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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of The Shadow (Jerry Goldsmith)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you can't resist the idea of a heroically affable
guilty pleasure that you will hate to love and your neighbors will love
to hate.
Avoid it... on any of the albums prior to the 2012 Intrada 2-CD set, a fantastic presentation of an often overlooked score that features Jerry Goldsmith's later adventure and fantasy techniques at their organic and synthetic best.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Shadow: (Jerry Goldsmith) Who knows what guilty
pleasures lurk in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows... And apparently
director Russell Mulcahy thought he knew as well. Unfortunately, the
1994 adaptation of comic book character Lamont Cranston, long in
development and once under the guidance of Robert Zemeckis, was a
popular failure despite its many redeeming qualities when compared to
other ridiculous comic inspirations on the big screen in the 1990's. The
lavish production suffered from a somewhat incoherent plot, Cranston
mentored by a Tibetan mystic during the "nomad period" of his life and
thus given the ability to cloud men's minds and exercise superhero
activities back in New York City. Meanwhile, sophisticated Mongolian
villain Shiwan Khan uses the same training to stage a takeover of the
city using mass hypnosis and an atomic bomb. A fantastic cast of B-rate
stars litters The Shadow, with several vintage comedians placed
in somewhat serious cameo roles to maintain levity. Likable performances
by John Lone, Peter Boyle, Jonathan Winters, Ian McKellen, Tim Curry,
and Penelope Ann Miller balance Alec Baldwin's efforts to be both
mysterious and heroic in the lead, a role built primarily around the
actor's distinctive voice. The production's loyalty to the 1930's
setting and the legend of the original Orson Welles radio show from that
era, not to mention some outstanding art direction and sound effects
editing, have allowed The Shadow a limited cult following.
Contributing to its mystique is a memorable and surprisingly
accomplished score by Jerry Goldsmith that went largely unnoticed at the
time due to the fact that the film competed against The Lion King
in cinemas. In fact, if there were ever to be the need to identify the
ultimate, relatively obscure "score of guilty pleasure," then
Goldsmith's The Shadow could very well be it. The quirky
personality of both the film and score, led by the movie's unstated
charge to parody the very superhero genre it belonged to, caused the
pair to be an undeniable romp for enthusiasts of comic book dramatics.
Aided by the music, the film's highlight is its remarkable layers of
sound, whooshing through a Gotham-like setting with a classical yet
electronically modern touch. It's hard to imagine that such a dominant
synthetic edge to Goldsmith's music could function so well in the
noir-like streets of the 1930's, but the composer infuses his style very
well with both the film's lighter plot elements and the impressive sound
effects.
Overblown and silly at times, Goldsmith mocks everything from Batman to Lawrence of Arabia in The Shadow, exercising a youthful exuberance not always heard in the composer's darker scores. Just like those who created the wacky story and visuals for the film, you get the sense that Goldsmith had more fun scoring The Shadow than he did for the typical romances and children's films he had otherwise been engaged with at the time. That sheer enthusiasm can be heard in the faster than usual tempo of electronic rhythms that Goldsmith employs throughout the score, as well as the complexity with which he develops his countless themes and motifs. There is no doubt that The Shadow did not deserve the complicated layers of motifs that Goldsmith afforded it, such intelligence defied by the substandard screenplay, but his effort for the genre is easy to appreciate when heard outside of context. The title theme for the film, originally hoped by the studio to be the identity for an entire franchise to follow, is as simplistic and heroic as you can get while also preserving the basic concept of duality that runs through the entire score. The duality, of course, represents the masked and unmasked personalities of the Baldwin's mysterious Cranston (whose face literally transfigures depending upon the character's mood), and the idea manifests itself in the music through the constant shifts between major and minor keys, sometimes as frequently as every other measure of music. It was a tactic that Danny Elfman so masterfully manipulated for his classic Batman score and Goldsmith's theme for The Shadow is largely an exaggerated and extended brass version of the same basic minor/major progression. Since the occasionally nebulous time frame of the film (once again, a la Batman) displays numerous elements of a more innocent decade long past, the noble and bold brass theme is a perfect statement of campy triumph during the scenes of comic book heroism. Goldsmith's loyalty to the idea carries it into innumerous softer incarnations throughout the score, often introduced by a distinctive rhythmic figure that becomes its own motif much like the bass string rhythms prior to John Williams' Superman theme serve their own anticipatory purpose. This bouncing rhythmic motif often exists before, under, and after statements of the main theme, and even it can be boiled down to a descending major third progression that becomes a calling card of its own. The rhythm turns mysterious when it is lightly plucked by harp or delicately performed by others in conversational scenes. The sweeping string interlude during the primary theme's major performances in The Shadow is eventually revealed to be a lovely romance motif that only receives