!
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure I.Q. is a perfect score for the film, it's just a kind of film music I really dislike.
I love Seconds.
Yes, it's not easy listening, but it's a score that is a clear emotional messenger, about something which is both tragic, and deeply, deeply disturbing.
Cheers
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moolik, it is SO fulfilling to see your journey of this score over the past several days, from dislike, to it growing on you, to you finally seeing it in film context and absolutely falling in love with it. Just beautiful:
That first cover art is wicked in a good sense!
Not a big fan of the score though..but great release nevertheless!
Maybe I need to spin it once more ....
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Hi Yavar..sure..I wanted to watch the movie for a long time but never got a hold on it.Will definetly check it out ...and yes It has to be in context with the movie for sure...I can see why it will work great.
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Now that I listened to SECONDS a second (ohhhhh) time...its really a great score.Now gotta listen to SHOCK TREATMENT again..cause this was another hard one for me as well...
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Just watched it..Fantastic !!And Jerrys score fits it like a glove!
If it wasnt for THE SAND PEBBLES this would have gotten an academy award nomination.
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Yes this tender Love theme is incredibly effective in its melancholy....I must admit..I see the score in a whole new perspective and its one of the strongest ones by Goldsmith for me now.That in mind it shows how deeply conected those great scores are to the movies they are written for.
This is the kind of open-minded reappraisal we all should aspire to, when it comes to our appreciation of art! (Next, moolik, you should try to get into Donaggio!)
Yavar
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Hi! That’s a neat observation. I don’t love all Britten but I do love that; another I’d recommend of his is his Sinfonia da Requiem:
https://youtu.be/IZAgYQSTTJA
Yavar
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Hear a very good live performance on the radio of Sinfonia da Requiem by the St. Louis Symphony. I'll re-listen to the Sea Interlude along with Seconds when the Quartet arrives.
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Posted: |
May 21, 2022 - 11:16 PM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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Just listened to this one. I think this is a terrific score, and while the LLL release was unquestionably sonically compromised, I enjoyed it very much.
But this one (thirteen years of technology later) is very significantly better. Really great work! (I would have thought it impossible, but I guess I know nothing about sound engineering.) No, there's no "perfectly balanced stereo image," as Jose from Quartet acknowledges with modesty, but honestly, this feels like what Seconds should sound like, a gritty, black and white, '60s sci-fi score. Boy, I'm glad I sprung for this new issue!
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Posted: |
May 22, 2022 - 3:37 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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... but honestly, this feels like what Seconds should sound like, a gritty, black and white, '60s sci-fi score.
Glad you're enjoying this too, Schiffy. Funny though, just reading your comment "...'60s sci-fi score..." made me realise how much of it actually seems to avoid sounding like that. There are maybe, what, three tracks (?) where it goes all Twilighty Zonish or FREUDian (ha!) but for the most part it's just so incredibly melancholy. I could be pretentious (oh yes, I can be) and say that this is Goldsmith conveying a sense of loss, or a sense of longing. That's what it conveys to me anyway. The liner notes state that the "Love Theme" (as such) is a close cousin of THE BLUE MAX's Love Theme, and that's true, but overall the score which SECONDS is most closely related to is for me THE ILLUSTRATED MAN - one of my favourite scores of all time.
While I'm here I may as well add that I'm not particularly struck by the source cues - and I often love source music, especially for cocktail parties - but there's nothing much of interest in them. In fact the two Jimmie Haskell tracks (especially the last, Wacky Races one) are irritating. I will listen to them again, but never as part of the main prog. Last night I heard the 25-min score (only) and was so enthralled that I as soon as it had finished, I put it on again. One of the joys of 25-minute scores.
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Posted: |
May 22, 2022 - 3:56 AM
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By: |
Rollin Hand
(Member)
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... but honestly, this feels like what Seconds should sound like, a gritty, black and white, '60s sci-fi score.
Glad you're enjoying this too, Schiffy. Funny though, just reading your comment "...'60s sci-fi score..." made me realise how much of it actually seems to avoid sounding like that. There are maybe, what, three tracks (?) where it goes all Twilighty Zonish or FREUDian (ha!) but for the most part it's just so incredibly melancholy. I could be pretentious (oh yes, I can be) and say that this is Goldsmith conveying a sense of loss, or a sense of longing. That's what it conveys to me anyway. The liner notes state that the "Love Theme" (as such) is a close cousin of THE BLUE MAX's Love Theme, and that's true, but overall the score which SECONDS is most closely related to is for me THE ILLUSTRATED MAN - one of my favourite scores of all time.
