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PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Presumed Innocent (John Williams)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you are open to the idea of hearing a rare, brilliant
entry into the genre of hypnotically minimalistic suspense by the
legendary John Williams.
Avoid it... if you consider Williams' sparsely understated and thematically subtle scores to be unimpressive and boring, for this one requires acute attention to appreciate the mastery of its details.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Presumed Innocent: (John Williams) Director Alan J.
Pakula's adaptation of Scott Turow's best-selling novel placed Harrison
Ford in a role that was becoming more familiar to him with each passing
project. While many will recall his action films before all others,
serious movie-goers can remember Ford's phase during which he
adequately, if not smartly portrayed a scared man. From Frantic
to The Fugitive, Ford successfully expanded his career into the
realm of thrillers, with the 1990 film Presumed Innocent
representing perhaps the pinnacle of such work. Courtroom dramas rarely
come as powerful as this, no character ultimately proving to be the
protagonist and justice most definitely not served. Pakula's storied but
relatively sparse career included a long working relationship with
composer Michael Small in earlier entries and finished its span of
thirty years with contributions by James Horner for the two pictures
immediately preceding his horrifying death via a flying pipe in 1998.
Surprisingly, Presumed Innocent was the director's only movie
featuring the music of film score legend John Williams. The maestro was
about to embark on yet another decade of spectacular film scores,
finishing the previous year with multiple Academy Award-nominated works
and well on his way into a new phase of massive adventure scores of
considerable quality. Steamy, adult thrillers weren't among the usual
assignments for Williams, whose scores at the time resided closer to
traditional drama and, even more still, action. Such psychological toils
hadn't occupied him since the early 1970's. Thus, Presumed
Innocent distinguishes itself as a rare stylistic departure for
Williams, one that he would unfortunately not further investigate later
in his career. Most Williams enthusiasts tend to be perpetually
overwhelmed by the composer's ability to present a score that stands
well as both its own formidable force in his films on one side and a
spectacular album on the other. Differing in its intent is Presumed
Innocent, however, and the score's underwhelming aim has often led
to its demise in the opinions of film music collectors. To say that this
work is Williams' forgotten masterpiece would be slightly misleading
given that so many of his own fans strangely consider the score to be
unimpressive, if not boring.
Anyone doubting the music for Presumed Innocent should re-examine its superbly careful constructs and execution, because wrestling within its contents is one of Williams' most skilled presentations of harmony versus disharmony, good versus evil, and confusion versus resolution. It remains one of the most poignant musical examinations of the corruption of the soul to exist in film music history. The film tears at the viewer with questions of morality and murder, building to the gut-wrenching and ultimate destruction of a seemingly happy suburban family. Thus, Williams maintains the score with a single piano at its heart, representing the normal sound of a safe and typical family lifestyle with elegant though easily manipulated primary and secondary themes. Also of note is a solo horn and timpani in the credits performances and other cues, both forcefully performing their roles apart from other brass or percussion and leading to the sense of despair and fright on a personal level. Such instrumentation remains consistently simple yet sharp, with dissonant electronic effects providing a further edge of fright to the mix as technology comes to play a role in the corruption within the story. A fuller ensemble, including strings and brass, does exert some depth at times for both misleading Americana comfort and outright horror. More importantly, however, is how Williams adapts his themes in the film to the constant battle between passion and suspicion. Each thematic idea is inherently positive and elegant in its basic construct, meandering on the piano in a deceitful dance of sincerity during the few relaxed scenes of the film. As the story unfolds, however, Williams' slowly strips away the accessibility from the themes and inserts more troubling off-key instrumentation and subtle mutation of those ideas. Finally, as the major confession is presented at the end of the film, Williams' score has completely degenerated into a wash of tingling percussive sounds. Within this narrative are four themes, essentially, and three of them mingle inextricably in the opening and closing titles to suggest the impossible connectivity between characters in the story. The two primary ideas are the most often referenced by Williams. The first of these is a cyclical 14-note piano rhythm that repeats its closing four-note descent twice, suggesting the unforgettable allure of the woman killed early in the story and her effect on everyone else. It's this conspiracy motif that each character cannot shake at any turn, and Williams weaves this idea throughout the score masterfully. The conspiracy motif in Presumed Innocent opens "Main Title" and sometimes churns underneath the other themes, typically making some kind of connection back to the murdered female character. Next on solo horn and later piano in that "Main Title" cue is