The Flight of the Phoenix: (Frank DeVol) Many
adversities involving a group of survivors in hostile natural
environments have been explored on film, but the 1965 epic ensemble cast
triumph
The Flight of the Phoenix added the twist of forcing its
characters to rebuild an airplane to escape a North African desert. When
their cargo plane goes down in a sandstorm, the men have to battle each
other and the Saharan elements until they can devise a way to adapt
surviving pieces of their plane into an all-new aircraft that can carry
them to safety. The brilliantly varied cast thrust into the
collaborative effort overcomes distrust of one another to get their
plane aloft, though the stunt pilot tasked with doing just that lost his
life when the craft didn't perform as expected. While composer Frank
DeVol collaborated with director Robert Aldrich on over a dozen films,
including
The Dirty Dozen, it is his dramatic work for
The
Flight of the Phoenix for which the composer is best remembered.
DeVol was known as an unheralded workhorse in the industry; while other
composers of his generation received far more recognition, he had
invented a technique that allowed him to crank out an impressive number
of minutes of music per workday, allowing him tremendous quantity of
music served even if the quality was highly variable. For
The Flight
of the Phoenix, DeVol supplied an orchestral score of a scope
appropriate for the vastness of the desert, but he also conjured a
plethora of source pieces for the radio music heard by the stranded men,
along with material suitable for the Arabian-oriented hallucinations
they experience. The composer was also not afraid to adapt other sources
of music, some mainstream-oriented while others traditional, directly
into his score. The resulting music for
The Flight of the Phoenix
is somewhat stereotypical in how it addresses the location via Middle
Eastern chord progressions, begging for comparisons at its most melodic
portions to Maurice Jarre's just previous classic,
Lawrence of
Arabia. But there's a lot more happening in this score than just
that flourishing nod to the locale, with Mediterranean and British
musical techniques and instrumentation figuring into the equation as
well. The core of the work remains suspenseful in tone, but most
listeners gravitate towards DeVol's full ensemble highlights from the
opening and closing scenes involving flight.
While some listeners may fixate on DeVol's grand
exposition in the opening and closing moments of
The Flight of the
Phoenix, the score consistently provides a wealth of ominous,
engaging, and ultimately rewarding cues in between. The conflicts among
the characters, as well as the sorrows of death and alienation, are
accentuated by occasionally militaristic yet appropriately exotic
tempos. Smaller motifs for individual characters are employed, but not
with obvious effect. The piano and harp for the German character is
often underplayed, and the military march for the sergeant, a tune based
upon a traditional British melody, is somewhat distracting. The somber
theme for the lead pilot is highlighted by "Towns is Back" and receives
dedicated evolution through the work. A source song for the ill-fated
Gabriele character breaks the tone of the score with some Connie Francis
vocals; that song was borrowed from pop culture and received significant
attention at the time. The score kicks up its intensity with "The
Propeller;" while still using the bass strings to remind us of the
precarious and ominous situation, DeVol provides the first glimmer of
hope. When that hope is realized and the plane takes flight, DeVol's
score soars with fully orchestral tonality and an easily accessible,
straight forward sense of satisfaction. Interestingly, the concept of
flight receives no theme itself from DeVol, these highlights content to
explore exciting but melodically anonymous structures. The striking
technique used by the composer for the opening titles, accompanying the
freeze frames of each character during their credit with hyperactive
percussion only, precluded much development of themes there. The
overarching idea for the desert is the main attraction in the end,
closing out the score with lush relief in "Ole Swimmin' Hole." In 1999,
Film Score Monthly released 40 minutes of the score alongside
Patton on an album widely considered at the time to be the best
entry in the label's young Silver Age Classics series. While
Patton was the main feature on the disc, the product was more
often cited as a success in retrospect because of the presence of the
long-awaited
The Flight of the Phoenix on album. A dedicated,
2-CD set for the DeVol score was finally provided by Intrada Records in
2021, the full film score and countless source and alternate tracks
offered in remastered stereo but still archival sound quality. While the
full presentation does drag in its midsection, the alternates contain
fascinating variants on major cues. For enthusiasts of the film, DeVol's
contribution remains an engagingly diverse highlight.
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The 1999 Film Score Monthly album includes extremely detailed notes about the films
and scores relevant to that product. The same can be said of the 2021 Intrada album's insert,
which contains the label's usual depth of notation about the film and score.
