The Black Stallion: (Carmine Coppola/Shirley
Walker) The films based on "The Black Stallion" fantasy story written by
Walter Farley in 1941 were not only popular, but they helped the concept
become a fixture in the early 1980's, offering the topic of the
human/animal/nature relationship that had been short in quantity until
that time. Both the highly acclaimed original film and its redundant
sequel culminated in predictable horse races, exhibiting highly
acclaimed, often spectacular location photography. The original 1979
film retains the most attention in the mainstream for its classic
storyline, depicting a boy and a wild Arabian stallion marooned on a
tropical island as the sole survivors of a shipwreck. The film is
divided very obviously into two halves, the first dealing with the
growing relationship between the boy and the horse (helping each other
to survive) and the second showing their training and winning of a race
in America after their rescue. Both films were produced by Francis Ford
Coppola, and it was because of this connection that Coppola's father,
Carmine Coppola, ultimately received the assignment to score the first
film. To say that the scoring process of
The Black Stallion was a
mess is generously worded. In fact, it was a tense nightmare that
churned in the background of the Coppolas' concurrent efforts on
Apocalypse Now. Due to the producer's initial wish to have a
purely unconventional musical approach for the concept, the film was
originally to be scored by jazz and classical crossover artist William
Russo, but immediate disagreements with first-time director Carroll
Ballard about this musical approach caused the composer to walk away
without writing a note. Working with Carmine Coppola yielded a decent
orchestral score for the director, though Ballard was determined to cut
it to pieces and demand significant re-writes of that material. The
difficulty of working with Ballard's precise musical vision of how the
film should sound eventually caused Coppola to become alienated with the
project in its last weeks of rewrites, and team member Shirley Walker,
along with several of the session musicians themselves, were forced by
Ballard to rewrite multiple cues for the final edits of the film.
Unfortunately, most of the rearrangements, rough edits,
and total re-writes forced upon
The Black Stallion, despite
whatever intelligence it took from the underrated talents of Walker to
appease the director, were inferior to Coppola's original score. This
downgrade is especially prevalent in the second half of the film, a
damning statement given that that initial material was highly flawed in
its own tepid tone and mismanagement of themes in the first place.
Coppola's music still maintains a majority of screen time in
The
Black Stallion, and it is simplistic and barely adequate thematic
material that struggles to generate and hold an appropriate tone for the
story. It's remarkable to consider the underlying strength of the
thematic constructs but the careless and completely unenthusiastic
manner in which they were conveyed by the Los Angeles musicians. A
pretty title theme for the boy/horse relationship, a secondary
Arabian-influenced theme for the stallion, and a potentially rousing
idea for their riding sequences (as well as a distinct training theme in
the second half of the movie) are all well conceived and probably looked
great on paper. Somewhere in the translation of that material to
performance, all the life was sucked out of the music, leading to a
score with the cool warmth of elevator tunes. The title theme is
especially strangled by slow pacing, outright boring orchestration, and
performances that lack any particularly deep meaning. This lack of
emotional engagement is critical to the score's failure, though
Ballard's response was to apparently shake the score down to even less
dense soundscapes. Although the ambience Coppola set for the film was
carried on by the other musicians who wrote additional material, the
thematic integrity and instrumental cohesion became lost in the process.
While all of the music for the film together sounds reasonably similar,
the style that Ballard wanted to hear artificially inserted into some of
the running and vista sequences doesn't mesh with Coppola's otherwise
understated approach. Genres of music are badly merged, from jazzy piano
to slight string waltzes. By the time of the banjo, steel guitar, and
harmonica material meant to represent Americana elements in the second
half, the score has completely lost any semblance of consistency.
There are individual highlights to be heard in
The
Black Stallion, however. The rousing fanfare in "The Black
Stallion," composed by Walker and Nyle Steiner, is an obvious attempt to
infuse the picture with a large, victorious burst of brass, though there
was never any way it could possibly work with the preceding cues for the
island scenes. The minimalistic scoring of those earlier scenes, led by
solo harp and flute, completely loses the fantasy element that Coppola's
score had attempted to capture in its entirety. Much of this material
sounds almost like documentary music that you'd hear in National
Geographic nature shows at the time, scores that made a conscious effort
to provide a basic backdrop and avoid any significant emotional impact
on the visuals. The cues for the final race and its aftermath provide a
glimpse, along with the simply repeated thematic suite as the finale of
the score, of how rich Coppola's score could have been if Ballard hadn't
sent the musicians back to record over and over again. On either of the
score's two official albums, a correct sequencing will give you a very
good idea of just how butchered the recording process was in its final
weeks. Luckily, for 1983's
The Black Stallion Returns, director
Robert Dalva and veteran French composer Georges Delerue hit it off
immediately. The sequel score's overwhelming and consistent presence in
the film further proves the score for
The Black Stallion as
evidence of how not to treat the music for your production. A 2001
Prometheus album placed both scores together, 35 minutes total from
B>The Black Stallion. An impressive 3-CD set from Intrada Records in
2009 offered that same original album presentation but also two CDs of
the complete score with many alternate and unused takes. Although the
best treatment of the score possible, that 2009 product (limited to only
1,500 copies) only served to expose the extremely troubled evolution of
a score that ultimately had no chance to form a cohesive whole in the
picture. It's a prime example of a promising, but ultimately
underachieving, fragmented soundtrack that is carried by the strength of
the other production elements. Skip the expensive collectable of 2009
and try instead to satisfy yourself with the 2001 double-score album,
which is worth its price for the Delerue sequel score alone.
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