Tag: John Barry

Film Review: The Quiller Memorandum

The spy film genre has been thrilling cinema audiences for over a century now and with certain franchises still flourishing, it’s likely to continue to do so for a while yet. Way before “Bond, James Bond” saved us from SPECTRE’s first attempt at world domination and even before the “talkies” allowed fans to hear their favourite actors’ voices, tales of espionage and government agents captured our collective imagination.

Like most (perhaps all) film genres, this one has its roots in literary works of fiction and these date back to a time shortly before the First World War when writers such a G.T. Chesney and William Le Queux imagined French or Russian invaders attacking Britain. As the fortunes of Europe’s major powers began to shift and colonial rivalries grew, new alliances were formed as new threats loomed and soon Germany became the number one foe in these literary tales.

Films like Peril of the Fleet (1909) and Lieutenant Rose and the Stolen Code (1911) tell of foreign attempts to attack the British Navy, the country’s single greatest defence against invasion. It’s interesting to note that in all these films leading up to the outbreak of WWI, the foreign spies are never given a country of origin because the films’ distributors were reluctant to close the door on a large cinema-going market. But once war had been declared, the enemy was named.

The genre grew even more popular during the 1930s when tensions once again began to rise in Europe and directors such as Alfred Hitchcock had many a hit with titles such as The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935) and Secret Agent (1936).

For many, the popularity of spy films peaked in the 1960s when the Cold War had pushed the bar of tension between east and west to its greatest height. This is where the action-packed adventure movie carved out a niche for itself and began to break box office records. Fantastical and ludicrous the plots may have been but in terms of entertainment, they were dynamite.

But there were also less stylised – but no less stylish – films being made, grittier, more realistic and equally suspenseful. Films like The Ipcress File (1965) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) both adapted from gritty spy novels (Len Deighton and John le Carré respectively) were low on action but high on procedure and intrigue.

And so we come to The Quiller Memorandum from 1966 starring George Segal, Alec Guinness and Max von Sydow. A fine example of a grittier type of spy film this time set in West Berlin during the Cold War.

Quiller played by Segal is sent to Berlin by SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) to investigate the murders of two British agents by a mysterious neo-Nazi organisation. His controller there Pol (Guinness) warns him that a new generation of Nazis has emerged who are difficult to spot because they no longer wear uniforms. He orders Quiller to locate the organisation’s headquarters. With his only clues being three items found in the murdered British agent’s pockets, Quiller – clearly resourceful and laconic – sets out to do just that.

There is much shaking off of people following him and questioning people who may or may not have known the murdered agents – all simple investigative procedures – and yet the ever present threat in the perfectly photographed city (it was shot in Berlin) looms like an approaching storm. You feel as though Quiller’s every move is being watched by those he’s trying to investigate. The pacing is excellent and the tension builds nicely.  And my God – it’s all so cool. Typical 60s cool but so subtly captured. The cars. The clothing. And John Barry’s superb soundtrack – surely nobody at this time was composing cooler film music.

Soon Quiller is captured by the neo-Nazi organisation and “persuaded”  by means of a truth serum to tell their leader Oktober (von Sydow) the location of SIS HQ so that the bad guys can annihilate the good. Quiller may not be a musclebound tough guy but he’s nonetheless a tough nut to crack and he just about manages to deflect Oktober’s questioning so that Oktober, fed up with having his time wasted, orders him to be killed. But of course, he escapes his would be assassins and….no, that’s all I’ll say. Because it really is worth a look if you’re a fan of thoughtful spy dramas.

It was directed by Michael Anderson whose credits include The Dam Busters (1955) and Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and adapted by Harold Pinter from the 1965 novel The Berlin Memorandum by Elleston Trevor (under the pseudonym Adam Hall). It was nominated for three BAFTAs while Pinter was nominated for an Edgar Award but it failed to gain a win. But that really doesn’t matter.

