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FILMTRACKS.COM
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Review of Body Heat (John Barry)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you seek John Barry's highly acclaimed, seductively
jazzy tribute to film noir history while also hearing him pivot towards
his romantic tendencies of the 1980's.
Avoid it... if the predictable instrumental techniques and underlying structures of Barry's music, no matter how effectively matched with the particular film, cannot be outweighed by the score's obvious sex appeal.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Body Heat: (John Barry) In his first directorial
effort after contributing scripts for such popular movies as Star
Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Lawrence Kasdan ventured into the realm of film noir imitation and
critics and audiences generally considered his efforts to have been a
great success. For viewers who can't handle films that try too hard to
saturate themselves in the dark sets, cigarette smoke, identity
intrigue, and jazzy scores of the 1940's, Body Heat floated its
appeal with a few remarkable plot twists and an element not allowed in
the movies of the earlier era: gratuitous nudity and sex. Despite
whatever tired elements were squeezed into the project to accompany (or
justify) the erotic displays of flesh, Body Heat would launch the
names of lead actors Kathleen Turner and William Hurt, not to mention
Kasdan himself, into stardom. The story of the film isn't particularly
clever until you reach it's latter half, where all the nasty twists
occur. Essentially, Turner's rich, lonely housewife uses her allure to
tempt Hurt's sleazy lawyer into a lustful and deceitful series of acts
that inevitably leads the man into a plot to kill Turner's husband.
Despite knowing that there's probably a bleak outcome for all of this,
Hurt goes forward with the manipulation, never revealing just how much
he knows about what he's getting into. If there's any doubt that Turner
will win in the end, then you don't know your noir well enough. After
consulting with four composers about the project, Kasdan settled upon
John Barry for the assignment based upon their common stylistic goals
for the plot. Coming at a transitional phase in Barry's career, Body
Heat would require a score overtly faithful to the genre, drawing
upon some of the skills from the composer's jazzy roots in the 1950's
while also straying into the weightier dramatic tones already beginning
to redefine his evolving personal style in Somewhere in Time and
Raise the Titanic. Because of the influence of his 1980's string
melodramatics, the end result from Barry in this case wouldn't sound
like any of his early 50's recordings, though, for the Body Heat
score is ultimately weighed heavily by the film's more contemporary
sexuality and suspense, aided by not only the string section but also
hints of synthetic accompaniment.
While for some listeners Barry may not have captured in Body Heat either the essence of noir or brute lust as well as Jerry Goldsmith accomplished in Chinatown and Basic Instinct, respectively, his entry was a well balanced exploration of the two genres together. This memorable combination, while really only constructed out of Barry's usual set of structures, has given Body Heat a longevity in popularity for Barry's fans well beyond most of the composer's other scores. The consistency of lasting praise for this work is testimony to the score's remarkable effect in the film, more so than just its merits on its own. As per usual, any strong Barry score of the 80's and 90's makes for an easily harmonic listening experience on album, but Body Heat goes a bit further because of the film's heavy reliance on the score's presence. Significant scenes in the picture offer only Barry's score over dramatic silence, including the strikingly powerful opening seduction scene concurrent to the cue "I'm Weak." In a technical sense, the learned Barry collector will be able to point to several later scores from the composer and place each element into context with his other works. The important attribute of Body Heat to remember, though, is that it came before most of these references, causing it to be a far more fresh combination at the time. Two or three of the primary themes will remind of Barry's tribute work to 50's soft jazz in Playing by Heart, with chord progressions extremely familiar to a multitude of his famous themes. This is especially true of the main theme for Turner's conniving character, her theme twisting mysteriously but retaining allure in its movements. Spinoffs of this idea are motifs specifically taunting Hurt's lawyer with the agony of loneliness or the urges of desire. The ensemble is roughly the same as in Barry's equivalent works: sax, piano, light percussion, and string bass in the forefront with a full string section and other accents (led by noteworthy trombone and flute solos in several cues) for occasional depth. Also of note is the same delicately tingling synthetic keyboarding that would be prevalent in My Life a decade later, used in Body Heat to establish a seductive rhythm ahead of the main theme, its slow progressions in a style faintly but eerily similar to parts of The Black Hole and replacing the need to state the full theme by the score's second half. When placing Barry's jazz elements with the synthetic and orchestral ones, there are parts of Body Heat that will