true recognition in a handful of sequences. Given that the relationship between Cranston and Margo Lane isn't particularly well developed in the film, the lack of fuller expressions of this idea in more cues is perhaps understandable, though the swelling finale performance in "Frontal Lobotomy" is outstanding. Goldsmith's applications of the theme are most frequently fragmented and barely audible, tenderly expressed by solo woodwinds or piano in less active cues. He manages to create a constant sonic battle between hero and villain within the instrumentation and structures of the score, and while the noble title theme's obvious placements in the movie are certainly crowd pleasers, equally powerful are the Mongolian-styled outbursts for Khan. For this character's larger than life personality, Goldsmith offers the bloated presence of Taiko drums, as well as his The Wind and the Lion-inspired array of metallic and wooden percussion, to rock the soundscape with equal force. No better an alternating, orchestral battle of wills is conveyed than that between the grand, brass theme and raw, percussive pounding at the end of "Chest Pains." The actual woodwind theme over these sequences for Khan is completely overshadowed by its underlying rhythm, suggested in several places throughout the score (and introduced in particular in "Don't Open It!") but dominated by the villain's more forceful musical elements. The "Frontal Lobotomy" finale showcases the Mongolian percussion and theme in, ironically, its fullest form, followed by the heroic brass title theme and string-dominated romance interlude all in succession, yielding a fantastic conclusion to the score and film. Aside from these three major themes (four, if you include the rhythm under the main theme to be a separate entity), Goldsmith unleashes a number of secondary motifs, all of which explored several times in the work. The Monolith Hotel and the concept of brainwashing receive a creepy, brass-slurring identity that is first heard after massive gong early in "The Clouded Mind" but shines later in that cue, throughout "The Hotel," and at the end of "Fight Like a Man." A separate motif for chasing and movement in "The Sanctum," "A Mission," and "Get Dr. Lane" often launches into the main theme. A dedicated fight motif highlighted at the start of "The Mirrors" is pure Goldsmith action at its best, and when slowed down for high drama, as in "The Call" and the conclusion of "What I Know," which accompanies the film's nightmare sequence, the tumultuous personality of Poltergeist is resurrected. Goldsmith's instrumentation is key to defining several of the uniquely individual motifs that represent technology (for the atomic bomb and the lead character's sanctum organization) and hypnosis (for both the prime characters and mystic at the start of the film) in the plot. To balance the traditional comic book heroism and the bizarre mental and futuristic mechanisms within the film, Goldsmith makes fine use of his usual array of synthesizers and library of sound effects. The resulting combination of organic and synthetic in The Shadow stands among the best of the composer's career, not as obvious as in works like Legend and Hoosiers, but in purely complimentary bliss that allows the electronics to effectively aid both major facets of the score's personality. Two specific applications of the synthetic pitch-altering effects are frequently referenced in the score, and both are integral to its success. Heard at the very start of the film (in "The Poppy Fields") is the first of these two mini-motifs, a rising tone in the treble that denotes mystery and the psychological elements of the plot. It is the opposite of the all-too-common "sinking feeling" effect that dominated film scores in the 2000's, a lightly ascending treble tone rather than a deeply descending bass one. While it may seem indiscriminately applied at times, Goldsmith actually starts its rise on a specific harmonic note and often matches the orchestral material to its pitch later in the effect. The other major electronic motif utilized throughout the score is a descending but still treble-rooted swooshing that resembles both a cymbal roll and the passing tires of a vehicle on a wet street, again accentuating the noir style of the film. Goldsmith provides this effect as an extended substitute for traditional cymbal crescendos, such as the introduction of the title theme in "The Poppy Fields." Additional synthetic effects include deep bass thumping for the descending major third pairs under the main theme's rhythmic counterpart, highlighted in "I'll Be There" and sometimes suggested alone to solely represent a hint of the Shadow. The composer's more common, tingling, rambling electronic tones accentuate that main rhythmic figure. Less obvious is the soft keyboarding that Goldsmith provides for the love theme at the start of "Secrets" and elsewhere. On the whole, "I'll Be There" is a good place to study the various electronic elements, and you'll also encounter some of the score's only snare usage there as well (at about 1:30). For enthusiasts of the flying theme from Forever Young, Goldsmith reprises the electronic and woodwind rhythms from that cue (and even hints of the theme on brass above) for roughly half a minute at 2:45 into "The Tank." The enhanced role for electronics in The Shadow is made all the more impressive by the composer's employment of the traditional orchestral players. In some cases, as in the use of muted trumpets to accentuate the noir atmosphere, the choices are intuitive. But in some cues, it's hard not to get the feeling that Goldsmith and his orchestrators did everything they could to tinker with the performance aspect of each orchestral element without causing them to become dysfunctional. The trombones, for instance, perform some striking