: (Jerry Goldsmith) Remarkable public
hysteria surrounded the purported auto-biographical tales of French
convict-turned-author Henri Charrière in the early 1970's.
Regardless of the veracity of his depictions of life in a penal colony
in French Guiana long before, the story he told in 1969's "Papillon"
captured the hearts of readers and studio executives. Charrière
wouldn't live long enough to witness the 1973 screen adaptation of the
story, the film's production suffering numerous setbacks. The duo of
Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman portray French prisoners seeking to
escape their Southern Caribbean prisons in repeated attempts, McQueen in
the lead as Charrière's nicknamed Papillon. Their long plight
contains extended suffering and frustrating setbacks, but redemption
awaits at the end. Critics weren't impressed, however, many of them
focusing on the immense length of Franklin J. Schaffner's product and
the inevitable stretches of contemplation and boredom that result from
them. If you never become invested in either of these characters, then
can be a very arduous experience. One of the few
elements of the movie still enjoying lasting respect is Jerry
Goldsmith's Oscar-nominated score, the composer in the middle of his
extremely fruitful collaboration with Schaffner at the time.
Interestingly, prior to Schaffner's hiring on the project, the producers
of
had promised the assignment to famed French composer
Michel Legrand as a favor for one of his previous scores being
unceremoniously removed from a picture. There were even several early
discussions about how Legrand would approach the story. Upon the arrival
of Schaffner, however, even Legrand admitted that the compositional
duties should shift to their mutual friend, Goldsmith. The movie proved
challenging for even Goldsmith, though, for Schaffner's instructions
about the intended French character of the score bedeviled the composer
for weeks. From a basic strategic standpoint, however, they agreed that
the film did not require much music. Despite running two and a half
hours long,
only contains a little over forty minutes of
original music, rounded out by a few sprinklings of source material here
and there. No score is used in the first 20 minutes.
Despite the relative brevity of the music in
Papillon, it certainly made a significant impact on the film and
in pop culture, its memorable main theme translated into song covers and
becoming a staple of Goldsmith's own concert appearances thereafter. The
ensemble for
Papillon is somewhat conventional at its base, the
orchestra recorded in Rome in an arrangement more akin to Ennio
Morricone's works. These players are supplemented by accordion and
harpsichord to provide the French ambience to the otherwise Italian
demeanor of the performance. Percussion is sometimes typecast, as in the
chimes of "Reunion" and gong hit following the extended sustain in
"Farewell, Part 1." More dynamic percussion contributions ranging from
rattles to wood blocks were employed to generate the jungle-appropriate
atmosphere of the Caribbean. Despite its ethnic variances, however,
Papillon remains saturated with Goldsmith's structural
sensibilities, especially in the meters and orchestrations of the full
ensemble. The whimsical romanticism of strings, for instance, is a clear
preview of similar passages in
Under Fire. The few action cues
offer the staggered rhythmic formations that were common for the
composer as well, though they tend to exercise the more dissonant side
of the equation. The score has one really uniquely divergent, long cue
that is intended to stand apart; as the lead character lives for a year
with a native tribe, Goldsmith provides an eight-minute cue in "Gift
From the Sea" that plays like a miniature nature documentary within this
score. It does not make significant use of the other themes in the work,
and while Goldsmith does apply fanciful woodwind performances in other
cues, their application here is distinct. The personality of this cue is
also strikingly positive compared to the remainder of the score,
offering relief and fulfillment in its harmonies and dedicate melodic
ideas. The circular path of the lead character inevitably takes him back
to his original captors, however, allowing the composer to return
conveniently to his core set of themes. While most casual listeners
remember
Papillon for its remarkable primary theme, Goldsmith
actually developed four recurring ideas in the work. While the main
theme is the most hopeful and therefore accessible, the other three are
all related to aspects of imprisonment and failure, making them less
attractive despite their basic effectiveness.