My only complaint, if I could call it that? How the hell is it that I’d never seen it before last week! I’m amazed that such a classy spy flick had escaped my radar all these years. George Segal is perfectly cast as the quietly confident American who ends up with more trouble than he hoped as is Alec Guinness’s rigidly unemotional Pol, (he of course would eventually go on to play another spymaster character, George Smiley). Max von Sydow is suitably menacing as are his henchmen and Senta Berger (the love interest, of course) is wonderfully enigmatic and oh so alluring.

A very nice and sadly underrated film that is quite likely closer to how it really was than the majority of spy films ever made.

Maestros of Film Music

If I were to ask you to name your top ten favourite movies of all time, how long would it take you to settle on a list? Would you find it as easy as 1,2,3, able even to put them in order of preference all the way up to 3,2,1? Or would it take hours of head-scratching, soul-searching and discussion, with DVDs and old videos being pulled out and watched over to remind yourself of how great or maybe not so great a film is? I was asked this recently and I must admit that I found the idea of naming my top ten favourite films absolutely impossible. I can name the titles of numerous films that would most certainly be included in the list but I couldn’t for a single moment begin to arrange them in any order of preference. Nor could I stop at ten. I’m guessing, but I think the number would be at least twice that and likely many more. For me, there are quite simply more than ten films worthy – for reasons aesthetic, technical, artistic or simply just plain entertaining – of standing on the shoulders of all the rest. Of course, if you want to see such a list the Internet has dozens of them. Dozens of top tens, top fifties and top one hundreds compiled by movie fans, critics and institutes alike, all with most probably a far greater knowledge of cinema than do I.

However, the idea of compiling a top ten list of something appealed to the pop-picker in me and so I continued to think of one that would be related somehow yet easier, nay possible to come up with. What I decided on came to me via my iPod and although it initially seemed fairly straightforward, as I scrolled through my music library and then began researching certain items that were on my wish list, so began the head-scratching, the soul-searching and the discussion. Nevertheless, finally after what I consider too long a time, I have compiled a list of my ten favourite film music composers. But please don’t think there’s any order of preference here.

I will kick off with the only one on my list that I happened to have shared a ceiling with because ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to see Elmer Bernstein perform at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Needless to say, it was a fabulous evening and I think I whistled The Great Escape tune all the way back home, probably to the annoyance of my fellow tube travellers. Bernstein (not to be confused with Leonard) is probably best known for his scores for The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, the latter of which undoubtably helped turn a fairly routine western into one of the most enjoyable films of the genre. His upbeat western themes, of which there are many, are a true joy but a quick look at his credits prove him to be an extremely versatile composer, capable of writing for any genre. He won an Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and would go on to be nominated a total of 14 times giving us along the way great scores like The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Age of Innocence.

Last year (2012), Hitchcock’s Vertigo replaced Citizen Kane at the top of the British Film Institute’s Greatest Films of All Time list. That’s somewhat significant when you consider that Orson Welles’ debut film had previously occupied the top spot for 50 years. What’s also of interest is that Bernard Hermann wrote the score for both movies. Hermann, who started off working in radio as a staff conductor, wrote some incredibly atmospheric pieces – The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and The Day the Earth Stood Still are about as atmospheric as you can get. He collaborated on many a Hitchcock picture and gave us the classic dramatic soundtracks to North by Northwest and Psycho. But there was much much more great music throughout his career too.  Mysterious Island, Cape Fear and On Dangerous Ground to name but three. He won an Oscar for The Devil and Daniel Webster in 1941and would go on to receive a total of 5 nominations.

Next up on my list of no particular order comes one of the most successful and influential film composers of all time, a man who, aside from Walt Disney, is unmatched in Academy Award nominations with a total of forty eight to date. Out of these he has garnered five wins. He has composed some of the most recognisable and whistleable music in film history including Star Wars, Superman and the Indiana Jones films. I refer, of course, to John Williams. Williams moved to Los Angeles and began writing film scores in the late ’50s but it wasn’t until he penned the music to Spielberg’s Jaws in 1974 that his career really took off. The ominous three-note motif that he composed was a stroke of genius and has since become synonymous with sharks. Many of his compositions employ a full orchestra and this gives his music a classical neoromantic style, making it very easy to pop in a CD and listen to. His grand symphonic score to Star Wars has become the highest grossing non-popular music recording of all time. His score for Jurassic Park is sublime as are those for Saving Private Ryan, Empire of the Sun and the Harry Potter films. His most recent work for Spielberg’s Lincoln shows that even after fifty years of composing film scores, he’s still got what it takes to give the world beautiful music.

