was the fourth directorial outing for the highly
acclaimed Richard Attenborough, who, after fielding moderate success for
this film, would turn his immediate attention to
. At the
time,
was not known for its star power, but most of the
consideration given to it today is due to the emergence of several
actors and other crew members involved with the project. Its star,
Anthony Hopkins, had already performed in several great roles for a
decade but had not yet achieved superstar status. The same applied to
Attenborough. The film's strong supporting cast (which looks now like an
awkward preview of the
supporting group) was
limited to just a few characters, with a tightly woven and introverted
script telling a tale that involves only five characters. Five, that is,
if you include Fats, the dummy. The film's plot is a horrific tale of
mental derangement on the part of the primary character, a magician and
ventriloquist, who succumbs to the evil suggestions of his puppet and
commits hideous crimes while haunted by a love for an old schoolboy
crush. The body count swells to encompass most of the cast, and the film
is ultimately a frustrating and disturbing endeavor in every possible
way. When envisioning the score for the film, no task too tough was to
exist for the immensely busy composer Jerry Goldsmith at the time.
Goldsmith's music proved to be key in the development of the
self-destructive relationship between Hopkins' pathetically wacko
character, Corky, and his sickeningly suggestive dummy, taking specific
harmonic ideas for the protagonist and constantly bombarding them with
the striking instrumental tones that represent his sidekick.
The composer had finally won an overdue Academy Award
at the ceremonies just a year prior, and the obviously experienced
Goldsmith was entering a ten-year period that many critics still
consider to be the most richly textured of his career.
Magic was
a project for which Goldsmith could entertain a delicate love theme and
weave it into a constant battle with the theme of the dummy, mirroring
the schizophrenia of the ventriloquist as he falls victim to that
physical object. His comfort with the horror and suspense genres was
beginning to reign with consistency. The difference between Goldsmith at
his prime and most of the other composers of later eras in film music
was Goldsmith's ability to make the "less is more" idea work and work
well. This is a score of few grand notes, and yet Goldsmith's ability to
take a charming little love theme and twist it into an agonizing fight
between fear, doubt, and love is grand in and of itself. Still, you need
to investigate this score knowing that an appreciation of Goldsmith's
talent is really the only reason to listen to
Magic for any
length of time. From the outset of the work, during which Goldsmith
introduces the hauntingly stark harmonica theme for the dummy, the score
quivers with uncertainty and frustration. It is built upon the same
sparse constructs as a score like
A Patch of Blue, but with none
of the inherent affection. A laid back, jazzy theme for the good natured
side of the primary character's heart battles the unpleasant harmonica
for the entire score, only to lose at the very brink of victory. A
maximum of a minute or two of actual horrific slashing music is to be
heard in
Magic, heightening the tension throughout the rest of an
orchestral underscore that features atonal battles with accessible
harmony in many sequences. In short,
Magic's music is so passive
aggressive that it's nearly impossible to tolerate for purposes of
enjoyment on album. Still, remarkably, the score has received
significant attention on CD through the years.
For ten years, a little more than 15 minutes of the
Magic score was available on the highly collectible and cherished
Society for the Preservation of Film Music Tribute CD pressed in limited
copies for the audience attending a 1993 dinner in honor of the
composer. For the very few who owned that album (or one of the countess
bootlegs that came afterwards), it should be noted that the SPFM Tribute
CD has all of the most pertinent and impressive Goldsmith cues from
Magic (in roughly equal sound quality). None of the additional
material provided on later albums dedicated to the score is significant
in length, and the short cue times only add to the unsettling listening
experience. True Goldsmith completists will indeed be interested in the
whole score, but if you are going to choose one just Goldsmith score to
further explore from that original SPFM CD, then
Magic is by no
means the best choice. The limited 2003 Varèse Sarabande Club
album of 3,000 copies includes two nightclub cues required as source
material from Goldsmith, and these add nothing to the experience except
for an even greater appreciation of the composer's versatility. The
product sold out within a few years and also became a moderate
collectible. In 2015, La-La Land Records offered nearly the same
presentation (revealing another 30 seconds of actually quite impressive
material in one additional cue) on a pressing of 2,000 copies. Despite
the remarkable skill it puts on display, though, any album offering for
Magic won't sit among the better half of Goldsmith's works. It is
a disturbing listening experience, as to be expected, and even the
popular, heightened pronouncement of the love theme in "Appassionata" is
presented with an agitated, suspenseful edge that will convince your gut
that something is wrong. If you haven't seen the film, it would be a
challenge to start listening to the score, read a synopsis detailing the
gripping plot of the film, and feel comfortable stopping only halfway
through. Such is the life that Goldsmith's unsettling score brings to
this horrific tale.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.22
(in 138 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.25
(in 154,594 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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