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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you have the 1997 CD album and want a significantly better product, especially in regards to the bold Tigerfish theme. Avoid it... if you are rightfully suspicious of any action score that has the name Michel Legrand on it, and don't want to pay higher prices for ten minutes of outstanding music. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The result of his effort was a score with two better than average themes (one of which would go down in submarine score history as a fan favorite), but underscore that exhibits, perhaps, Legrand's lack of experience in the genre. The film has two themes: the first is a somewhat sweeping, romantic overture piece to represent the characters of the film. The second, though, is the theme that most fans would adopt as the title theme, and that is the repeating four-note submarine (Tigerfish) theme. It plays prominently during several key sequences in the film, and especially during loaned footage of the Tigerfish leaving for the open seas at the start (I say "loaned" because the Navy opted not to give the filmmakers footage of a genuine nuclear sub). In between these thematic bursts is an enormous amount of dense, suspenseful underscore. Legrand's handling of these cues is adequate for sure, but he continuously inserts disharmony to many cues --sometimes with woodwinds and a vibraphone-- that causes the underscore the become difficult to digest outside of the film's excellent story. Even during the main thematic sequences, it seems that Legrand was intent on taking a harmonious structure and inserting one or two awkwardly wandering instruments into the mix. This places the score in an imbalance between thematic beauty and effective dissonance, and causes several cues to lose their potential power in film and on album. Nevertheless, the Tigerfish theme was considered a top "most wanted" theme on album for a lengthy time. An LP release, followed thirty years later by an identical CD release from P.E.G. in 1997 offered key cues, but only 30 minutes in total length. The 2003 FSM album replaces the badly packaged and incredibly poor sounding P.E.G. album with a crisp-sounding, rearranged, and well presented Ice Station Zebra, finally providing the original five-channel stereo recording from master elements for our enjoyment. The P.E.G. album was snatched up by fans readily in 1997, though they were presented with sound quality that sounded as though somebody had recorded the score from two rooms away and strange packaging that featured a backwards American flag on the cover. In 2003, Tigerfish fans finally had an excellent treatment of this score, though one still wonders if almost 80 minutes of this score is truly necessary... A 50-60 minute remastered album may have been best, given that some of Legrand's suspense cues are difficult to handle on their own. But you can't discount the restoration effort put forth by FSM, and the improvement in sound quality is alone worth the price of the album for fans of the film and genre.
2003 Film Score Monthly Album **** Overall: ***
The 1997 P.E.G. insert includes no extra information about the score or film, but the 2003 FSM album contains the usual excellent quality of pictorial and textual information. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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