Another John now, this time John Barry. Barry will probably be remembered as the man who gave musical accompaniment to the world’s coolest spy. Although the writing credit for the James Bond theme goes to Monty Norman, it was Barry’s arrangement that has made it one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of music the world has ever heard. He wrote the scores for eleven more 007 films throughout the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s and for my money, the Bond music was never better. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is, in my opinion, the high point of the series but all those that came before it have terrific soundtracks. He scored numerous other films throughout a fifty year career and picked up five Oscars (Born Free (best score and song), The Lion in Winter, Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves) out of seven nominations along the way. Zulu, The Ipcress File, Midnight Cowboy and Enigma are great examples of his film soundtracks. Early in his career, he had a number of hit singles with his band The John Barry Seven – Hit and Miss, Walk Don’t Run and Beat for Beatniks to name just three – and these tunes simply ooze with the style and coolness that was inherent on the streets and in the clubs of London in those swinging ’60s. He also penned some memorable TV themes, none more so than The Persuaders!

Ennio Morricone, like the preceding four composers here, has a certain style. And this style is no more apparent than in his scores for the spaghetti westerns for which he is most famous. In 1964 director Sergio Leone set out to make a different kind of western and when he hired Morricone to write the score, they created an accompanying soundtrack that was equally different from the orchestral standards of the genre that had come before. Making use of the then new Fender electric guitar, jew’s harps and trumpets they basically came up with a whole new twangy sound for a western movie soundtrack. And what a sound it was. As instantly recognisable after just a few bars as the James Bond theme and equally as evocative. His music adds another dimension to these films and is arguably a character of its own. Without their soundtracks, these films simply would not be the same. And like Elmer Bernstein, Morricone’s versatility ensured that he wasn’t restricted to just cowboy films. His long list of credits include, the comedies La Cage aux Folles and Bulworth, John Carpenter’s excellent 1982 chiller flick The Thing, the Schwarzenegger fantasy movie Red Sonja, The Untouchables starring Kevin Costner and Robert De Niro and Clint Eastwood’s In the Line of Fire. Aside from the spaghetti westerns, perhaps his best known work is the soundtrack for The Mission, a 1986 film by Roland Joffé about the experiences of a Jesuit missionary in South America during the 18th Century. It is considered to be a perfect example of what music can do for a film and has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Surprisingly, Morricone has never won an Academy Award but he has been nominated a total of five times.

Another composer who enjoyed a long and successful career was Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith began scoring radio shows in the early 1950s and this quickly progressed to television shows such as The Twilight Zone and later, the theme to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. His first feature film was a western in 1957 called Black Patch. More TV and film scores followed but it wasn’t until he scored the classic 1962 western Lonely Are the Brave that he began to receive widespread recognition. Throughout the decade his career flourished with critically acclaimed achievements like A Patch of Blue and The Sand Pebbles both of which garnered him Oscar nominations. Another nomination together with enormous critical attention came for his controversial soundtrack to The Planet of the Apes in ’68, a score which saw him using innovative techniques to get the ape-like sounds he wanted. The Omen in ’76 saw him win his only Oscar out of a total of 18 nominations and before his death in 2004, he would go on to give us some of the most stirring and memorable film music ever. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is perhaps his most recognised work and following its success, he would go on to score four more films for the franchise (my personal favourite score being First Contact) as well as the themes to the TV series The Next Generation and Voyager. Other highlights include the wonderfully eerie Alien, the spooky Poltergeist and the cool jazzy L.A. Confidential.

