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| Goldsmith |
100 Rifles: (Jerry Goldsmith) Attempting to utilize
the same basic elements as
The Wild Bunch, 1969's
100
Rifles was a predictable failure. Stagnant direction by Tom Gries,
worn action concepts in the Western genre, and a cast of stereotypically
supporting stars thrown into prominent roles doomed the film. The Indian
versus Mexican versus lawman concept prompted significant spaghetti
Western action scenes, but they were shot with such a fixed, unengaging
technique that nobody could ever have expected audiences to stay
interested in them. Trying valiantly to compensate for this bland
direction was composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose score for
100
Rifles could most easily be described as overachieving. Goldsmith
was already well established in the Western genre at the time, with most
of his classics already on film, and he was clearly defining the style
of his sound as an alternative to Elmer Bernstein's more heroically
fluid sense of Americana for 60's Westerns. Goldsmith would walk into
100 Rifles after having finished the highly acclaimed
Planet
of the Apes, and while the quality of projects represented a
significant decline, the composer would maintain much of the
instrumental creativity from that famous score in this undeserving
Western. The complex, highly-layered music that Goldsmith would provide
for
100 Rifles saves the film from total mediocrity and
embarrassment. It's an interesting paragraph in Goldsmith's career
story, but isn't of the caliber of his classic Western scores. He
utilizes, perhaps moreso here than in any of his other genre scores, a
creative array of traditional Latin instruments, along with a usual,
moderately sized orchestra. His energetic Latin rhythms are mixed
directly with his bombastic, brassy style of theme, making
100
Rifles a more intelligent multi-cultural listening experience than
some of his other Westerns. At the same time, though, Goldsmith also
infuses a significant sense of dissonant darkness into the score as
necessary for some of the film's brutal scenes of killings.
Goldsmith establishes the primary themes for
100
Rifles in succession over the first five or six minutes of the
score. His title theme will perhaps sound a bit stock-oriented for
Goldsmith collectors, though its staggered progression represents the
brash attitude of the film quite well. This theme is reprised several
times by the full ensemble throughout, including a climactic finale in
"I'll Go Back." For enthusiasts of Goldsmith's bold Western themes, the
opening and closing cues, along with the ambitious "Escape and Pursuit,"
will provide the seven best minutes of material on the album. The middle
portions of the score are more interesting than they are enjoyable, with
"Cliff Fight" being completely intolerable. Goldsmith's diversity of
Mexican instruments is employed in staggered rhythms concurrently with
the orchestra, creating a truly odd crossover effect in parts. From
marimbas and castanets to electric and acoustic guitar, the score's
sound is isn't as difficult to grasp as the dissonant layers with which
Goldsmith applies those instruments. The only respite in the middle of
100 Rifles is "Lydecker and Sarita," a romantic variant of the
title theme which, after some mariachi movements at the opening, yields
a combination of instrumentation and counterpoint that will well
foreshadow his later
Under Fire. The two different mixes of the
original recordings available on the Film Score Monthly album bring out
differing accentuations in the Latin instrumentation. The album was
arranged to include the maximum amount of music from
100 Rifles,
and due to the varying quality of the sources, the entire score is
included in mono (which was the original presentation of the film) while
others have been alternately mixed into stereo. The stereo tracks do
better justice to the large-scale opening and closing themes (the mono
version of the finale is greatly muddled), however some of the mono
tracks bring out the best of the marimbas, flutes, gourds, and other
featured instruments. The outstanding presentation of music on the FSM
product (including two tracks of source music) will appeal to the most
studied Goldsmith collectors, but the mass majority of it will fall
short of stirring the interest of casual listeners.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.28
(in 113 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.3
(in 142,424 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The album contains the usual excellent quality of pictorial and textual information
established in other albums of FSM's series, with extremely detailed notes about the film
and score.
