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Regarding Henry
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(1991)
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1991 Capitol (Zimmer) |
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Replacement Score Composed, Arranged, and Co-Produced by:
Replacement Score Orchestrated by:
Bruce Fowler
Replacement Score Vocal Performances by:
Bobby McFerrin
Replacement Score Co-Produced by:
Jay Rifkin
Rejected Score Composed, Conducted, and Produced by:
Georges Delerue
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LABELS & RELEASE DATES
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Capitol/EMI Records
(August 6th, 1991)
Universal Music (France) (November 1st, 2011)
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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The 1991 Capitol/EMI album with Zimmer's score was a regular U.S.
release but fell out of print and sold for over $40 in the 2000's. The same score
material was appended to a widespread First Born Records bootleg for Thelma &
Louise a few years later. The 2011 Universal Music album from France, titled
"Partitions Inedites/Unused Scores," is the first limited entry in the label's
"Ecoutez le Cinema!" series, though its 3,000 copies were retailed internationally
for an initial price of only $15.
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AWARDS
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None.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... if you never tire of dozing off to Georges Delerue's
restrained but beautiful orchestral lyricism or Hans Zimmer's
predictably innocuous, harmoniously consistent light jazz and drama
style of the early 1990's.
Avoid it... on the Zimmer album if the composer's intriguingly
unique application of vocals, erhu-like violin, muted trumpet, and
acoustic double bass may threaten the otherwise conservatively smooth
atmosphere of its synthetic, contemporary tone for you.
BUY IT
 | Zimmer |
 | Delerue |
Regarding Henry: (Georges Delerue/Hans Zimmer) Not
all of writer, director, and producer J.J. Abrams' concepts have been
successes. In fact, early in his career, he wrote scripts that were
often pounded by critics, and one of his first tastes of that reaction
came when his second feature film story was teamed with director Mike
Nichols. The 1991 drama Regarding Henry was mostly advertised as
an exhibit of actor Harrison Ford's ability to charm audiences in less
heroic circumstances. He plays a mean, unethical, cutthroat New York
lawyer with a dysfunctional family but a highly respected career
defending large clients. He is shot in the head and chest while seeking
cigarettes at a convenience store and recovers without a memory or
speaking ability. Through the laborious process of his rehabilitation,
he is reintroduced to his family and discovers, not surprisingly, that
he doesn't like his former self. His medical disaster ultimately saves
his most meaningful relationships and causes him to turn against his own
law firm. It was revealed by critics at the time that Regarding
Henry was a contrived attempt by the director to revive past glory
from a similar journey of self-discovery, and other than an early
leading role for actress Annette Bening, not much came of it. Screenings
for the movie had gone poorly enough to cause the rejection of the
film's original score by French romance master Georges Delerue, who had
enjoyed three successful collaborations with Nichols previously.
Delerue, not surprisingly, had written a lovely score for strings,
woodwinds, and a tasteful handful of plucked accompaniment meant to
humanize Ford's character and infuse a sense of warmth and intimacy into
the relationships in the story. His music was led by a lyrical violin
theme that meanders with classical grace in many important cues,
straying into solo woodwinds as per the norm for the composer. Only in
"Back to Life" does Delerue extend into covertly grandiose volumes. His
music for the movie has distinctly European sensibilities in its embrace
of the concept, and when test audiences reacted poorly to Delerue's
rather sappy style (which, to the studio's defense, did strike up its
romantic tone immediately and persistently rather than slowly evolve as
does the main character), Nichols apologized to him with humiliation
upon the notice of rejection and vowed to work again with Delerue. The
composer died within a year of completing Regarding Henry,
however, silencing the industry's most reliable provider of overflowing
melodic beauty.
This film was not the first instance during the
composer's final ten years in which his music was rejected from a major
American picture. He was far more distraught with his removal from
Something Wicked This Way Comes in 1983, however, accepting the
loss of Regarding Henry with greater ease. These two rejected
works (actually, about half of each) were eventually released together
by Universal France on one CD in 2011, and the 33-minute Regarding
Henry portion features sound quality far better than that of the
older work. In both cases, Delerue was supplanted by much younger
composers on the verge of finding their strides in American cinema, and
these replacement scores were both above average in quality. Whereas
James Horner finished the scoring duties for the 1983 film, Regarding
Henry became one of many character stories for composer Hans Zimmer,
who was in the midst of a period in his career when light dramas and
romantic comedies were the norm. He was a dependable source of affable,
contemporary music at a low cost, having proven his techniques with the
mainstream upon receiving an early Oscar nomination for that sound. In
terms of instrumentation and spirit, many of Zimmer's scores for these
assignments from 1989 to 1993 utilize extremely similar ideas that
became the composer's easily identifiable trademarks. The success of any
one of these scores individually usually depended upon the composer's
ability to insert some kind of unique personality into each score. For
Regarding Henry, he begins with the same one-man ensemble of
keyboards and samples, continuing to emulate organic instruments with
remarkably satisfying results. But on top of these conservatively safe
choices (and thematic progressions that unquestionably share traits with
other optimistic Zimmer scores of the era), the composer layers a small
collection of important acoustic instruments and unconventional vocals
into the mix. These special touches allow an enthusiast of Zimmer's
older, contemporary style of writing to appreciate this music while
digesting some satisfyingly distinguishing characteristics by which to
identify it. Whereas Delerue had tackled the story of rebirth with an
overwhelming sense of optimistic (and, in a few places, heroic)
progress, Zimmer's approach was far more ordinary to filmmaker
expectations at the time. The result of his efforts for Regarding
Henry is, as was typical for Zimmer in this kind of role on other
projects, a completely innocuous and pleasant listening experience with
a marginally adequate dose of style far lighter on its feet than
Delerue's beautiful but broadly antiquated sound.