While I'm here I may as well add that I'm not particularly struck by the source cues - and I often love source music, especially for cocktail parties - but there's nothing much of interest in them. In fact the two Jimmie Haskell tracks (especially the last, Wacky Races one) are irritating. I will listen to them again, but never as part of the main prog. Last night I heard the 25-min score (only) and was so enthralled that I as soon as it had finished, I put it on again. One of the joys of 25-minute scores.
I don't agree with you, Mr Wilson. These source tracks are essential to the whole and they underline well certain scenes in which the lead undergoes some dramatic stuff and they create a strong and mad counterpoint.
Moreover, the film doesn't belong to the "science fiction genre" at all but to the social and existential drama: it's more like a philosophical tale camouflaged as a horror story with a political overtone (very anti corporation). It's basically a character's study on old age. An old man refusing his age. From the start Arthur Hamilton has a double life that he hides from his wife: a frustrated painter forced to live a conventional life. Then he physically embraces his private fantasy by becoming Wilson. Do you read me, Mr Wilson? Are you faifthful to the company, Mr Wilson?
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It's funny how this film is so loved now by people who never saw it when it came out (basically, no one saw it when it came out) but who discovered it much, much later. I saw it three months prior to its release, at a sneak preview in Westwood, in the days when sneak preview titles were not known in advance to the audience going - you got whatever was playing PLUS the sneak preview. Can't remember what the main feature was, but it was a full house for the preview. Lights dim - know one knows anything, music begins and those incredible Saul Bass titles. Rock Hudson's name comes on - the audience boos. Film proper begins - no one knows what the hell is going on - this isn't a Rock Hudson comedy. In fact, where IS Rock Hudson. Everyone sits there, baffled and not too happy - everyone but me - me is loving every second of Seconds. Then the transformation - laughs - how could John Randolph become Rock Hudson? At that point, people begin leaving in droves. Those who stuck with it, about a third of the audience, are mesmerized and after the end of it, no applause, no boos, people just sit there.
Three months later, the studio knows it has a loser on its hands and shoves it out wide on a double bill with Waco, a western. The film gets a decent review in the LA Times, but not one that would actually get a single person in the theater. The film dies and disappears until TV gets it much later.
And then, at some point, probably in the later 70s or even early 80s, suddenly it's a masterpiece. Suddenly everyone knows the film. Suddenly it's beloved. Funny how that happens. I thought it was a masterpiece at the preview and I think it now. And Mr. Goldsmith's score is brilliant, one of his best. As to Mr. Hudson, as the LA Times reviewer points out, this is the film that made him an ACTOR. The End.
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It's funny how this film is so loved now by people who never saw it when it came out (basically, no one saw it when it came out) but who discovered it much, much later.
You're right. I didn't know what to make of it when it came out. Granted, I was two years old.
I loved everything I saw when I was two, especially macaroni and cheese.
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Posted: |
May 22, 2022 - 9:20 PM
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By: |
Wedge
(Member)
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Interesting recollection, Bruce. I'm curious ... were Evans Evans and Leonard Nimoy still in the film at that point, or was it closer to the final cut?
It's such a pity that a good chunk of the film appears to be lost to the ages. Along with the aforementioned Evans/Nimoy scene, there was a sequence with a family at the beach that was the source of the brief hallucination at the end of the film. I also found an article describing at least one lengthy additional scene with Barbara Werle, who played Hamilton's secretary at the beginning of the film. Apparently, a dramatic 5.5-minute telephone call between Werle and Rock Hudson garnered applause on the set. This scene was likely meant to occur during the abridged second act, but I wasn't able to find any specifics about its context, nor if it wound up in Frankenheimer's original cut. Regardless, I'd love to have a peek at the shooting script.
Depending on when the trims were made, it seems conceivable that Goldsmith might have written music for some of these excised scenes. Since the only audio source we have for the score is the music stems, anything recorded but not used would not have been on them. A shame his sketches aren't archived at AMPAS.
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)