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| Goldsmith |
Caboblanco: (Jerry Goldsmith) Charles Bronson
existed on screen in the 1970's and 1980's to accomplish one thing:
punish the wicked. In
Caboblanco, he essentially meets that goal
once again, though the screenplay is so awful that the payoff at the end
is hardly worth the insufferably endless conversations prior. Obvious
noir sensibilities and too many parallels to the 1942 classic
Casablanca (extending well beyond just the title of the film)
make
Caboblanco laughable in parts and insufferable in others.
Bronson is an inn owner in South America caught in the middle of a
scheme by Jason Robards, the town's commanding force and a former Nazi
in hiding, to sink and retrieve priceless, stolen wartime artifacts that
exist at the bottom of the town's bay. A love triangle complicates
matters, and regardless of how seriously Bronson tries to take his role
in
Caboblanco, his other collaborations with director J. Lee
Thompson remained closer to his comfort zone. Also a regular partner in
the productions of Thompson was composer Jerry Goldsmith, though none of
their work together gained much attention in the mainstream due to the
poor overall quality of those films. Goldsmith had been interested in
exploring Latin sounds in his music for much of his life, gaining the
opportunity to do so in several projects ranging from
Bandolero!
to
Medicine Man (though none would prove quite as intoxicatingly
effective as
Under Fire). The Latin influence on
Caboblanco is arguably more pronounced than in many of his other
similar examinations of this cultural sound, with the highlights of this
score firmly rooted in the subgenre. While performed by the National
Philharmonic Orchestra, the composer's most reliable players at the
time, the straight symphonic elements are not the most memorable heard
in
Caboblanco. Castanets, tambourine, solo trumpet, acoustic
guitar, and other stereotypical instruments for the region contribute to
the flair of Latin rhythms and flourishes in counterpoint that very
convincingly ground the score in the proper place. The complimentary
tones of the two harmonious trumpets together is a welcome technique. If
anything, though,
Caboblanco contains too little flavor of this
variety, for the score is ultimately sunk by its remaining parts.
The lack of development of the title theme in
Caboblanco is its doom, for outside of "Main Title," "Beckdorf's
House," the start of "The Drowning," and "The Final Act Begins,"
Goldsmith not only loses the identity of this piece in the remainder of
the work, but its exotic personality as well. The secondary themes are
all weak. The love theme for
Caboblanco is comprised of an
adaptation of Roy Noble's "The Very Thought of You," presented in
solemn, whimsically romantic tones that are surprisingly shallow
throughout the picture, attempting too hard to pull at the
Casablanca strings and failing to achieve any sense of convincing
warmth that is usually present in Goldsmith's own compositions along
similar lines. And the film and album both make liberal use of the
adaptation, extending to over ten minutes of ultimately boring material
that really doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the score despite the
late 1940's setting. The soft song appropriate to the time written by
Goldsmith himself, "Heaven Knows," is equally mismatched. A slightly
terse string rhythm for Robards' villain is only vaguely explored in
"Beckdorf's House," giving the character none of the convincingly
sinister musical personality that Goldsmith had given Gregory Peck's
hiding Nazi character in
The Boys from Brazil (a score with just
a few hints of Latin tones, though effective ones). The action cues in
Caboblanco are surprisingly orphaned by the rest of the score as
well, creating an effective ambient environment for grisly killings but
not really achieving any greater purpose. The duo of "Boat Attack" and
"Hide and Seek" on album, the product's two longest cues, are both
severely underachieving in depth, despite the composer's attempts to
incorporate some of the Latin instrumentation into their otherwise
symphonic stirrings. The two concluding cues do very little to
intelligently convey the climax of the story, leaving the score in an
aimless fog of uncertainty before invariably returning to the Roy Noble
adaptations. The entire album presentation is disjointed in personality,
never living up to the contextual flair of the opening cue. Hearing less
than 25 minutes of original Goldsmith score doesn't help, either. A
non-limited CD released by Prometheus in 1993 was re-issued with
identical musical contents but different artwork in early 2005. The
score has promise, but
Caboblanco is a rare case in which
Goldsmith fails to deliver upon a compelling title theme after its
opening introduction.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29
(in 113 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.31
(in 143,742 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The inserts of both albums contain information about the score and film.
