Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you want to hear an extension of John Barry's dramatically gothic, choral and orchestral approach to The Lion in Winter. Avoid it... if you have difficulty tolerating Barry's habit of forcing his action material into predictable structures that don't always match the tone of the topic at hand. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Last Valley: (John Barry) Heralded as a magnificent piece of visual and aural storytelling, The Last Valley's depressingly bleak and sometimes horrifying treatment of its characters kept audiences away. Set during the Thirty Years' War, the film depicts the struggles of an unravaged village (filmed in Austria) that deals with an occupation by forces of a foreign army, and in so doing, the story blurs the lines of good and evil in its characters. Lead actor Michael Caine asserts that it is among his favorite personal works, although he, like the others involved with the project, recognized that its brutal violence made it a difficult film to stomach. Despite being at the height of his popularity in the James Bond franchise by 1970, composer John Barry was building an impressive list of dark and dramatic scores for which he was receiving equal attention in the industry. Having recently won the Academy Award for the eerie, powerful score for The Lion in Winter and also having worked with director James Clavell on King Rat, Barry was hired to provide a score for the heavy, morbid tale of The Last Valley. As in The Lion in Winter, Barry's music for The Last Valley would address both the ethereal, religious nature of purity as well as the chilling chants of war (together producing the composer's most gothic career sound). In order to provide the best score possible for the production, Clavell's filming schedule allowed Barry an outstanding six months to write music for the film. The result is a deeply rendered, thoughtful score that makes use of a large orchestral ensemble and the same Voices of The Accademia Monteverdiana that he had utilized for The Lion in Winter. Given so much time to complete the score, Barry wrote six original, basic instrumental and choral songs that were inserted as source material into the film, sometimes utilizing lyrics from Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century German poets and folk songs. The score for The Last Valley, as often is the case with Barry's works, is surprisingly simple in construction, but relies upon the brute force of its emotional power to accomplish its goals. An identical approach of simplicity in his structures had often worked for Barry, with a strong sense of harmony leading the way in place of complex instrumentation, tempi, or layers. This sparse sense of plainness is effective for half of the score for The Last Valley, but might present difficulty for some listeners in its other half. Barry's writing functions very well in communicating the unsophisticated lifestyles of the village and the last valley itself, representing its people with a kind, uncomplicated touch that will dazzle your ears with the same success as the vast cinematography shot within the valley. The songs for the villagers are also handled well, with the appropriate religious influence provided for the heavily superstitious people of the community. On the other hand, Barry's score loses a step when it comes to its driving cues for battle, as heard additionally over the title sequences. The right ingredients are all in place for these cues: the timpani, the tolling bell, the ripping snare, the deep male chorus, and brutal brass. But Barry's own style of writing jazzy progressions into his themes betrays him here, with his title identity for The Last Valley losing power because of its slightly inappropriate rhythmic movement for the genre. That title theme, despite being performed by all the right elements, sounds a tad out of place, as though it was adapted from a jazzy theme in Barry's previous compositions and inserted at a slower pace to suffice as a war theme here. This slight swing to the theme causes it to lack the same kind of primordial power and brutal effectiveness that was realized with The Lion in Winter. Even as such, however, the theme still has positive moments when bracketed by the excruciating music for the valley, and the overall package is serviceable despite being slightly suspicious during the battle sequences. The authenticity of the work in the film is established through the choral elements, which, needless to say, offer a dreamy atmosphere to the horrors of the story. Overall, The Last Valley isn't Barry's strongest work in the genre, but it features several superb thematic performances for the valley's beauty, and you won't go wrong with two of the three albums available in regards to the music. The score was long neglected on CD before finally receiving its due treatment in the 2000's. It was available on LP at the time of the film's release, and a CD of this material was pressed by Luxembourg's Tickertape label in 1998. Unfortunately, being an unconventional label associated by some with bootleg productions, this Tickertape album was difficult to find and usually showed up only at soundtrack specialty outlets. As part of its trilogy of Barry period recordings in 2001 (including The Lion in Winter and Robin & Marian), Silva Screen Records commissioned the City of Prague Philharmonic to perform the same music, and twenty minutes more, under the careful reconstruction and conducting of Barry associate Nic Raine. The original performance features more raw energy than the re-recording, although the production team for the 2001 Silva release made sure to accentuate the choral elements of their version (since, after all, there was no dialogue in the film to contend with). They also took some artistic liberty with different tempi for a few of the cues. As with The Lion in Winter, Barry's original recording team for The Last Valley very well captured the resounding performance with a wet, echoing, and sometimes booming sound quality. The Silva re-recording was widely available in the commercial sector, and those partial to Barry and The Last Valley will likely be pleased by a comparison between Raine's interpretation and the original recording. With the score's original sheet music lost in some cases, the extra material on the Silva album had to be reconstructed by listening to the music as it is heard on the DVD of the film. That fact alone makes a statement about the relative simplicity of Barry's writing for the film; had his music taken a more complex avenue, then such a reconstruction would obviously have been a more difficult proposition. In 2007, Intrada Records made the original recording of The Last Valley the 46th entry in their "Special Collection," an unusual venture into Barry material for the label. It was limited to a pressing of 3,000 units, but unlike many of the label's similar products, it did not sell out within the first two years of availability. Its contents are the same as the LP and the 1998 Tickertape album, and for the best enjoyment of this score, both the Intrada and Silva versions are recommended. **** Track Listings (1998 Tickertape Album):
Total Time: 37:52
Track Listings (2001 Silva Screen Re-Recording):
Total Time: 56:51
* previously unrecorded Track Listings (2007 Intrada Album):
Total Time: 37:29
All artwork and sound clips from The Last Valley are Copyright © 1998, 2001, 2007, Tickertape (Luxembourg), Silva Screen Records, Intrada Records. 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 7/6/03, updated 3/18/09. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2003-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
1998 Tickertape
