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Chinatown (Jerry Goldsmith/Phillip Lambro) (1974)
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Average: 3.43 Stars
***** 38 5 Stars
**** 43 4 Stars
*** 38 3 Stars
** 26 2 Stars
* 12 1 Stars
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Composed, Conducted, and Produced by:

Orchestrated by:
Arthur Morton

Rejected Score Composed, Orchestrated, Conducted, and Produced by:
Phillip Lambro
1995/2012 Varèse Sarabande Albums Tracks   ▼
2012 Perseverance Album Tracks   ▼
2016 Intrada Album Tracks   ▼
1995 Varèse Album Cover Art
2012 Varèse Album 2 Cover Art
2012 Perseverance Album 3 Cover Art
2016 Intrada Album 4 Cover Art
Varèse Sarabande
(Goldsmith Score)
(1995)

Varèse Sarabande
(Goldsmith Score)
(May 29th, 2012)

Perseverance Records
(Lambro Score)
(November 19, 2012)

Intrada Records
(Goldsmith Score)
(May 17th, 2016)
The 1995 Varèse Sarabande album was a regular U.S. release. That label re-issued the same presentation as a CD Club product in 2012, limited to 3,000 copies and available for $20 through soundtrack specialty outlets before selling out.

The 2012 Perseverance Records release of the rejected Lambro score is titled "Los Angeles, 1937" and is limited to 1,000 copies, but it remained widely available for regular retail prices. The 2016 Intrada album is limited to an unknown quantity and available initially for $20 through soundtrack specialty outlets.
The Goldsmith score was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA Award.
The insert of the 1995 Varèse Sarabande album includes no extra information about the score or film. Those of all the other albums include information about both.
Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #2,185
Written 3/2/22
Buy it... on the 2016 Intrada Records product only if you desire a truly definitive presentation of Jerry Goldsmith's overhyped but still appreciable score.

Avoid it... on any album if you expect either Phillip Lambro's rejected score or Goldsmith's replacement to leave you feeling any better than the film itself, both works depressingly sparse outside of their noir elements.

Goldsmith
Goldsmith
Chinatown: (Jerry Goldsmith/Phillip Lambro) Considered widely to be among the best films of all time, Roman Polanski's 1974 noir thriller, Chinatown, also remains one of the most overrated films of all time. Despite a smart script and exemplary acting performances, the story of the film is extraordinarily depressing, making a mockery of its title by actually concerning itself with a private eye mystery involving the politics of Southern Californian water rights. Jack Nicholson plays that detective in search of the truth behind the criminal shenanigans in property sales and the family of an engineer involved in the local water system. That engineer's murder launches a series of destructive events and disturbing discoveries, and the detective is physically and emotionally brutalized along his path. It's the kind of the film that isn't afraid to pull the incest card in its final third, show women being struck, and allow the villains to essentially win. It's an immensely unpleasant cinematic experience all around, though that didn't stop Nicholson from obsessing for years about returning to the character, which he did with little success in a 1990 sequel. Polanski's regular composing partner from the prior decade, Krzysztof Komeda, had passed away at a young age, leaving the director in search of a new composer for Chinatown. Having utilized several concert pieces by American composer Phillip Lambro in the early assembly of the picture, Polanski hired him to write the score. By most accounts, the process of spotting the film and recording with Lambro went smoothly, the director, producer, and even Nicholson impressed with the composer's adaptation of noir jazz with avant-garde orchestral experimentation. So tickled were they by Lambro's work that they gave him a monetary bonus and asked him to write even more music for the film, and it was while he was away composing this additional material that Polish composer Bronislau Kaper commented to Polanski that Lambro's music was "killing your picture," and a poor test screening identifying the music as a detriment sealed Lambro's fate. He was hastily fired but negotiated the rights to his own score in return for the studio using the music in the film's trailers, a convenience because the studio didn't have the replacement music in time for that use.

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