stylistically remind you of another acclaimed Jerry Goldsmith work, The Russia House. Barry's music here, by comparison, lacks the same sense of bluesy movement, instead dragged to the muddy depths of sexuality required by the film. There is much in Body Heat that will foreshadow the similarly rendered theme in The Specialist, though Barry doesn't utilize the orchestra's force with as much dynamic range in most places. The exceptions are cues that include Barry's two darker themes for Body Heat, both of which utilizing thunderous piano depth for the plotting and fright motifs. The high string jabs and thunderous low piano barbs in the latter's statements (highlighted by "I'm Frightened") preview A View to a Kill and other 80's-era Bond scores. In retrospect, some of these predictable Barry techniques don't appeal as much as they did when the score first debuted. Still powerful decades later, however, is the noir-like styling of the main theme and its various supporting motifs. The muted brass performances establishing the sleaze of Hurt's character, for instance, are enduringly shameless and enjoyable. The exploding moment of realization at the end of "Better Get Him" is about as melodramatically forceful as Barry will ever get, too, a poignant way to wrap up the suspense of the score and yet another exhibit of just how often the composer intentionally leaves his thematic statements unresolved for this plot. As mentioned before, Body Heat makes for a very good listening experience unless you psychoanalyze its somewhat predictable "Barryisms" to death. The album situation for Body Heat was not satisfying for a very long time, unfortunately, though relief for Barry collectors did sputter out through the years. The 1989 album release of the original recording by the SCSE collector's label long served as the sole formally pressed album for the score. Its 32 minutes feature only moderate sound quality, which doesn't really do this score justice given that the standout solo performances require a crisp mix to appreciate. Barry himself disavowed this album, for it did not utilize the desire suite format that he had originally intended. Nevertheless, the SCSE release became a top collectible because of high demand and its limited pressing of 2,000 copies. In 1998, the Varèse Sarabande label contracted for composer Joel McNeely to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra for a re-recording of Body Heat in a single day. As to be expected, the sound quality on the Varèse release is vibrant at every level, superior by most measures to the original recording. McNeely's touch with Barry's material is almost as accomplished as Nic Raine's in this recording, and most Barry collectors will be highly satisfied with the result. The Varèse album also features six additional minutes of newly arranged, previously unreleased music, including the snazzy "Ned" and the expansive string introduction to Turner's estate in "Matty's Place." Several cues were lengthened and restored to their film order on the re-recording. Even with the superior commercial re-recording on the market, though, there were Barry fans who would settle for nothing less than original, and because of their desires, the SCSE release remained a highly valued target for many more years. This finally changed in 2012, when Film Score Monthly (as one of their final Silver Age Classics albums) released a comprehensive 2-CD set featuring remastered original recordings of Body Heat in both the complete film order and in Barry's initially intended album arrangement. The mix of the album arrangement on this set is faithful to the composer's wishes and different from that of the SCSE product. The 48-minute film order presentation is joined by a couple of alternate takes, a wealth of source material by Barry (most of which unused), and ten demo recordings at the end of the second CD that fabulously convey the main quartet's early explorations of the theme (becoming progressively contemporary in each entry). In many ways, these ten demo renditions of the main theme, the prime attraction in this score, are alone worth the price of this "unlimited" pressing. There are a few downsides to the full set, however, one being the continued, oddly muted quality of sound, especially in the string section (which keeps the 1998 re-recording relevant). The other truth of Body Heat to remember is that Barry did provide some filler suspense material in the second and third acts that does detract from the poignancy of his two darker themes. Overall, however, the FSM product is the outstanding presentation that this score truly deserves, and, in the end, Body Heat remains one of those films extremely well matched to Barry's trademark sounds, regardless of their structural predictability.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1989 SCSE Album:
Total Time: 32:29
* composed by John Williams 1998 Varèse Album: Total Time: 38:34
2012 FSM Album: Total Time: 139:35
* composed by Lew Brown/Sammy Fain ** composed by Michael Lang
NOTES & QUOTES:
All copies of the 1989 SCSE album are numbered. The 1998 Varèse and
2012 FSM albums both contain extensive information about the score and film in their
inserts.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Body Heat are Copyright © 1989, 1998, 2012, Soundtrack Collector's Special Editions, SCSE CD-1, Varèse Sarabande, Film Score Monthly and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/27/97 and last updated 9/2/12. |
