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Article - Where
does John Barry fit in modern cinema?
Stephen
Woolston - Jan 5, 2002
John
Barry was probably once the biggest name in film music. Bigger than
Goldsmith. Bigger than Williams. Today he is appreciated massively
but mostly in retrospect and out of affection for his first thirty
years in the medium. He doesn't appear to have been the directors'
choice of this or the last decade, and a rapidly decreasing body
of film music listeners understands his music.
Many
of the new detractors choose to disfavourably compare John Barry's
scores with the grandeur and energy of such epic scores as Ben Hur,
or modern actioners from Star Wars to Total Recall. They cite the
excitement of the big sound and the energy of driving action cues.
It's a flawed comparison. It assumes all film music aspires to the
same sensibilities and all composers to the same films. Despite
the Bond movies and Dances With Wolves, John Barry is not a composer
of epic action and adventure scores. He never has been.
John
Barry developed his style in a reactionary phase in films: the sixties.
Golden age classics and old fashioned direction values were subsiding.
The new generation had been disaffected by war but enjoyed their
young adulthood amidst the excitement of new social and sexual values.
Culture had revolutionised. There was new economic growth, new eras
in world politics, new world anxieties and new cultural icons. The
new directors admired the cinematic new wave of Jean Luc Godard
and Francois Truffaut. Production line cinema had gone out of vogue
in favour of films stamped with personal style and authorship. Directors
wanted to express their political views and became more interested
in what they could say on a smaller, more intimate scale about the
human condition.
The
result was a wave of films interested in pseudo-ordinary people,
intimate and rich in expressionism and stylistic freedom. The list
of such films in Barry's CV are endless: The Knack, although an
anarchic comedy, is still a close study of people heavily influenced
by new individual expression. Bryan Forbes' films became a standard
bearers of the new plain cinema in England. The list includes Petulia,
The Chase, Midnight Cowboy, Follow Me, Walkabout, Dutchman, The
Appointment. None of them were plain films stylistically but all
favoured these pseduo-real people to the glamour icons that had
gone before.
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| Petulia
... an archetype of the sixties character film
in which John Barry established himself. |
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John
Barry had a perfect European sensibility suited to these films.
He was the English Nino Rota, not the English Rosza. By establishing
and insisting on memorable melodic themes in intimate arrangements,
his music brilliantly observed the humour, tears and drama of the
people that had been filmed, their unusual bonds and their very
different journeys through this life. It was a perfect marriage
of film and music and John Barry was its undisputed master.
In
1977, one film changed the industry forever. Star Wars revived interest
in fantasy in an irrevocable way. Society was emerging from its
post war optimism with a new drudge of industrialism. It brought
a new need for escapism. Cinema as art subsided towards cinema as
the easy story telling medium, and character studies became out
of vogue. The world community's taste in films shifted increasingly
towards the low brow. As we stand today, by consensus and box office
vote, we like our entertainment dumb, fantastic, unreal and very,
very noisy. Intimacy in films has almost died, at least in America.
It
would be an oversimplification to box Barry in as simply the composer
who scored innovatively styled character films. After all, his music
often swelled beyond character themes. I'm thinking of the defection
scenes of The Tamarind Seed, and the fight music of The Ipcress
File. But these cues extended out from a score whose central point
was nonetheless a theme for a character or place. Bond was a form
of escapism too, and he had mastered that art. Yet Bond is a remarkable
exception. These worked mostly because of the scores were derivation
from a song, and songwriting is a superb springboard for a melodist
such as Barry. But even here Barry did not compose as for the classical
epics. Bond music was hot, but that heat came from the exploration
of combined jazz and Bacharachian easy listening, with mellow strings
and cracking high notes in brass. Not from the jagged rhythms voiced
by today's action composers.
The
wonderful strokes of John Barry's intimate melodies is an intimate
poetry undiscovered and unachieved by the modern purveyors of action
music such as Zimmer and Elfman. Sadly, there's a declining demand
for that in the modern American film. Not the mainstream film at
least. There are some. American Beauty would have been an ideal
Barry vehicle. Playing By Heart was another ideal vehicle that Barry
did score. I rather fancy that Barry might have come up with something
very interesting for Pulp Fiction too.
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| Amy
Foster ... was a character film but arguably too
steeped in classical motifs. John Barry is a modernist. |
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In
fact, it's too sad to reflect on some of the wonderful films that
Barry could have really gone to town with. Imagine the wondrous score
he might have written to 2001. Imagine the dark wonder he might have
written in Apocalypse Now.
So
where does Barry go from here? He can also fish for those few films
like American Beauty that do call for a composer who can observe
bittersweet humanity in music. But that's if the directors rediscover
him. Could he go back into Bond to re-establish his popularity to
get those assignments? A possibility, but only likely to work if
he can have that song springboard back. Numb action films are not
the solution. Neither The Specialist nor Mercury Rising could light
the right fires, though in each case his music was strongest looking
at the strange bonds of the characters again.
If
Barry can't relate to something delicately emotional or explore
the jazz idiom he has no place to go. It's not that Barry can't
score humanly empty films with professionalism and craft. The Black
Hole and Game of Death proved that. But then these scores have no
special relevance in his career.
The
modern trends simply do not suit Barry. Conversely, Barry does not
suit them. Films like Hollow Man, Lord of the Rings, Planet of the
Apes and Harry Potter are truly more suited to names like Jerry
Goldsmith and John Williams.
Perhaps
the best way to tap in to what Barry does truly well is to do what
Herrmann did when his career ceased to flourish in Hollywood. Herrmann
went to Europe. Not for long, but long enough to be rediscovered
in a major way. Herrmann had become unpopular in Hollywood for his
lack of pop scores, but he found a new vehicle for himself in films
like The Bride Wore Black. Europe is still the predominant home
of films about humanity made in creative styles. If John Barry could
have scored Cinema Paradiso or even the difficult French film Beau
Travail, he might have written something remarkable.
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| Beau
Travail ... perhaps European cinema is where Barry
would flourish most. |
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Bottom
line? It is an empty comparison to put Barry head to head with Rosza
on accomplishment in biblical epics, or with Williams on accomplishment
in summer blockbusters. It's like saying Steve Martin is funnier than
Gregory Peck. So what? Answer this. How would Rosza do in a head to
head on accomplishments in melody and intimacy?
Stephen
Woolston
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