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The Missouri Breaks: (John Williams) On paper,
The Missouri Breaks certainly seemed like a good idea. While
director Arthur Penn had never delivered a truly critically embraced
film in the mainstream, his
Bonnie and Clyde was a phenomenal
cult success. Actors Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson were both
extremely popular as well. Spaghetti Westerns were becoming quirkier by
the year. Composer John Williams had just won the Academy Award for
Jaws during his long run of mega disaster scores. Together, all
of these elements came together to create
The Missouri Breaks,
commonly considered to be one of cinema's most baffling mega disasters
in and of itself. The film would mark the only time that longtime
friends Brando and Nicholson would work together, and their egos (and
particularly Brando's immense presence on location) would be credited
for pulling Penn's film in directions suiting their own whims and
devastating the sensibilities of the script (which was weak to begin
with). Brando played an Irish assassin hired to stop an outlaw group of
horse thieves led by Nicholson; their unconventional behavior bordered
on nonsensical at times, making
The Missouri Breaks a fun
character study at the most. The quirky nature of the film extends to
John Williams' score, which resembles very little of the composer's
other works. Williams, for being identified so much as the top American
composer of the modern age, has produced surprisingly few Western scores
through the years. After
The Reivers and
The Cowboys early
on, Williams would only dabble in the genre in less obvious fashion,
including
The Missouri Breaks. Undoubtedly, 1976 was a year of
general understatement for Williams, with few high points compared to
the lengthy series of classic scores immediately to follow. For
The
Missouri Breaks specifically, Williams would shed the orchestrally
vibrant approach of his earlier Westerns and adapt the style of more
modern bluesy works like
Conrack and
The Sugarland Express
into a score almost as curious as the film's two leads. The score is, in
short, a hip 1970's bastardization of the Western genre, infusing jazzy
and pop rhythms and instrumentation into a genre that very well could
have done without it.
Some Williams collectors will say that the reason
The Missouri Breaks sounds so awkward today is because the score
is extremely dated, hopelessly tied to its era. In the 1970's, you could
get away with a combination of wild harmonica and honky-tonk piano with
electric bass, electric harpsichord, and other modern elements. Now, it
seems so cheesy that
The Missouri Breaks is a potentially
unlistenable experience. The eccentric score opens with a blues and jazz
theme that defies Williams' career and features a very small ensemble of
expected Western instruments in conjunction with a modern band. A
handful of orchestral players, mainly tied to timpani, harp, and piano,
occasionally contribute. A secondary love theme receives lengthy
treatment in the score, and is an extremely poppish affair consistent
with Williams' song writing at the time. Its performances on solo guitar
and harmonica survive the test of time much better than the electric
harpsichord and chimes, both of which are difficult to swallow. Even
more awkward are the many explosions of hony tonk action cues in
The
Missouri Breaks, beginning with "Arrival of the Rustlers" and
exploding with full comical force in "The Train Robbery." There's no
doubt that these cues were meant as a tongue-in-cheek accompaniment to
the ridiculously bumbling actions of Nicholson's gang of thieves, but
for some reason, Williams' take on this style doesn't feature the same
listenability as Jerry Goldsmith's many similar ventures into the same
realm at the time. Even less interesting are the darker tones for deep
bass harmonica and other menacing sounds that Williams conjures for
Brando's character. There are singular moments of intriguing
instrumental use by Williams, especially involving deep range piano
accents during the few suspenseful moments, but for the most part, the
pop rhythms, both subdued and with their frantic banjo accompaniment,
define the score. Overall, you can completely understand what Williams
was trying to accomplish with his humor in
The Missouri Breaks.
But the result is still too dysfunctional to withstand the test of time.
On album, a 1999 Rykodisc release expanded upon a previous version from
the same label, this time adding three cues of the original film
versions (Williams re-recorded most of his scores for album at the time)
to the product. Of the label's great re-issues of classic 60's and 70's
scores in the late 90's, this one's among the weakest. A 2004 reissue
from Varèse Sarabande adds no new content.
** Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download
| Bias Check: | For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.73 (in 68 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.6
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