Long considered to be one of the giants of Hollywood movie music, Dimitri Tiomkin was musically trained in Russia and made his performing debut in the early ’20s as a pianist playing with the Berlin Philharmonic. He moved to Hollywood in 1929 but it wasn’t until ’37 that his score for Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon helped him achieve any sort of recognition. The next ten years saw him work with Capra on films including Mr Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life. Over the course of his career, he wrote music for some of the most popular and spectacular films ever including The Guns of Navarone, The Alamo, The Fall of the Roman Empire and Land of the Pharaohs. He scored four Hitchcock films including Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder and numerous westerns, the genre with which he perhaps became most associated. His first was Duel in the Sun in 1946 and his most well-known was High Noon 1952, a film which received seven Oscar nominations and won four, two of which were for Tiomkin – Best Original Music and Best Song. This was the first time a composer had received two awards for the same movie. He won twice more for The High and the Mighty in ’54 and The Old Man and the Sea in ’58. In total he would be nominated twenty two times. Other highlights include Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The War Wagon, Town Without Pity and Giant. Tiomkin also penned memorable themes to TV shows such as Rawhide and Gunslinger.

In complete contrast to the classic style of Tiomkin comes Lalo Schifrin, an Argentine pianist at heart with jazz running through his veins. He is perhaps best known for his theme to the Mission: Impossible TV show and several of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies. These are excellent examples of his often edgy, frequently pumping and sometimes cool jazzy soundtracks but there are so many more scores worth attention. Schifrin moved to Hollywood in 1963 and was offered his first film project by MGM in the form of an African adventure called Rhino! That year he re-arranged Jerry Goldsmith’s original theme to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. into something far more jazzy and ended up winning the 1965 Emmy award for Best TV Theme. His credits encompass virtually every genre and include some of the coolest tunes associated with film. Notable soundtracks are Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Enter The Dragon and Rush Hour. Classic TV themes penned by him include Starsky and Hutch and Planet of the Apes. He’s yet to win an Oscar but he’s been nominated six times to date.

Another composer who knew how to write “cool” was Henry Mancini. Some of his best known works include The Pink Panther theme, Moon River and Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the score to Victor Victoria. His career as a musician began in 1946 when he became a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra. Six years later he joined Universal Pictures music department where he contributed to dozens of films including The Glenn Miller Story starring James Stewart. This gave him his first Oscar nomination. In ’58 his thirty-five year collaboration with Blake Edwards began when he scored the TV series Peter Gunn. Breakfast at Tiffany’s followed as did The Pink Panther and it’s sequels, The Great Race and Victor Victoria to name just a few of their pairings. He worked with numerous Hollywood directors throughout his career and along the way gave us such scores as those for Hatari! which includes the chirpy and well-known Baby Elephant Walk, The Molly Maguires, Charade, The Glass Menagerie and Santa Claus: The Movie. In Oscar terms he was nominated eighteen times and won four.

