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Review of High Road to China (John Barry)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you are an unreserved enthusiast of John Barry's lush
and occasionally soaring romance themes and rhythmic action motifs, no
matter their relatively stagnant foundations.
Avoid it... if you expect an ounce of originality from Barry in this score, for what you receive is a clear cross between Raise the Titanic and Out of Africa.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
High Road to China: (John Barry) The 1983 adventure
High Road to China was meant to be actor Tom Selleck's victorious
transition from television to feature films and introduce a rival to the
"Indiana Jones" franchise. In the Brian G. Hutton movie, Selleck is a
drunken, depressed pilot hired in the 1920's by a British heiress to
help find her captured father and thus ensure that his riches transfer
to her. With those somewhat curious parameters in mind, the film doesn't
ask you to sympathize with any of its leads, but it rather entertains
you with its aerial journey from Turkey to Afghanistan, Nepal, and
ultimately China. With a budding but never realized relationship between
the Selleck's rogue and the heiress (who is revealed to be deceiving her
partner in that she's a skilled pilot herself and simply needs his
planes to make the rescue attempt herself), the film balances a
bittersweet romantic element with the stunning aerial photography
central to its appeal. No doubt a logical hire for the scoring
assignment at the time was John Barry, who was well equipped to not only
provide the flowing romanticism necessary by those two main features of
the story, but also the stock suspense that accompanies attempts by
other interested parties in killing off the heiress. Barry was balancing
two major sides of his career at the time: the continuing formula of the
James Bond scores and the bloated, string-dominated lyricism that would
eventually yield two Academy Award wins for the composer. Collectors
made cynical by Barry's consistency in these efforts throughout the
decades have rejected both sounds, flocking instead towards the few
efforts by the composer that do not squarely fit in one of those two
genres. For these listeners, High Road to China is truly a
nightmare of redundancy. In the film, the majority of music heard is
actually source material consisting of jazz and classical pieces from
the era. Barry wrote two of these source cues, and most of the others
are standards that mainstream cinema-goers will likely recognize. The
score itself offers absolutely nothing new to the composer's career, but
it does have the advantage of stating Barry's obvious mannerisms with a
more effective voice than many of his other similar scores.
Composed a few years after Raise the Titanic and a few before Out of Africa, the score for High Road to China is a clear mix of the two. Barry returns to his robust and repetitive title theme structure of the same grand nature as Raise the Titanic while utilizing the heavier dramatic base of Out of Africa, accentuated by low rumblings of the tuba at regular intervals. The score's two primary melodies are almost always present. The title theme doubles as the "love theme," an overwhelmingly lush and straight-forward string melody of melodramatic weight, contributed to by Barry's standard, broad brass counterpoint. Like Dances With Wolves, Barry's secondary, more rhythmic theme for the film is the superior attraction, however. From the inspiration of daring flight, this theme soars with determination and majesty over a churning string rhythm. The expansive gong hits and medium to high brass layers utilized during this theme are an exceptionally bold twist on the usual kind of propulsive action music that populated Barry's scores for the Bond franchise at the time. Its keen sense of movement rivals On Her Majesty's Secret Service, especially in its bass and drum use, and the lofty attitude will remind of Moonraker's primary theme as well. For the rugged and mountainous setting of the film, this secondary adventure theme is, despite its simplistic construct, quite effective. In a nice touch, Barry's chugging snare drums well represent a biplane engine. A saxophone over acoustic guitar in the final cue is an echo of Body Heat. Lovely viola counterpoint to a woodwind performance of the love theme in "One Eye Open" is unusually textured for this kind of Barry romanticism, as are the layers of very high violins in the finale cue. A few secondary motifs do exist for the villains of the film, stomping to percussive rhythms as usual for the composer and conveying equally generic progressions of slight dread. Altogether, High Road to China is extremely representative of Barry's best mannerisms of this era, though be aware of its inherent constriction of creativity. The sound quality enjoyed by this score has never been as clear as in other Barry recordings, unfortunately, and a suite from High Road to China long remained a request for the producers at Silva Screen Records, with whom The City of Prague Philharmonic often performed adept re-recordings of Barry's music. On album, High Road to China has been released three times digitally, and all of these products lack the vibrant, dynamic stereo soundscape existing in other Barry features of the era. Still, for enduring defenders of the composer's simple romanticism, the content of the music outweighs any audio deficiencies, standing alongside Out of Africa and Dances With Wolves as a dramatic necessity in any Barry collection. The score's history on CD began in 1990, released as the second album in the Soundtrack Collector's Special Editions (SCSE) series. A much coveted collector's item within the film music community, only 2,750 copies of this debut CD of High Road to China were made available to the public. On the secondary market, they sold for up to $150 in auctions during the middle of the 1990's. By the end of the decade, though, an unexpected extra stock of original copies of those CDs was made available through Amazon.com (listed as an "import") for $21 apiece, greatly reducing demand. In 2000, the Super Tracks specialty label released a limited promotional album with two extra minutes of score and the full compliment of source material to make the presentation complete. With the addition of the traditional source music and the two source cues written by Barry, the 2000 album contains every moment of music heard in the film. The two source cues and additional score material by Barry are unexciting, not worth the price of the expanded album alone, and fans should be aware that the mastering of this product yielded a fair number of digital artifacts (typically referred to as "pops") that reduce the listening experience. Additionally, the 2000 album condenses the original score into a 32-minute suite that combines cues unnecessarily (and sometimes to the omission of the natural conclusions to some). In 2009, the producers of that CD rectified the sound anomalies as part of another release of the 2000 album's contents in limited form. Unfortunately, that BSX Records re-release of High Road to China maintained the same somewhat disconcerting suite format and even added another nine-minute custom arrangement of major cues at the end. Ultimately, any of the albums will suffice for collectors (all contain the most notable music, including some for scenes that were cut from the final release of the film), but there remains an allure to the 1990 album's presentation despite lesser sound quality than on the 2009 product. On the whole, this score has a more adventurous spirit than many of Barry's other lush works, and its increasingly better availability on album should satisfy all the demand this film and score can muster.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1990 SCSE Album:
Total Time: 30:04
* source cue written by Jimm Jonson and Cecile Mack 2000 Supertracks Promo: Total Time: 57:58
* source music arranged by Al Woodbury ** original John Barry source music 2009 BSX Records Album: Total Time: 66:48
* source music arranged by Al Woodbury ** original John Barry source music
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts of all of the albums contain extensive notes about the film
and score. All copies of the original SCSE release were hand-numbered. The 2009
BSX Records album incorrectly lists itself as a 2010 product on its packaging.
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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 High Road to China are Copyright © 1990, 2000, 2009, Soundtrack Collector's Special Editions, SCSE CD-2, Super Tracks Music Group (Promo), BSX Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/27/97 and last updated 11/30/11. |
