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Born Free: (John Barry) One of cinema's most
successful nature documentaries,
Born Free was a sentimental
British phenomenon in 1966 that helped spur the cause of the genre on
television thereafter. It tells the true story of an orphaned lioness
raised by two animal rights activists in Kenya; a year after releasing
it to the wild on a remote reserve, the couple returns at the end and
the lion, now a mother of three, remembers her human parents fondly.
Despite director James Hill's best intentions, the film was not a
technical success, relying on photographic trickery to convey certain
plot elements involving the animals and sometimes practically ruining
the narrative by the odd insertion of stock wildlife footage and
inconsistent color in neighboring scenes. The most famous aspect of
Born Free has always been its music. Providing all the glory of
almost every possible score-related award under the composer's belt for
his creation,
Born Free confirmed, along with
Zulu, that
John Barry was headed in a mainstream direction that wasn't restricted
to his snazzy tones for the James Bond franchise. Barry's fully
orchestral score for the safari tale gained him a collection of Golden
Globe and Academy Awards for both his score and the associated song.
Written twenty years before the composer would score
Out of
Africa to much acclaim,
Born Free has more in common with
Zulu than anything thereafter in his career. Even though the song
was the vehicle which propelled the music from
Born Free to so
many awards, Barry's score, like those for many Walt Disney films
through the decades, is still of solid quality in its wholesome
demeanor. Having just followed
Thunderball with the same set of
musical collaborators, the grand success of
Born Free's music was
more of a mistake than the intent. Arguments over the level of scope for
the score, as well as the vocals that eventually accompanied Barry's
theme for the song, were still under debate when the song, originally
performed by Roger Williams, launched itself to the top spot on the
American music charts. So popular was Barry's theme that it was
eventually performed by over 600 artists around the globe and even
adopted as one African nation's national anthem.
By comparison to the sensational worldwide embrace met
by the title song, Barry's score for
Born Free may seem to be
rather mellow and understated. While still retaining a theme of noble
stature for the lions and the landscape, Barry chose to avoid the
grandiose string style that he would eventually become even more famous
for, a move made against the wishes of the director. Barry insisted upon
taking a more subdued, playful route, emphasizing the innocence of the
story and therefore keeping the ensemble pleasantly bubbling along in
tonal variations of the main theme for much of the score's running time.
Nothing as complicated or even as interesting as Alex North's style for
the continent is to be heard here, the layers in Barry's structures held
to a minimum. As usual, the composer's more simplistic habits of
composition cause the main theme to be inserted in practically even
place possible, with only slight variations between performances. Only
in a few places does he unleash a burst of tonal romping with all the
players to accentuate the massive scale of the environment, as he had
done with
Zulu. The use of prominent brass to mimic the sounds of
the animals in "Elephant Stampede" is of special note, but don't expect
much of this excitement to prevail. In general, Barry's score is humbled
and conservative, a point of criticism from those expecting to hear his
expansive tendencies at work in this context. But it is effective none
the less in conveying the bright and optimistic heart of the narrative.
Like many films of the era, the soundtrack for
Born Free received
a separate recording that was made specifically for the LP album
release. Barry was never satisfied with the performance of the music in
the film (performances that included a considerable number of errors by
the players), and the later album version is clearly of superior
quality. The follow-up recording was made in vibrant stereo, as many of
Barry's scores were, and with some remastering the LP presentation
sounds just as dynamic today as a digital era recording. The fate of the
original film recording has long remained a mystery (the tapes were
declared lost at some point), but the album version's masters survived,
and in 2004, Film Score Monthly released 40 minutes of the score from
those recovered tapes as part of the label's Silver Age Classics series.
Due to the popularity of the score and its accompanying song, this was a
rare entry in FSM's series not to be limited in its production
run.
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2000 Varèse Album: | | |
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Only $9.99
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Interestingly, Barry recorded nearly an hour of music
for the 95-minute film, so there remains material from
Born Free
that has never made it in original form onto an album. The FSM album
does have the Oscar-winning song performed vocally by Matt Monro. This
original version, while clearly dated (especially with those dainty
flute lines fluttering about in the background), is a satisfying easy
listening experience entry in retrospect, one that should please
Thunderball enthusiasts. There does remain an alternate source of
music for
Born Free, however. A re-recorded presentation of the
score was released in 2000 and represented a continuation of the
collaboration between conductor Frederic Talgorn and the Royal Scottish
National Orchestra (following the "Hollywood '99" compilation released a
few months prior). The performances in this interpretation are steady
and enjoyable, though Talgorn was one step behind conductor Nic Raine
and the City of Prague Philharmonic is capturing the broad essence of
Barry's works. The latter group re-recorded both
Zulu and
Raise the Titanic at roughly the same time with great success,
and there seems to be a touch of epic stature that Talgorn is missing in
his interpretation of Barry's style. Part of that difference may owe to
the smaller scale of
Born Free in general, and the sound quality
issue is not quite as relevant here given the superior remastering of
Barry's original album recording. The Varèse Sarabande label,
under the guidance of executive producer Robert Townson, was pressing
re-recordings of other best-selling Barry works frequently at the time,
including
Body Heat,
Out of Africa, and
Somewhere in
Time. It's easy to understand why
Born Free was chosen as the
next installment in this series of Barry interpretations, especially
given the commercial success of the song and score back in the 1960's.
But more technical merit might have resulted had the label and the RSNO
tackled a re-recording of another, far more impressive Academy Award
winner for Barry in the 1960's,
The Lion in Winter (something
which the City of Prague Philharmonic did eventually do). While the
Varèse album does not feature the song in its pop form, it does
have nearly the entire hour-long score represented. Thus, if you're a
true Barry collector, then you'd be best served by purchasing both the
Varèse and FSM albums for a complete survey of the effortless and
innocuous music from the concept.
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