Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you seek John Barry's highly acclaimed, seductively jazzy tribute to 40's-style film noir. Avoid it... if the predictable structures of Barry's music, no matter how effectively matched with the particular film, cannot be outweighed by the score's sex appeal. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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 on SCSE Release: *** Score as Heard on Varèse Release: **** Overall: **** Track Listings (1989 SCSE Release):
Total Time: 32:29
* Composed by John Williams Track Listings (1998 Re-Recording):
Total Time: 38:34
All artwork and sound clips from Body Heat are Copyright © 1989, 1998, Soundtrack Collector's Special Editions, SCSE CD-1, Varèse Sarabande. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/27/97, updated 5/7/07. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1997-2005, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
1989 Original