: (John Williams) The spectacular
success of disaster films in the first half of the 1970's had fizzled by
1977, but that didn't stop studios late to the party from attempting
their own thrillers with unlikely plotlines. By the time of
, among others, the genre was no longer
attracting massive box office returns or awards consideration,
especially with the space fantasy era officially in full swing.
Paramount's
stretched the concept beyond the usual
realm of natural disasters and instead fashioned its story as one of
political revenge, though mass terror and death were still the potential
outcome. After the Israelis turn up the heat on the Palestinians in
response to the Black September terrorist attack on the 1972 Munich
Olympics, their battle is transferred to America. There, the
Palestinians almost succeed in their plan to smuggle a massive,
dart-shooting bomb into the country, hang it from the bottom of the
Goodyear blimp, and detonate it at the Super Bowl with the American
president in attendance. After solving logistical hurdles involving the
use of the Goodyear name on the blimp and the shooting of actors
interacting at (and interfering with) actual NFL events, director John
Frankenheimer was left to populate the film's earlier portions with a
suspenseful cat and mouse game featuring actors Robert Shaw, Bruce Dern,
and Marthe Keller. The film was well received critically but failed to
generate much popular interest, a circumstance that extended to John
Williams' score. In the year that otherwise brought
became
lost in the mix. By comparison to its two highly recognized peers of
1977, this score was thematically functional but underwhelming, edited
extensively in the final version of the film and, despite the composer's
early intentions, neglected on album. There is nothing in the
instrumentation or constructs of
that can compete
with the memorable elements in Williams' other scores of the year,
though his collectors will undoubtedly find merit in his subdued but
still technically precise ideas for the concept.
While rather straight forward in its thematic constructs,
Black Sunday is often restrained in its presentation of those
ideas, leading to a morbidly somber and perpetually unsettled and
ominous tone until its final moments. The score features two primary
themes and one seldom-referenced secondary idea. By far dominating the
personality of
Black Sunday is the methodical motif for the
Palestinians, represented by a series of four-note phrases that always
begin with straight, almost mechanical repetition in its first phrase.
The theme haunts the score from its opening moments to the final fade at
the end, easily malleable in relation to the other themes and
intensifying in performance depth as the plot to explode the blimp
progresses. While the theme lurks on celesta and woodwinds earlier in
the score, it is finally translated into its final, brass incarnations
in "Miami," one of the film's more memorable scenes as the blimp is
first seen. Several momentous brass expressions of the theme, in a style
typical to Williams' darker fanfares for his own disaster scores of the
early 1970's, await the blimp's final journey to the stadium and
collision with it. A handful of powerful cello, piano, timpani, and bass
woodwind churnings of the theme produce the highlights of the score,
including another driving performance for a great shot in "Bomb Passes
Stadium," a scene depicting the bomb on its way to be joined with the
blimp as the game is starting. The relentless reminders of this
propulsive theme, extending with stealth into the resolution cue and
original end credits, serves as a reminder of the unyielding, focused
threat of terrorism that spans even beyond this picture. As the theme
changes its meter in its later, more accelerated performances, it takes
on a personality similar to Jerry Goldsmith's tense material for urban
thrillers in the 1990's, a characteristic that applies especially to the
two variations of "The End." Interestingly, as the terrorists' theme is
allowed to merge with underlying rhythms in this score, it begins to
form a very clear mould for Williams' tumultuous motif for the raptors
in
Jurassic Park, especially in the use of rolling bass woodwinds
in the mix. The ending of "Underway" is quite surprising in this regard.
In fact, the connections between
Black Sunday and
Jurassic
Park are plentiful in these passages, including the use of enhanced
synthetic bass effects to expand the music's dynamic reach.