synth-like slurs in "The Hotel" to cleverly reflect the brainwashing concept, a technique that he would rarely touch upon again in his career. In fact, so successful was Goldsmith in this task that no subsequent performance of The Shadow by another body of musicians has ever been able to capture the same stylish personality. Even with all of the strange instrumentation and eclectic performances, though, the composer manages to maintain an airtight sense of continuity that makes the score distinctive even within a long career during which he utilized many of the same basic ingredients. Overall, you have to remember that The Shadow has a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek attitude, both on screen and in its music. But Goldsmith's score remains tremendously entertaining in its highlights and easy to appreciate for its unnecessary complexities when heard in its fullest length. At 85 minutes, The Shadow represents one of Goldsmith's longest scores of the era, and this doesn't include a major 5-minute cue (the final battle in "The Mirrors") that the composer re-wrote later in the production process to match the completely rearranged scene. There is very little filler material ("No Shadow" and "The Jumper" among the few rather uninteresting cues) in the 90 minutes of the complete score, the plethora of motifs and instrumental creativity keeping the work surprisingly fresh from start to finish. The original 1994 commercial album from Arista for The Shadow only offered thirty minutes of the score, but it features most of the essential pieces that you will hate to love and your neighbors will love to hate. There is enough action of significant, stereo-swooshing volume on this album, whether it be noble, pounding, or just downright strange, to cause your neighbors to become irate, even more so than something as masculine as the lion sequences in The Ghost and the Darkness. Included for good measure on this album were two dialogue clips, the first of which, with the slogan of the legend performed by Baldwin in a distorted mix, of perfect length and substance to whip on telephone solicitors at the highest possible volume. The other features Orson Welles' vintage narration. Not worthy of much discussion is the Taylor Dayne song "Original Sin" meant for the end credits of The Shadow. While misplaced in terms of style and personality (and of no relation technically to Goldsmith's score), it does at least utilize lyrics relevant to the film and has a sense of pizzazz that lends it well to appreciation in another context. The Arista album presented two mixes of this song and compounds its presentation problems by separating Goldsmith's opening cue from the rest of the score with an otherwise reasonable vintage jazz song performed by Sinoa. The product disappeared from the market quickly (within a year after its release) and has since fallen badly out of print. Never to be daunted, however, are those illustrious Goldsmith fans. An expanded bootleg album with only Goldsmith's score appeared many years later, though the various versions of the presentation typically offered only roughly an additional 14 minutes of material. Although the early packaging of this bootleg suggested that it was a Universal Music-produced promotional item, don't be fooled by its illegal status from birth. It's important to recognize, though, that these bootlegs still lacked half of Goldsmith's total recordings for the film and were often unsatisfactory in their sound quality. While including the important nightmare sequence cue, they still lacked the full "The Mirrors" and other vital music. At least twelve short cues comprise the extra material, and many of them repeat short sequences (0:15 or less in length) from the larger, better structured tracks heard on the Arista album. Realistically, the expanded bootleg was advisable only for seriously devoted fans of this score, and Intrada Records finally made its existence moot in 2012 with a stunning 2-CD release of the full 90 minutes of sessions work, complimented by two source pieces by Dennis Dreith and the original Arista presentation. With outstanding, remastered sound quality, this set offers a wealth of additional material that will tickle fans of this score, almost all of which presenting worthy extensions of Goldsmith's many ideas for the film. The title theme's renditions in "I'll Be There" and "Nice Tie" are not to be missed, nor are the Khan and hypnosis extensions in "The Clouded Mind" and "Don't Open It!" and the several love theme renditions finally exposed in three or four cues. The highlight of this product is the alternate version of "The Mirrors," which features some of the composer's best career action material. While there have been several outstanding expanded re-releases in 2012 (Hook and Star Trek: The Motion Picture among them), this set of The Shadow competes favorably with those products. It represents Goldsmith adventure and fantasy at its most affable, and despite the film's questionable quality, it will be impossible to put this fantastic album too far away.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1994 Arista Album:
Total Time: 46:15
2002 Bootleg Albums: Total Time: 43:26
* contains commercially unavailable music (other bootlegs for this score contain varying track listings) 2012 Intrada Album: Total Time: 134:49
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts on the Arista album and initial bootlegs contain
extensive credits but no extra information about the score or film.
That of the 2012 Intrada album features notes about both.
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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 The Shadow are Copyright © 1994, 2002, 2012, Arista Records, Bootleg, Intrada Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/24/96 and last updated 8/16/12. |