One of the first composers to ever write musical scores for movies was Max Steiner, an Austrian-born music prodigy who was trained by Johannes Brahms and Robert Fuchs. He conducted his first operetta at age twelve and became a full-time professional conductor/composer at fifteen. Steiner is referred to as “the father of film music” and is widely considered one of the greatest film score composers in the history of cinema. He composed over three hundred scores for RKO and Warner Brothers throughout his career and was nominated for an Oscar twenty four times, winning three for The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942), and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides these, his more popular scores include King Kong (1933), Casablanca (1942) and his most famous work and arguably the greatest film score ever recorded Gone with the Wind (1939). From Austria, the young Steiner toured to England, then to New York for a fifteen year stint on Broadway as musical director or conductor before accepting an offer from RKO to move to Hollywood. His first screen credit as orchestrator came on a musical called Dixiana in 1930. His breakthrough came three years later with King Kong. Actor and musician Oscar Levant later called the film “a symphony accompanied by a movie”. After a move from RKO to Warner Bros. Steiner was sought after by the leading directors of the day. Other notable scores include The Searchers, They Died with Their Boots On, The Big Sleep and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Marvin Hamlisch wasn’t the first composer to take the musical reigns of the 007 franchise from John Barry. George Martin was that man. George ‘The Fifth Beatle’ Martin composed the score and the title song for Live and Let Die and while the latter is arguably one of the best of the series, the former is not quite up to the standard set by Barry. Marvin Hamlisch contribution to the franchise was The Spy Who Loved Me and again one can argue that the title song he co-wrote with Carole Bayer Sager – Nobody Does It Better – is a strong entry in the series but the rest of the soundtrack is below Barry’s high standard. Having said that, it’s by no means the weakest in the franchise’s history. Hamlisch’s first job was as a rehearsal pianist for Barbra Streisand’s Funny Girl. His first film score was for the 1968 Burt Lancaster movie The Swimmer. He followed this with a number of comedies including two Woody Allen films but it wasn’t until 1973 that things got interesting for him. That was the year he wrote the title song and score for The Way We Were as well as adapting Scott Joplin’s ragtime music for the movie The Sting and he would walk away from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on the following Oscar night with three gold statuettes in his grip. The Way We Were is beautiful romantic music and The Sting is a fun collection of Joplin’s classic rags sewn together and embellished by Hamlisch’s wonderful orchestrations. He would go on to receive a total of twelve Oscar nominations with three wins. Other fine works include Sophie’s Choice, A Chorus Line and The Informant! a 2009 Matt Damon film directed by Steven Soderbergh.

And now, I hesitate to continue because, as those of you who are still awake will have observed, I have already surpassed my allowance for this list of my ten favourite composers. And yet I still have more to share, more names that should be in that top ten. You see how awful I am at these lists! Oh well, maybe next time I’ll share with you my thoughts on Maurice Jarre’s exquisite scores to Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India all of which he won an Oscar for, and Ron Goodwin’s excellent wartime music for Where Eagles Dare, 633 Squadron and Battle of Britain as well as Yann Tiersen’s gorgeous score to Amélie.  But until then, if you get a chance, pop in a soundtrack CD and listen to the music that our film composers have written. Sit back and enjoy their hard work unaccompanied by the sights and sound effects of a movie and allow yourself the pleasure to hear their talent in all its pure, undiluted form.

 

The Persuaders! – Classic Action/Adventure TV

In my earlier article, The Invaders – Classic Sci-fi TV, I made the comment that its opening title sequence was unarguably the most atmospheric for any TV show ever made. The way it ominously leads you into the premise of the show and the protagonist’s situation is, to my mind, quite simply perfect. The eerie music, the heavy, monotonous tones of the narrator bringing you up to speed with how the nightmare began for architect David Vincent is a touch of genius and has never been bettered. However, there is another show with an opening title sequence that works in much the same way and, in my opinion, is just as evocative. I’m talking, of course, about The Persuaders! which, with its blend of glamour, action and humour, really was and still is, a thoroughly watchable romp.

Again, the opening titles, this time accompanied by John Barry’s superb theme tune (Did this man write some great music or what?), are pure class and do a great job of informing us what the show is about. Using a split-screen layout they reveal the backgrounds of the two main characters of the show played by Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. Side-by-side, a pair of folders, one red and one blue, labelled Danny Wilde and Brett Sinclair narrates their lives via photographs and old film of the two men from childhood through to their current status as international playboys. Live footage and torn newspaper clippings offer glimpses into their lifestyles and explain, in part, their various successes and then the sequence culminates in showing the two men enjoying a life of glitz and glamour in exotic locations surrounded by beautiful women, fast cars, diamonds and Champagne.