The second prominent theme for
Black Sunday
accompanies Robert Shaw's lead Israeli commando and is a clear precursor
for Williams' redemptive but alluringly tragic theme for the Force in
Star Wars: A New Hope. This idea, while faithfully developed by
Williams until its first full incarnation on trumpet in the closing
resolution scene ("The End"), was considerably damaged in its
application to the film due to the score's significant rearrangement in
the editing process. Ultimately, you never hear this theme in full in
the final cut of the film, though its interactions with the terrorists'
theme, as well as its own intriguing manipulations for the character's
thought process, can be appreciated on album. The third theme in
Black Sunday is only heard on creepy piano in "Building the Bomb"
and disturbed strings and celesta in "The Last Night," and it represents
the doomed love affair between the lead Palestinian agent and the
mentally unstable Vietnam veteran who will pilot the blimp. This theme
is a bit too tortured for even fans of Williams' 1970's romance ideas,
its harmony twisted into eerie formations. A handful of other
instrumental touches are used by Williams to accentuate certain concepts
in the film, most notably an array of clicking percussion as the fuse on
the bomb is lit and the distinct flourishes of the harp to address the
vague romanticism of the blimp. The employment of the celesta, usually
in conjunction with strained high violins, leads to cues difficult to
enjoy on album ("Moshevsky's Dead," "The Test," etc.). Outside of the
intermingling of all of these themes and instrumental identities in
Black Sunday is the standout cue "Preparations," which bursts
with a fugue that foreshadows several similar, striking
multi-string-lined expressions of rhythmic propulsion to come from the
composer. Also of note is "The Explosion," which was originally deemed
too anti-climactic by the filmmakers, so Williams returned for a later
recording session to specifically provide what would eventually be known
as one of his blazing brass fanfares in the bombastic major key. The
replacement 30-second cue for the very end of the film sounds like a
combination of the nobility of
The Towering Inferno's exterior
shots in its performances of the Israeli commando's theme and the
show-stopping timpani pounding and sixteenth notes on trumpets later to
grace the composer's
Star Wars prequels. The tone of this short
cue is completely different from the rest of the score but still a
welcome relief.
Overall,
Black Sunday is an accomplished score
but not necessarily a truly memorable one. The relatively archival sound
quality doesn't allow the many intricacies of the instrumental colors to
expose themselves well enough to casually appreciate. Once it starts
cooking in the second half, there is much to like about its outwardly
menacing attitude. Though the first half of the score is equally grim,
it blends into the background much like Williams' just previous
Midway did outside of its major thematic performances. The theme
for the terrorists is afforded some truly fantastic statements that
easily earned him his paycheck, and it almost makes you wish they had
accomplished their aim, if only to hear what kind of glorious variation
Williams could have made on this idea. Those who appreciate the
composer's use of low woodwinds to denote suspense, as in
E.T. The
Extra-Terrestrial, will love the maturation of this primary theme.
If you are nostalgic for Williams' infusion of pop rhythms and
instrumentation into his vintage disaster scores, you will find equal
merit in the composer's solo trumpet and light jazz arrangement of the
Israeli's theme in his original end titles cue. Thus, altogether,
Black Sunday is the kind of score that will appeal to Williams
collectors but convert few outside of that group. Long represented on
album by only substandard bootlegs, it was finally given proper
treatment by Film Score Monthly in 2010. This outstanding, remastered
presentation of the score allows listeners to hear it as Williams had
intended, which will give them the opportunity to consider an extensive
amount of material dialed out of (or rearranged in) the film. Included
are the source cues recorded by Williams for the game and beyond, as
well as the original end credits cue without the pop percussion and an
edited approximation of the end credits material heard in context.
Unfortunately, the masters of the revised version of "The Explosion"
could not be located, so the score's single most memorable moment
reverts back to mono sound from a seemingly inferior source. Aside from
this one major detraction, this
Black Sunday album will not
disappoint, and it was re-issued in limited, remastered form (aside from
the one, still-mono cue once again) in 2025 by La-La Land Records. Had
the score been recorded digitally twenty years later, a vibrant
soundscape for the composition would likely have afforded it a fourth
star in its rating. True enthusiasts of the composer can even extend
comparisons of this score to Williams' approach to 2005's
Munich.
The dark hues are equally sinister in both scores.
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| Bias Check: |
For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.68
(in 91 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.51
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