Released when the 60s were in mid-swing, The Ipcress File stars Michael Caine in one of his signature roles as working class spy Harry Palmer. Based on Len Deighton’s novel, even though it is produced by Harry Saltzman, has Ken Adam as production design, Peter Hunt as editor and John Barry as composer, Sidney J. Furie’s film was very deliberately concocted to be the opposite of the James Bond films – no fake glamour, no glitz and girls – and 60-odd years later it still stands up remarkably well.
Barry’s score is one of his most brilliant. It came at a time he was at the height of his creative powers – in Bond terms, in between Goldfinger and Thunderball, but also around the same time as The Knack and Born Free and The Chase – a remarkably diverse set of music showing the range he had back then.
The score’s signature is its magnificent main theme, “A Man Alone”, with Barry capturing the cold war feel through his prominent use of the Hungarian hammered dulcimer the cimbalom. He went on to use it in other projects too but it is in The Ipcress File where its somewhat sparse, very slightly jarring sound is at its most brilliant. As the theme is unveiled over the wonderful opening credits sequence, we are treated to one of the most perfectly-judged combinations of image and music of the composer’s whole career (which is saying something because there have been very few to have worked in this field who could come anywhere close to John Barry’s dramatic instincts).
Given the quality of the theme, perhaps it should come as no surprise that the soundtrack album the composer put together back at the time should focus so much on it, featuring various jazzy variations (as well as the cimbalom, there is some brilliant trumpet and piano playing). This serves as a really fine capture of a particular mood at a particular time and has been issued on CD a couple of times, but what it didn’t really capture was the actual film score – about half of the album is given over to re-arranged and re-recorded pieces of underscore and the whole thing is undeniably brilliant – but Quartet’s new recording of the music as written for the film, with Adam Klemens conducting the City of Prague Philharmonic, is a real eye-opener and makes a tremendous companion-piece to the classic original album.
There are still numerous presentations of the “A Man Alone” theme, alongside some wonderful suspense music. When the score does burst into “action” mode, such as in “Fight on the Steps”, Barry keeps things dark and murky – and now we can hear the full fruits of the dramatic architecture of his score, because this cue leads into the glorious suspense of “Break-In” where a smoky bass flute version of the main theme is heard before a terrific suspense motif takes over – and then the brief-but-impactful “Codename Housemartin” which sees all sorts of different textures coming together to create a great smorgasbord of flavour.
Quartet’s new recording is really quite remarkable – apart from the fidelity of the sound, you’d swear you were listening to something Barry himself had recorded back in the day. They wisely opted not to attempt to recreate the improvised jazz variations on the main theme from the original album but did record the album arrangements of some of the film cues which are heard in the bonus section of the new CD, along with recordings of two other classic Barry themes which feature the cimbalom, Vendetta and The Persuaders!
They have also issued their recording on vinyl, featuring a curated selection of the score in an attempt to create something resembling what an album of the film score may have sounded like had it been released at the time – it features various edits which means it cannot be replicated with a simple playlist of tracks from the CD (which is a bit of a shame because I would love to hear it – but don’t do vinyl).
The Ipcress File has always been a favourite Barry album of mine and I have to say, hearing it in this new incarnation really is a revelation – the way the theme more gradually develops, the pockets of suspense motifs that we now hear more frequently – the two albums make fantastic complements to each other. This is a release that no Barry fan will want to be without.
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