The premise of the show is straightforward and fairly typical of television at the time which for the best part of a decade had been churning out one action adventure series after another. Two men from very different backgrounds are brought together by a retired judge and persuaded to team up and solve cases which the courts cannot. Danny Wilde (Curtis) hails from the slums of New York City, a streetwise urchin made good. He escaped a tough neighbourhood and a probable life of crime by enlisting in the U.S Navy and later became a millionaire several times over via Wall Street and the oil business. Brett Sinclair (Moore) was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. An English aristocrat – the 15th Earl of Marnock to be precise – he attended Harrow and Oxford before serving as an officer in a Guards Brigade, then became a Grand Prix racer and race horse owner. The two characters could not have come from different backgrounds and much of the humour of the show plays on this fact as well as the general differences between British and American customs. The two actors’ playful banter and adolescent attempts at oneupmanship are what help make this show so great.

Laurence Naismith plays Judge Fulton, the man who brings this mismatched pair together. Despite being retired from the Bar, he is determined to continue his personal crusade for justice but needs someone to do his legwork for him. So, he arranges for the two men to meet on the French Riviera and coerces them into helping him. Having studied them and deeming them ideal for his purposes, he presents them with an offer they can’t refuse – to be of use to society and to do good for mankind rather than to waste away their lives in Martini hazes and all night parties. Naturally they elect to help him (particularly when they learn a beautiful woman is involved) and voila, a sparkling new crime fighting duo is born!

Each episode is an adventure in itself, sometimes set in a glamorous European locale but more often based out of Sinclair’s London home (just around the corner from St. James’s Park tube, if you’re interested). By today’s standards, the stories are rather simplistic but they always look terrific and are great fun to watch. The show also has certain signatures. There are always pretty women, there are always punch-ups and there is always humour even when the heroes are at gunpoint – fortunately both actors had wonderful comic timing. And then, there are the cars they drove – a handsome Aston Martin DBS for Sinclair and a gorgeous Ferrari Dino 246 GT for Wilde. A testament to the cachet the show was expected to carry was that both cars were given to the show’s producers courtesy of the manufacturers. I mean, come on, what’s not to like. This show had it all, it had to be a success. Right?

The series was released in the autumn of 1971 and was a big hit pretty much everywhere except the US, which was a vital market for the show’s producers. American audiences however, were not persuaded to switch over from Mission: Impossible, which aired on an opposing channel on Saturday nights and because of this, the ABC network pulled the plug even before all 24 episodes were shown. This resulted in the show not being commissioned for a second season.

Despite some speculation about the working relationship between Moore and Curtis, you cannot help but surmise that they had an absolute blast making this series. Both men appear to be in their element throughout and for me, their on-set chemistry was simply wonderful. Roger Moore was directly involved in the production of the series and already had a good relationship with Robert S. Baker and Lew Grade, having achieved great success in another ITC production, The Saint. Apparently, the three of them sealed the deal of this new series with a simple handshake and no contracts were signed. Curtis was actually Moore’s third choice for the role of Danny Wilde after Rock Hudson and Glenn Ford passed on the offer – luckily for us. At the time, The Persuaders! was the most expensive British TV show produced with each episode costing on average £100,000 (that’s almost £2,000,000 in today’s money) but with the locations and the general high quality of filming, it’s no surprise as few television shows offer quite the spectacle of The Persuaders!

Both stars were of similar age during filming although, where Curtis had enjoyed great success in Hollywood throughout the 1950s and ’60s his star was waning. His work would become less significant and he appeared often as a special guest star on series and movies made for TV but Moore’s stardom was about to go supernova with his donning of James Bond’s tuxedo in 1973. Moore has often said that prior to the filming of Live and Let Die, the Bond producers asked him to cut his hair and to lose some weight and seeing how trim he appears in his first Bond outing compared to his appearance in The Persuaders!, it’s obvious he succumbed to their request. He reportedly gained 20lbs over the course of filming The Persuaders! and he attributes this to the use of real Champagne during filming. And I for one, quite believe it.

So, if you’ve never caught this show, I recommend you give it a try. To witness these two great charismatic stars having an absolute hoot together is a wonderful thing to behold and one that we may never see again. Yes, I’m aware of the rumours of a movie remake, but in all honesty, will a Starsky and Hutch style remake ever live up to the twenty four classic hour-long episodes? I think not.