Williams' main theme for the movie, representing Ford's haunted and flawed character. As the theme dies away in that cue, the composer provides its extremely pretty secondary phrasing, a sequence that won't experience fully harmonized treatment until about 0:45 into "End Credits." The main phrase follows Ford's lead throughout the film as a reminder of his personal failings and sadness, often tinged with the conspiracy motif underneath. The lovely nature of this idea's core progressions is never realized in the work, a recognition of the story's inevitably troubled ending. Williams adapts the idea into an intriguing, ghostly offshoot with electronics at 1:23 into "End Credits," a keen blending with the corruption motif. That third idea of tawdry, ominous dread is another cyclical rhythm, this time four notes accompanied by a cheerless three-note answer in the bass region by timpani. It's introduced softly at 0:25 into "Main Title" and develops further at 0:17 into "The B File," where its association with corruption is cemented. When a character is directly connected with dishonest acts, Williams runs the corruption motif underneath another theme, as throughout "On the Advice of Counsel" and early in "The Boat Scene." It's a highly tricky theme, as Williams adapts its bass answering portion to the treble to open "In the Patio," a fascinating cue that also applies the hypnotic conspiracy motif for the murdered woman to an unexpected new character, the wife of Ford's lead. The fourth theme Williams provides to Presumed Innocent is one of Americana typical to the composer, reminiscent of his fuller-fledged, wholesome, 1970's era that struggles to survive in this work but plays a vital role at identifying the dichotomy between a normal life and everything unseemly in this story. Heard initially in "Family Morning," Williams touches upon the idea briefly in "Family Theme" (but haunted by hints of the darker themes) and uses it as a false conclusion in "Case Dismissed" and "Return to Normal." Its brevity is necessitated by the few scenes of peace in the work. Minor motifs also exist for the bribery subplot on electronics ("The B File" and "Leon Talks") and the role of the wife ("Carolyn's Apartment" and "Barbara's Confession"), the latter a frightful but intelligent deconstruction of the conspiracy motif into a seemingly aimless meandering for celeste and piano. Also of interest is the horror music in the score for Presumed Innocent, anchored by the troubling "Love Scene" cue (the sex in this film is not meant to be purely erotic) and "The Basement Scene," which agonizingly starts to unravel the whole plot with the long overdue discovery of the murder weapon and uses tortured renditions of the main theme for the full ensemble. Shadows of this darkness without resolution continue into the "End Credits," exploding with a powerful, electronically enhanced performance of the corruption theme's bass portion that punches the audience in the face one last time, relentlessly driving home the surprise ending after the plot's devastating conclusion. All of this gravity is made with careful, troubled elegance, and you have to appreciate how Williams changes the tempo on the piano performances of the primary two themes in accordance with the level of fright on the screen at any given moment. One of the more remarkable aspects of the score is the difficulty with which other ensembles toil when attempting to re-record its suite arrangement by Williams; these other groups almost always lose touch with the stark tone of the original performance. On album, the score received a sufficient, 43-minute presentation from Varèse Sarabande at its debut that contained a few alternate recordings and combined multiple cues into its tracks. (Ironically, the album was longer than the amount of music actually utilized in the picture after a few cues were dropped by Pakula.) In 2022, the label offered a "Deluxe Edition" expansion that provides the full 50 minutes of the composer's original film versions of the cues alongside 28 minutes of album-specific arrangements. The longer presentation does illuminate intelligent additions to the narrative, from the conclusion of "Main Title" to the delicate duet of primary themes on piano in "Burning the Note" and "Outside the Courthouse;" these additions showcase Williams' very light synthetic keyboarding nicely. Other newly released cues, as in "Physical Evidence" and "Fingerprints," add little to the flow of the listening experience, the latter the score's only sustained dissonant moment. The sound quality on the 2022 album isn't significantly improved, but the proper arrangement of the full score will be highly appreciated by its enthusiasts. Some listeners will never be able to connect to Presumed Innocent because of its restrained subtleties and its tendency to dwell at minimal volumes in its midsection. And yet, the work remains one of the most striking deviations from Williams' standard action and drama works, and it continues to be an easy recommendation as a tensely stellar, hypnotically gripping, and lesser-known triumph from the master. *****
TRACK LISTINGS:
1990 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 43:27
2022 Varèse Album: Total Time: 77:52
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1990 Varèse album includes a short note about the score.
That of the 2022 album offers extensive information about the score and film.
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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 Presumed Innocent are Copyright © 1990, 2022, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande (Deluxe Edition) and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/24/96 and last updated 6/21/22. |
