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Review of The Great Train Robbery (Jerry Goldsmith)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you appreciate Jerry Goldsmith music at its most
exuberant and boisterously enthusiastic, in this case brightly comedic
due to its airy atmosphere and light waltz rhythms.
Avoid it... if you find Goldsmith's breezy, overly-positive comedy music to be remotely trite, because The Great Train Robbery reminds significantly of the composer's campy fluff from the 1960's.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Great Train Robbery: (Jerry Goldsmith) In a
diversion from his usual preoccupation with the concepts of science
fiction and fantasy, writer and director Michael Crichton visited the
genre of vintage crime caper with 1979's The Great Train Robbery.
(Some listings place the film in 1978 due to its British debut just
before the new year.) Crichton had published the film's story in a 1975
novel, exploring a devious plot about the efforts of two master
criminals (and their beautiful accomplice, of course) to steal gold from
the British government in a clever new way in 1855. Eying some gold
transported by train for the first time in history, a man of high class
and his keymaster associate devise a way to obtain the four keys
necessary to open a safe on that moving train and steal riches headed to
British troops fighting a distant war. Sean Connery and Donald
Sutherland are the naughty protagonists, using any nefarious means by
which to obtain wax imprints of the necessary keys, eventually
culminating in high thrills aboard the train itself at the end. The
atmosphere of The Great Train Robbery is relatively low-tech on
screen and off (the film was made for only $6 million), but it utilized
an abundance of charm to retain audience interest. A strong crew
assembled mostly in England included veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith, a
friend of Crichton and collaborator on many of the director's projects
all the way through 2003's troubled Timeline. While Goldsmith's
spirited music for The Great Train Robbery maintains a healthy
following, it could be argued that his general endeavors for
Crichton-associated films didn't really impress until the 1990's. It's
hard to deny that 1979 was a year great achievement for Goldsmith,
though, and while The Great Train Robbery admirably serves its
purpose, it doesn't compete in popular interest on any level with his
concurrent work for Alien or Star Trek: The Motion
Picture. Goldsmith's music for comedies often straddles a fine line
between infectious enthusiasm and obnoxious fluff, and The Great
Train Robbery unfortunately strays a bit too far to the latter
side.
In its personality, The Great Train Robbery is easily one of the composer's most optimistic and light-hearted efforts for a full ensemble, joining in the romp of the story's twists with unquestionably affable characteristics. The instrumentation is geared towards a light atmosphere, with plucked bass strings often dancing underneath high woodwinds, xylophone, violins, and occasional harpsichord. Whether you, as a Goldsmith collector, can find enough merit to appreciate in these airy tones apart from their necessary application in the film is another matter. Goldsmith uses the meter of a waltz in the polar opposite fashion as he had the previous year in The Boys from Brazil, this time taking the period-appropriate rhythms and accelerating them under an exuberant major-key theme. This idea receives boisterous, full-ensemble treatment in the opening and closing title cues, informing the remainder of the score with almost perpetual development of either the idea's progressions or its underlying rhythms. A three-note motif that opens the rhythmic figures beneath the thematic performances is a good tool with which to provide a quick moment of suspense while characters are sneaking about on screen. A secondary offshoot of the main theme heard at roughly 0:40 into the "Main Title" as occasionally thereafter is a little more devious in its interpretation of the same theme, yielding comparisons to Goldsmith's later Under Fire, albeit with a much brighter attitude. He doesn't take much time to explore supplemental material in The Great Train Robbery, instead content to allow his primary idea to effortlessly carry the likable story through its delightful twists. The romantic passages of character interaction lightly touch upon the main phrasing of the primary theme in softer shades, failing to explore anything new. Not only is there a relative absence of significant depth to both the composition and the performance (there are occasionally moments when Goldsmith stacks lines in the complex fashion you hear in many of his other scores, but such complications go against the spirit of the score), it's a rather short work overall, Goldsmith's contribution substantially limited to the major expositions of the title theme in the final cut of the film. One employment of the main theme does stand out in the score for The Great Train Robbery; in the short "Departure," a cue alternately titled "The Gold Departs," Goldsmith increases the pace and corresponding level of excitement in the ensemble as the steam locomotive gets its start; it's not a terribly original idea but an effective one nonetheless. On the whole, The Great Train Robbery is as engaging as it is trite, accomplishing all of its goals but potentially opening the doors for a headache in listeners who can't tolerate hopelessly optimistic comedy for long periods. Fortunately for these souls, there is little instrumentation targeting the era of the story, as the production mostly took a modern look at the historical events. On album, the meat of the score was only available on a rare 1990 dual CD (with Goldsmith's The Wild Rovers) for many years. In 2004, Varèse Sarabande remixed more of the music from newly discovered 24-track masters, allowing for not only superb sound quality when heard on regular CD players, but also an SACD presentation for those equipped. Intrada Records issued a more satisfying, 2-CD set of the complete score in 2011, adding mostly source-like material for solo flute and guitar but also a few new suspense cues in the middle passages. That set also includes extensive alternate takes, fifteen minutes of the actual source pieces, and the differing LP presentation on the second CD. Neither the 2004 nor 2011 albums were limited in quantity, but they did eventually go out of print. In 2019, Quartet Records revisited the general idea of the Intrada album but sought to more faithfully recreate the presentation heard within the film (including extensive work on the climactic "The Gold Arrives..." cue) and remaster all material again, including the original LP album, for another 2-CD set, this one limited to 1,000 copies. The prior arrangements of certain tracks as heard on the Intrada set are preserved as alternates on the Quartet product as well. Additional source pieces are also included. The sound quality on any of the later albums is very impressive, but it only magnifies the difficultly that some listeners might have with the extremely positive tone of the score. Goldsmith at his most playful was certainly proficient at his task but also occasionally tiresome, and a little of The Great Train Robbery's slurring trombones goes a long way. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
1990 Memoir Album:
Total Time: 60:54
* lyrics by Ernie Sheldon, performed by Ellen Smith ** traditional music arranged by Jerry Goldsmith, performed by Ellen Smith 2004 Varèse Album: Total Time: 36:27
2011 Intrada Album: Total Time: 96:40
* previously unreleased 2019 Quartet Album: Total Time: 101:47
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts of all the albums include information about the score
and film, the latter three products' notes especially detailed.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from The Great Train Robbery are Copyright © 1990, 2004, 2011, 2019, Memoir Records (European), Varèse Sarabande, Intrada Records, Quartet Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/22/09 and last updated 4/11/21. |
