Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #909
Written 3/5/00, Revised 8/27/24
Invert Colors
Buy it... on either the fuller 2000 or 2020 albums if you seek a
superior presentation of Jerry Goldsmith at the forefront of his
creative, parody Western mode.
Avoid it... if the use of harmonica, banjo, accordion, and
accelerated tack piano to augment the wild symphonic comedy overwhelms
an otherwise decent character theme that informs most of the work.
 |
| Goldsmith |
The Flim-Flam Man: (Jerry Goldsmith) A
happy-go-lucky 1967 comedy about con artists at the top of their game,
Irvin Kerschner's The Flim-Flam Man features a script that shows
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 comedy of the tale relies upon the absolute silliness of
the chasing and destruction in the movie, its action notable at the time
for the quantity of car wrecks and other damage to the small-town
Kentucky location where the story is set and the filming occurred.
Despite its outrage, Scott's performance fell flat with audiences and
The Flim-Flam Man lost a significant amount of money in theatres.
Not to blame for that failure was composer Jerry Goldsmith. Often lost
among the composer's grand, large-scale scores of the early 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 decades after the composer's death. Many of these
efforts feature a genuine Americana spirit unique to Goldsmith's
mannerisms, one not overly inspired by the style of Aaron Copland or
Elmer Bernstein but instead 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, acoustic guitar, and fiddle during
these years to promote that sound, and The Flim-Flam Man throws
in an accordion and hack piano to the equation, aiding in the flamboyant
flair brought about by the work's numerous chase sequences. While the
score has a distinct heart via its one dominant theme, supplying the
sensitive character contemplation of wholesome goodness that the
composer was known for, the work is also rambunctiously funny in parts.
The wild parody flavor pilfers the Western genre at its more ambitious
passages, straying almost to serious action in that mode at times. At a
time before his synthetics provided laughs in the mix, Goldsmith employs
percussion like a snare drum for a train engine for that role here. But,
in the end, for a score saturated with the essence of Goldsmith's sound
of Americana, it's the folksy bluegrass spirit helps set The
Flim-Flam Man apart from his other music of the era.
One of the reasons why
The Flim-Flam Man remains
an amusing entry in Goldsmith's comedy realm 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 and countless others. The spread of the instrumentation
of
The Flim-Flam Man is its greatest asset, with the strings
joined by deviously spread oboe, French horn, and the eclectic
collection of supporting personality instruments of harmonica, banjo,
piano, guitars, accordion, marimba, and wood percussion that bounces
back and forth in the soundscape. Contributing to the unique sound of
The Flim-Flam Man is Goldsmith's process of recording the piano
rhythms separately and then speeding 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 were masterfully reassembled for the album
presentations of the work, allowing a vibrant stereo mix that is quite
splashy for a recording of that age. Thematically, the score is
extremely devoted to its long-lined main theme for the con man duo of
the tale, introduced immediately on harmonica in "Main Title" and
featuring in practically every major moment thereafter before its upbeat
summary in "On the Road Again." It even translates down to the soft,
dramatic portions near the end of the score. The aforementioned piano
rhythms form the basis of a secondary chase motif for the score, and
these moments, clustered in the first half, are arguably the highlight
of the whole work. Goldsmith's infectiously amusing music for
The
Flim-Flam Man has long been represented across a variety of albums,
with selections featured on the famous Society for Preservation of Film
Music's limited tribute CD to Goldsmith in 1993, though those excerpts
did not contain some of the more difficult-to-edit assembling of chase
cues. An even shorter sampling was included on Varèse Sarabande's
massive 2004 compilation, "Jerry Goldsmith at 20th Century Fox." But it
was released properly in 2000 by Film Score Monthly (along with the
totally unrelated, far more restrained
A Girl Named Sooner) on a
very well-produced, limited product that sold out. In 2020, La-La Land
Records slightly expanded that presentation to include one extra short
cue ("Stolen Property II") on a dual album with
The Detective. On
either of these formal offerings, this score will bring a smirk to your
face.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.23
(in 140 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.25
(in 154,785 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
