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| Goldsmith |
The Flim-Flam Man/A Girl Named Sooner: (Jerry
Goldsmith) Often lost among composer Jerry Goldsmith's grand,
large-scale scores of the Silver Age were his variety of comedies,
parody westerns, and smaller character drama scores like
A Patch of
Blue that rarely receive due attention in the era after the
composer's death. Working tirelessly to bring these more obscure
Goldsmith scores from the 60's and 70's to soundtrack album collectors
has been Lukas Kendall's Film Score Monthly label, and at the time of
the release of
The Flim-Flam Man and
A Girl Named Sooner,
the label was steaming through many of the titles the composer's fans
were most requesting. Both scores on this particular album feature a
genuine Americana spirit unique to Goldsmith's career. As mentioned in
the product's fine notation, Goldsmith had an Americana feel not
inspired by the style of Aaron Copland or Elmer Bernstein, conjuring
themes and rhythms that defined Goldsmith's own style of home grown
American spirit. It wasn't uncommon for Goldsmith to use the harmonica
during these years to promote that sound, and both these scores owe much
of their own identities to that instrument. Irvin Kerschner's
The
Flim-Flam Man was a happy-go-lucky 1967 comedy about con artists at
the top of their game, with a script that showed the development of an
apprentice by the master. By the end of the film, after being chased by
dumb police and bilking money from unsuspecting fools in business, the
younger con artist proves his loyalty to the older one by sacrificing
his freedom for George C. Scott (in the role of the master). The second
film was a strict character drama made for television in 1975 and
followed the relationship between a couple who adopts a young wild girl
and deals with effects of her presence and absence. The first score
obviously conveys volumes of Goldsmith's more wild and parody spirit
while the second score is much more restrained, but both are saturated
with the essence of Goldsmith's sound of Americana. Most of the people
interested in this release will be attracted to
The Flim-Flam Man
and its undeniably funny character sound, though there is much merit to
be heard in the more tender sounds of
A Girl Named Sooner.
One of the reasons why
The Flim-Flam Man is the
highlight of the album is because of its superior stereo mix. The
content of the music itself has the rhythmic bounce of
Take a Hard
Ride, the harmonica movements of
Magic, and the romantic
interludes for woodwinds that would later define
A Girl Named
Sooner. The instrumentation of
The Flim-Flam Man is its
greatest asset, with the strings joined by oboe, French horn, and the
eclectic collection of supporting 'personality' instruments: harmonica,
banjo, piano, guitars, accordion, marimba, and wood percussion (among
others). Contributing to the unique sound of
The Flim-Flam Man is
the fact that Goldsmith recorded the piano rhythms separately and then
sped them up to give them a tack piano sound that is infectiously
rambunctious in the comedy cues from "No Rest for the Wicked" to "The
Getaway." The cue "Stolen Property" is especially addictive in its
upbeat mock-Western rhythms, and the score's separate tape recordings
are masterfully reassembled for this presentation, allowing a vibrant
stereo mix that is quite splashy for a recording of that age. A smaller
portion of the score had only been available on the Society for
Preservation of Film Music's limited tribute CD to Goldsmith in 1993,
and those excerpts did not contain some of the more difficult-to-edit
assembling of chase cues. The late dramatic turns of the score produce a
good transition to
A Girl Named Sooner, which is considered a
superior score by some because of its straight forward and more genuine
dramatic approach. Led by Goldsmith's typically pretty harmonica, flute,
and string lines, the later score is perhaps the easier listening
experience on album. Its mono sound is free of hiss but quite shrill in
parts, a result of the original recording quality that the label decided
not to alter. Some listeners will find the more dull sound of the latter
score to be difficult to appreciate after the masterful job that Intrada
Record's Douglass Fake did with the assembling of the various elements
for
The Flim-Flam Man. This album was notable for its all-star
cast of producers, and the results are very strong; fans of Goldsmith
would be treated to similar results for Goldsmith's
Take a Hard
Ride in a subsequent FSM release, further reducing the value of the
SPFM Tribute album.
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- The Flim-Flam Man: ****
- A Girl Named Sooner: ***
- Album: ****
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.28
(in 113 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.3
(in 142,513 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The album contains the usual excellent quality of pictorial and textual information
established in other albums of FSM's series, with extremely detailed notes about the films
and scores.
