Despite meeting with a very poor response both critically and commercially upon its original release in 1980, Somewhere in Time developed a cult following over the years. Jeannot Swarcz’s film – based on Richard Matheson’s novel Bid Time Return – sees Christopher Reeve become obsessed with a young actress from seventy years prior (Jane Seymour) and then somehow hypnotise himself to go back in time and fall in love. I don’t believe it is a true story.
Here’s something that is a true story: the US box office receipts for this film totalled $10m. The soundtrack album was certified platinum in the US, meaning it sold more than a million copies. A million copies! Of a soundtrack album to a film that very few people went to see. That suggests there must be something very special about it – and indeed there is. The original album is still in print – and good as it is, I’ve always found the sound to be a bit off, so La-La Land’s extended and remastered release in 2021 was a real boon. (A very fine re-recording with John Debney conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was also released over the intervening years.)
John Barry was a master film composer – his great gift was that he knew, always, not to over-complicate anything. He had an uncanny ability to hone in on what was important either at an individual moment of a film, or of a film as a whole. For Somewhere in Time, that was the love story – no need to get distracted by the period or by the setting – what mattered was the two people in love with each other – and so that’s where all the focus lies.
There are other themes in the score – an opulent melody heard in a couple of early cues, “The Grand Hotel” and “The Old Woman”; a typical Barry suspense theme which then gets explored in “June 27th” and “Room 417” before being expanded upon in the first parts of “The Journey Back in Time”, a magnificent piece which sees the composer somehow dabbling in slow-paced, murky suspense and yet seeing a magical sound emerge; a dashing light romantic interlude to conclude “Is He The One?”; a playful scherzo in “A Day Together” and “Rowing”; the gorgeous, melancholy “The Man of my Dreams”; and even the famous Rachmaninov piece which has gone on to be so associated with both the film and Barry’s music (which sits alongside it very comfortably) – but it’s the famous main theme which is the undoubted star of the show.
One of Barry’s most indelible melodies
The new album begins where the original one ended, with pianist Roger Williams’s virtuosic performance of one of Barry’s most indelible melodies (which is saying something). Lavish and unabashedly romantic, it is essentially as straightforward a “love theme” as you could find – but so beautifully effective in its construction, essentially in instrumental song-form with hook, verses, chorus and bridge – it just doesn’t let go. The gift to be able to write such tunes – such catchy, unforgettable tunes – is one with which John Barry so demonstrably had – no wonder these records flew off the shelves.
We are treated to numerous variants across the album – usually with the violins carrying the melody over the other strings and horn chords, but in a particularly lovely version later on in the poignant “Razor” it’s heard for flute, and even more attractively in variants for both flute and piano in “Total Dismay” and then in heart-breaking fashion in “Return to the Present”, solo violin taking the lead for the first time – and it’s such a good theme, it’s no problem that it’s heard so often.
What the new album gives is a bit more variety – the 44-minute main presentation of the score plays out with a more-rounded dramatic architecture than the 31-minute programme we were all used to for so long, with its understandable focus on the main theme. Here we have one of cinema’s great love themes, from one of its great melodists, sitting at the heart of one of the great romantic film scores – and on La-La Land’s album we finally get to hear the original recording in pristine sound, as it was meant to be heard. They don’t write them like this any more.
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