The rhythmic swing of Zimmer's score is slightly jazzy
for the urban atmosphere and employs the soft keyboarding that once
defined pop song accompaniment. The composer's themes are somewhat
generic amongst his concurrent output, though a slightly melancholy
sense does inhabit their melodramatic structures. The way these themes
are fleshed out in the score's highlights, however, provides nothing
less than another exuberant representation of rebirth. Offered in
succession in "Walkin' Talkin' Man," these ideas illuminate most of the
instrumental soloists as well. The most memorable is the distinctive
voice of Bobby "Don't Worry, Be Happy" McFerrin, whose puffing and
sighing performances were seemingly sampled by Zimmer and dubbed in
several different variations of pitch to actually replace the need for
metallic percussion to set a rhythm. These intriguing vocalizations,
which only really lengthen out into melodic accompaniment in that
opening track, are so interesting in their tone in some places that they
may be distracting from Zimmer's otherwise standard keyboarding.
Conventional light percussion pushes a few cues along in the middle
passages. An acoustic double bass lends much of the jazzy appeal to the
score, sometimes meandering about beneath the keyboarding with freedom.
Trumpet and violin soloists accentuate the almost otherworldly nature of
some of the ethereal keyboarded, orchestral samples. The trumpet's muted
tone offers a noir-like feeling of mystery while the violin has been
processed in such a way as to sound like an erhu, an enchanting
contributor to several cues. At times, the processing of certain
elements makes the soloists eerily vague, as in the ghostly operatic
voice in the middle sections of "Henry vs. Henry" and "Gotta Get Me Some
of That." Zimmer does ground these sounds with his usual sampled
woodwinds, from the crowd-pleasing faux clarinet from Driving Miss
Daisy to the quasi-exotic flutes from Green Card and beyond.
These performances are assembled into nearly constantly harmonic
statements of the score's themes from start to end, yielding a very
consistent listening experience on album. Nothing in Zimmer's work for
Regarding Henry is earth-shattering, but you can add it to the
wealth of easy listening of the least intrusive nature that the composer
was accustomed to writing back then. The rare, score-only album for his
music does not contain Sting and The Police's song "Walking on the Moon"
from the picture. That may a good thing, because you could put this
relatively short score on repeat and doze off to a better place for a
few hours. The same could be said of Delerue's score, though expect the
Frenchman's take on the concept to carry infinitely more weight while
achieving the same result. @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written by Hans Zimmer for the Film: ****
- Music as Written by Georges Delerue for the Film: ****
- Overall: ****
Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.93
(in 98 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.95
(in 277,212 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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Rejected Score Maleficio - May 6, 2010, at 7:55 a.m. |
1 comment (1360 views) |
1991 Capitol Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 37:33 |
1. Walkin' Talkin' Man (3:36)
2. A Cold Day in NY (2:23)
3. Blowfish (3:08)
4. Ritz (4:48)
5. Henry vs. Henry (3:11)
6. Ritz Part II (3:10)
7. I Don't Like Eggs (3:18)
8. Gotta Get Me Some of That (3:30)
9. Central Park, 6pm (4:20)
10. Buddy Grooves (6:15)
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2011 Universal Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 65:23 |
Regarding Henry: (33:31)
1. A Portrait of Henry (2:10)
2. Back to Life (3:48)
3. Amnesia (2:58)
4. Finding Love (4:22)
5. Sentimental Calliope (1:42)
6. A New Birth (5:22)
7. Erased Memory (3:02)
8. Speech Therapy (3:14)
9. Henry's New Personality (2:45)
10. End Credits (3:32)
Something Wicked This Way Comes: (31:52)
11. Something Wicked... (3:24)
12. ...This Way Comes (4:39)
13. The Edge of Death (3:50)
14. Mr. Dark's Carnival (4:22)
15. Time Carousel (4:00)
16. Black Lullaby (3:30)
17. Mirror Maze (4:07)
18. Finale (3:41)
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The insert of the 1991 Capitol album includes no extra information
about the score or film. That of the 2011 Universal product includes detailed
information about the circumstances of the rejection of both of the scores
included, presented in French and English. Sufficient information about the
crews on the latter product (for the recording and the album) is lacking.
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