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•	2001 Album

•	2021 Album

The score meanders back and forth between these modes with straight ragtime enthusiasm nestled in between, and some of this shifting focus is due to the score's significant rearrangement and rerecording after Goldsmith was done with it. To accommodate the final edits of the picture, his orchestrator, Alexander Courage, stepped in to rewrite several cues, adapting Goldsmith's thematic core into these revised passages. A softly modern and light-hearted song by Jim Grady, "Who's for Complainin'?," was also added for the opening and closing titles. The song was integrated by Courage into an instrumental version for "Boy Flier" with contemporary spirit for Rodger. Although Goldsmith provided the boy with his own theme in the score, this one is more applicable to the snappy side of his personality. It was also provided a bridge to blend it into the end of the score after "End Title." Courage's adaptations are excellent and, in some cases, even superior to the original cues Goldsmith had recorded. But they also contribute to the score's somewhat wayward narrative pathways. A main flying theme consists of upbeat, swinging 1920's jazz for brass, defined with pizazz in "Ace Eli Theme." A temporary pop-oriented recording of this idea yielded the track "Temp Theme for Ace Eli" ahead of the scoring. Interestingly, though, Goldsmith didn't really access this idea often in the work. He gave it a contemporary personality in "A New Plane" with clarinet and trumpet in the lead and plays it around the margins of the ragtime material in "First Fare." It barely informs the chords of "An Act of Frustration," where it is unrecognizable in modern electric bass, drums, and marimba, a cool rendition but a tad out of place. Courage, on the other hand, really ran with this theme in his arrangements, adapting it for "The New Wrinkle" on harmonica and using it to inform the worry of "Pig Sloppin'" in darker shades. The theme becomes brightly optimistic on trumpet in Courage's replacement for "A New Plane," and his all-new "Off to Monument" cue early in the narrative conveys the idea on trumpet with zest, building to the theme's best performance in the whole score, and with Western character to boot. Along the same lines are Goldsmith's ragtime source pieces. Both "Ace Eli Rag" and "First Fare" are fun cues, the latter a hot mess with sound effects. Wild banjo gives a country feel to the chasing circus of "Thrill a Minute" while "No Escape" picks up from "First Fare" with hints of the main theme in tow. These four cues are a massive sideshow in the score's otherwise more serious tone, especially before Courage's changes.

Goldsmith provides two secondary themes for the characters of Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies, and these identities carry far more of the emotional payload. The aforementioned Rodger theme wavers around key on piano and guitar at the start of "Main Title." It's a listless motif that is tentative in the middle of "A New Plane," quietly reflective in the rejected "No Pony," and whimsically fluttering in the soft "Night Talk," all of these moments addressing the boy's yearning for his dead mother. This Rodger theme sets some anticipation in "First Flight" on piano, underpins the dissonant death scene in "Final Flight Part I," and opens "Final Flight Part II" with a whimper on piano. Courage adapts it for additional warmth in "A New Plane," interjects it into the scene in "Rejection Game" better than Goldsmith's "No Lover," and uses it for the new bridge to the closing song crafted for the beginning of "End Title." At the same time, Goldsmith crafts an Eli and Rodger relationship theme that is essentially about parenting, and it's sometimes set over the Rodger theme in the background. It's a sad melody on trumpet at 0:49 into "Main Title," whistled badly later in the cue, and takes over Rodger's theme in the latter half of "No Pony." It barely stews in "Packin' Up" on murky organ tones but poignantly provides optimism to "First Flight" rather than the main flying theme; Goldsmith uses electric organ and continued pop elements to keep the tone modern here. The parenting theme is deconstructed to despair in "No Lover" and conveyed by melancholy piano at the outset of "Final Flight Part I," where it follows a creative brass and woodwind imitation of a starting plane engine in more redemptive tones. The theme takes a melodramatic stance until the dissonance of the deleted death scene and is carried by terrible whistling in "Final Flight Part II." Courage plays with the melody at the end of "Off to Monument" for humor but otherwise replaces it with more flying theme references. Generally, the score's enthusiasm is tempered by occasional performance flubs, especially on brass. In its full form, the score's two variants have been released twice on limited, dual-score products, first by Film Score Monthly in 2001 with some damaged sources, especially on the Courage side of the effort, and more cleanly in 2021 by La-La Land Records, both assemblies taking great care with the music. The original Goldsmith version is provided in mono sound only but the final Courage arrangements are in stereo and sound quite good on the 2021 album, which nicely separates out Goldsmith's intended score presentation from the final version with Courage's alterations. There are plenty of likable nuggets in the end result, especially in Courage's part, but don't expect this one to soar.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

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