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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 like Jim Brown and Raquel Welch 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 in that area 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 1960's Westerns. The composer approached
100 Rifles
after having finished the highly acclaimed
Planet of the Apes,
and while the quality of later project represented a significant
decline, the composer strove to maintain much of the instrumental
creativity from that famous score in this undeserving Western. The
complex, highly-layered music that Goldsmith provided 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 more
pervasively here than in any of his other genre scores, a creative array
of traditional Latin instruments along with the more typical, moderately
sized orchestra for broader genre expectations. His energetic Latin
rhythms are mixed directly with his bombastic, brassy style of thematic
resonance, 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
killing.
Goldsmith establishes the primary themes for
100
Rifles in succession over the first five or six minutes of the
score. His main 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 when heard on 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 disjointed 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 parts aren'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 main theme which, after some mariachi movements at the opening,
yields a combination of instrumentation and counterpoint that well
foreshadows his later
Under Fire. The two disparate mixes of the
original recordings available on the albums bring out differing
accentuations in the Latin instrumentation. The same album presentation
exists on a 1999 Film Score Monthly product and a 2018 La-La Land
Records re-issue, the latter offering remastered sound and joined by
Goldsmith's
Rio Conchos on the same product. The album
arrangements include the maximum amount of music available for
100
Rifles, and due to the varying quality of the sources, the entire
score is included in mono (as heard in the film) while others were 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 careful
assembly of music on these albums, including two tracks of source
material, will appeal to the most studied Goldsmith collectors, but the
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 3.26
(in 124 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 153,454 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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Both albums' inserts contain detailed information about the film and score.
