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MAGIC
...sure is!
A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

Music composed by
JERRY GOLDSMITH

Rating
* * * *


Performed by
UNNAMED ORCHESTRA
conducted by
JERRY GOLDSMITH

Orchestration
ARTHUR MORTON

Produced by
NICK REDMAN
ROBERT TOWNSON

Album running time
41:43

Released by
VARESE SARABANDE CD CLUB
Catalog number
VCL 0403 1018

Album cover copyright (c) 2003 Twenteth Century Fox Film Corporation; review copyright (c) 2006 James Southall

Before Richard Attenborough turned into "Mr Epic" with Gandhi and most of his subsequent films as director, he made this well-crafted, unusual 1978 thriller starring Anthony Hopkins as a magician whose ventriloquist's dummy develops a life of its own.  It sounds a bit daft, but works very well, with Hopkins on particularly good form.  As an actor, one of Attenborough's best performances (in The Sand Pebbles) had been accompanied by one of Goldsmith's best scores, and this was the only one of his films as director scored by Goldsmith.

Goldsmith had an almost-unique ability to, time after time, get to the very heart of a film with a main theme.  The composer was disparaging about the effectiveness of using leitmotifs in film scores, preferring instead to come up with one theme and anchor the majority of the music around it - in the hands of other film composers over the years, that approach has frequently produced mind-numbingly dull scores which just repeat a piece over and over again, but Goldsmith's craftsmanship was such that he was able to use the approach and anchor the majority of cues around bits and pieces of his main theme, sometimes doing it so subtly that the listener is blissfully unaware.  At least until the mid 1980s, Goldsmith seemed to spend far, far more effort on creating intelligent scores than was actually necessary - one of his great strengths, and probably the main reason he is perhaps the most revered amongst all film composes, particularly within the film music community itself.  (And this was one of eight films scored by the composer during that year!)

Magic certainly has its own magical main theme.  If played on a piano, as it presumably was for the director at first, it would be an extremely attractive melody, perhaps one of the sweetest of the composer's career - but, ever one for doing the unexpected at that time of his career, Goldsmith gave the piece to a solo harmonica, and it takes on a twisted, uncomfortable feeling which is so perfect for the film - and so different from what other film composers would have done - it must leave the listener in awe.  Just to prove its malleability, the composer later gives it a rapturous peformance for full orchestra in the exceptional "Appassionata".

In with different versions of the main theme are several genuinely-unsettling pieces of music, almost always featuring the harmonica.  It's remarkable to compare this sort of suspense music with that being written today - composers seem to favour long sections of strings just plodding along, completely unmusically, with sudden interjections of blaring brass when something exciting happens.  OK, so that might be perfectly effective enough as a technique for scoring a film, but compare that with this score's "The Lake" and tell me you can't see why Goldsmith was so damned good - he managed to create far more tension by actually writing music, orchestrating it carefully and using it sparingly.  Action pieces are few and far between, but for as tense a piece of action music as you could hear, "Duke's End" is the place to go.

As with all the Varese Club releases, presentation is excellent.  The sound quality is faultless - credit must be given to engineer Michael Matessino and producer Nick Redman - and Robert Townson's liner notes are a boon to anyone who hasn't seen the film, and interesting even for those who have (though the seemingly-random italicisation of some words is strange, to say the least).  Even better than the presentation, though, is the music - brilliant.  Strangely, some copies of this are still available three years after its release - I'd suggest snapping them up quick, before they're all gone!

Tracks

  1. Main Title (2:02)
  2. Corky's Retreat (3:18)
  3. Didn't Remember Me (1:50)
  4. Memories (2:52)
  5. What Can't You Explain? (:56)
  6. Appassionata (2:07)
  7. Let's Take Off (:53)
  8. One Chance (1:09)
  9. Stop the Postman (1:50)
  10. The Lake (2:47)
  11. The Ruse (1:27)
  12. Duke's Catch (1:36)
  13. Blood (1:05)
  14. Duke's End (1:04)
  15. Two Birds with One Stone (:45)
  16. I'll Tell (2:40)
  17. Fats Blows the Whistle (1:43)
  18. The Wooden Heart (2:38)
  19. Us Was You (1:16)
  20. End Titles (2:06)
  21. Previous Act (2:39)
  22. Next Act (2:39)
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