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Body Heat: (John Barry) In his first directorial
effort after contributing scripts for such popular films as
Star
Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Lawrence Kasdan ventured into the realm of film noir imitation and is
generally considered to have pulled it off with great success. For
viewers who can't handle films that try too hard to saturate themselves
in the dark sets, cigarette smoke, and jazzy scores of the 1940's,
Body Heat floated its appeal with a few remarkable plot twists
and an element not allowed in the films of the earlier era: gratuitous
nudity and sex. Despite whatever tired elements were squeezed into the
project,
Body Heat would launch the names of lead actors Kathleen
Turner and William Hurt, not to mention Kasdan himself, into stardom.
The story of the film isn't particularly clever until you reach it's
latter half, where all the nasty twists occur. Essentially, Turner's
rich, lonely housewife uses her allure to tempt Hurt's sleazy lawyer
into a lustful and deceitful series of acts that inevitably leads the
lawyer into a plot to kill Turner's husband. Despite knowing that
there's probably a bleak outcome for all of this, Hurt goes forward with
the manipulation, never revealing just how much he knows about what he's
getting into. If there's any doubt that Turner will win in the end, then
you don't know your noir well enough. Coming at a transitional phase in
composer John Barry's career,
Body Heat would require a score
overtly faithful to the genre, drawing on some of the skills from
Barry's jazzy roots in the 1950's. The end result from Barry wouldn't
sound like any of those 50's recordings, though, for the
Body
Heat score would be weighed heavily by the film's sexuality and
suspense. While Barry may not have captured either the essence of noir
or brute lust as well as Jerry Goldsmith accomplished in
Chinatown and
Basic Instinct, respectively, his entry was
a well balanced exploration of the two genres together. This memorable
combination, while really only constructed out of Barry's usual set of
structures, has given
Body Heat a longevity in popularity for
Barry's fans well beyond most of the composer's other scores.
The consistency with which Barry collectors praise
Body Heat is testimony to the score's remarkable effect in the
film, moreso than just its merits on its own. As per usual, any strong
Barry score of the 80's and 90's makes for an easy, harmonic listening
experience on album, but
Body Heat goes a bit further because of
the film's heavy reliance on the score's presence. Significant scenes in
the picture offer only Barry's score over dramatic silence, including
the strikingly powerful opening seduction scene concurrent to the cue
"I'm Weak." On a technical sense, the learned Barry collector will be
able to point to several later scores from the composer and place each
element into context with his other works. The important aspect of
Body Heat to remember, though, is that it came before most of
these references, causing it to be a far more fresh combination at the
time. The two or three primary themes (one for each primary character is
detailed at the outset of the score) will remind of Barry's tribute work
to 50's soft jazz in
Playing by Heart, with chord progressions
extremely familiar to a multitude of his famous themes. The ensemble is
roughly the same: sax, piano, light percussion, and bass string in the
forefront with a full ensemble for occasional depth. Also of note is the
same slightly synthetic keyboarding that would be prevalent in
My
Life a decade later, used in
Body Heat to set the slow
progressions in a style eerily similar to parts of
The Black
Hole. When placing these jazz elements with the synthetic and
orchestral ones, there are parts of
Body Heat that will
stylistically remind you of another acclaimed Jerry Goldsmith work,
The Russia House. Barry's work, by comparison, lacks the same
sense of zippy movement, instead dragged to the depths of sexuality
required by the film. There is much in
Body Heat that will
foreshadow the similarly rendered theme in
The Specialist, though
Barry doesn't utilize the orchestra's force with as much dynamic range
in most places. The exceptions are cues like "I'm Frightened" and
"Surprise and Explosion," which present high string jabs and thunderous
low piano barbs that will each resemble usage from
A View to a
Kill and other 80's-era Bond scores.
In retrospect, some of these predictable Barry turns
don't appeal as much as they did when the score first debuted. Still
powerful twenty-five years later, however, are the noir-stylings of the
title themes and their variants. The muted brass performances in "Ned,"
for instance, are both shameless and enjoyable. The exploding
realization moment at the end of "Better Get Him" is about as
melodramatically forceful as Barry will ever get, too. As mentioned
before,
Body Heat makes for a very good listening experience,
unless you psychoanalyze it to death. As usual, Barry constructs his
score so that lengthy concert suites fit directly into the film,
including the revelation cue "Matty was Mary Ann." The album situation
for
Body Heat has never been satisfying, unfortunately, though
there is relief to be had for Barry collectors. The 1989 album release
of the original recording by the SCSE collector's label has long served
as the only formally pressed album for the score. Its 32 minutes feature
only moderate sound quality, which doesn't really do this score justice
given that the standout solo performances require a crisp recording to
appreciate. Nevertheless, the SCSE release became a top collectible in
part because of demand and partly because it was limited to 2,000
printed copies. In 1998, the Varèse Sarabande label contracted
for composer Joel McNeely to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra for a
re-recording of
Body Heat in a single day. As to be expected, the
sound quality on the Varèse release is vibrant at every level,
superior by most measures to the original recording. McNeely's touch
with Barry's material is almost as accomplished as Nic Raine's in this
recording, and nearly all Barry collectors will be highly satisfied with
the result. The Varèse album also includes six additional minutes
of material, including the aforementioned, snazzy "Ned" and the
expansive string introduction to the estate in "Matty's Place." Several
cues have been lengthened and restored to their film order on the
re-recording. Even with the superior commercial re-recording on the
market, though, there are Barry fans who will settle for nothing less
than original, and because of their desires, the SCSE release remained a
highly valued target for many more years. In the end,
Body Heat
remains one of those films extremely well matched to Barry's sound,
regardless of its structural predictability.
Score as Heard in Film: ****
Score as Heard on SCSE Release: ***
Score as Heard on Varèse Release: ****
Overall: ****
| Bias Check: | For John Barry reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.87 (in 23 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.71
(in 20,820 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
All SCSE copies are numbered. The Varèse release has a long note from
producer Robert Townson.