The main theme of
Papillon has a mesmerizing,
carnivalesque quality because of its waltz formations, especially when
it's carried by the full ensemble, but that maddening character can be
tempered back to simple beauty for touching sentimentality in the
score's later cues. Goldsmith uses the harpsichord as a running
rhythm-setter under romantically swaying lines in ways that the piano
would accomplish in a few other cues here and prominently a few years
later in the highlights of
Ransom. (The two main themes even
descend to similar structural resolutions.) The theme represents the
bond of the two main characters and their shared goal of returning to
France, used by Goldsmith for primarily the scenes of them together. Its
concert arrangement in "Theme From Papillon" is the fullest ensemble
representation of the idea, the accordion and harpsichord overtaken by
the whimsy of the ensemble before the group nicely passes the melody
back to the accordion for a tasteful finish. The counterpoint lines late
in this track lend it a touch of mystery, and this technique carries
over to later incarnations of the theme as well. In its development on
screen, the theme begins with none of its allure, cues like "The Dream"
and "Papillon (Theme Variation)" carried by solo accordion while
deconstructed fragments are bludgeoned by the darker themes in
prison-related cues. It occasionally pops up in quick, loftier moments,
as at the end of the first minute of "Catching Butterflies." The theme's
role as a tool of hope and successful escape starts to really impact the
score in the latter half of "Reunion," brightening the unused "The
Garden," pondering wistfully in "Cruel Sea" with more than a hint of
Under Fire strings, and providing sentimental relief in the two
"Farewell" cues, the latter representing the theme's ultimate homage to
survival. Because Schaffner chose to use footage of the penal colony
over the end titles, Goldsmith opted to apply his prison-related
material rather than the main theme for this sequence. That didn't stop
the theme from a receiving radio-targeted song adaptation. The melody
retains its lovely form in song form, but its somewhat awkward structure
translates into some stubbornly poor Hal Shaper lyrics that vocalist
Engelbert Humperdinck struggles to perform seriously. Pop songs of the
era were simply not meant to be built upon French waltz formations, so
expect your appreciation of the melody to remain focused on the
instrumental origins of the tune.
The other themes in
Papillon are largely
forgotten because, while they serve their purpose, they're not
particularly pleasant. A menacingly rising melody specifically for the
prison environment is introduced in the first half of "The Camp" before
mingling with the main theme later in the cue. It interrupts the
optimism in "Catching Butterflies" and mingles with Goldsmith's other
depressing ideas in "Hospital." It explodes on brass at 0:32 into
"Freedom," bringing an abrupt end to a moment of nautical exuberance.
Meanwhile the composer also briefly introduces a theme related to
oppression generally in "The Camp" that struggles mightily to escape its
key but always descends back to it. This idea returns with a sickly
accordion performance in the unused second half of "Catching
Butterflies." It continues its stewing in "Hospital" but takes leave
until its brutal, long culmination starting immediately in "End Title;"
Goldsmith intriguingly ends this extended treatment of the oppression
theme with a glorious major key note to signify the eventual closing of
the penal colony. A third related theme borrows a few progressions from
the main theme and is used to representation lamentation by the main
characters, and it doesn't really congeal until the latter half of
"Hospital." Its most prominent placement comes at the outset of
"Reunion." As mentioned before, the "Gift From the Sea" diversion
contains its own peaceful melody as well. With all these themes
jockeying for limited air time in
Papillon, the score doesn't
provide truly satisfying and deep development of its secondary
constructs, the "Hospital" cue showing promise in its mingling of all
four recurring themes but the remainder compartmentalizing them to a
greater degree. Most casual listeners will return to the main theme
regardless of the album presentation, and it's a strong enough identity
to buoy the entire score. The original LP record presentation of 35
minutes became the first CD from Silva Screen in 1988. Universal France
expanded the score to a 47-minute program in 2002, and that arrangement,
with a few source cues in the chronological order of the story, remained
the standard for the score until 2017, when Quartet Records released an
even fuller presentation with unused cues, most of the source music, two
alternates, and the song. The Universal and Quartet albums, the latter
reissued in 2024, will suffice for most listeners, and the sound quality
is on par with other Goldsmith works of the early 1970's. If you prefer
not to bother with the darker material in
Papillon, then one of
the many excellent re-recordings of the main theme through the years
will suffice.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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