Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you are trying to complete a John Williams film score collection and are fully prepared for perhaps his most eccentric and dysfunctional genre-bending effort. Avoid it... if the idea of 70's pop rhythms and instrumentation in conjunction with comical Western honky-tonk elements seem like a recipe for disaster to you. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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. ** Track Listings (All Albums):
Total Time: 52:15
All artwork and sound clips from The Missouri Breaks are Copyright © 1999, Rykodisc USA, 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 6/13/99, updated 10/16/07. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1999-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
1999 Rykodisc