: (Jerry Goldsmith) Remakes happen all
the time in Hollywood. In the 2000's and beyond, they've become
shameless attempts by studios to make an easy buck. Rarely, though, does
the director of a remake send a note to the director of the original
classic and tell him that the remake was being done because the
original, despite public opinion otherwise, was a screw-up. This brazen
attitude belonged to director Gordon Douglas, who was given the task of
"modernizing" and improving upon the 1939 John Ford hit
starring John Wayne. While the cast and crew of the
1966 remake was accomplished, and critics generally considered the new
to be a worthy update, Douglas' efforts could not
ultimately unseat Ford and Wayne in the history books. Both followed
roughly the same screenplay, though the revision allowed for more sexual
undertones amidst its portrayal of a quirky collection of men facing off
against Hollywood's stereotypical Indian baddies. As expected, Douglas
reunited with composer Jerry Goldsmith, with whom a very strong score
for
had resulted two years earlier. The resulting
music was one area in which the remake was almost uniformly considered
an improvement over the Ford film, which had relied upon source-like
applications rather the kind of original music that would later
constitute a typical score. By 1966, Goldsmith had already been
nominated for two Academy Awards and was well established in the Western
genre, both on the big and small screens. Indeed, the composer was best
known early in his career for his consistently engaging Western scores,
with a musical style distinct to his efforts in modernizing the genre's
sound. From
, the sound of
Goldsmith's music for the West is easily recognizable in its merging of
folksy rhythms and bold action themes. In its basic stylistic
characteristics,
is no departure from this norm. But
it is different, however, in the approach taken towards the topic.
Whereas most of Goldsmith's other westerns are dominated by their action
themes and apply the folk rhythms as colorful accents,
is far more thematically subdued in its folksy and pastoral approach.
This is, quite simply, because the action scenes in the film were left
to their own sound effects.
In some ways, the low-key personality of the music for
Stagecoach causes it to be an interesting interlude to the
bombast and whip-cracking sound effects of Goldsmith's other Westerns of
the early to mid-60's. For many listeners, however, the score will lack
the excitement necessary to float the pastoral sways and funky
honky-tonk rhythms that would be put to far more expansive use
elsewhere. The main theme of
Stagecoach serves as a weak preview
of the pretty and memorable identity for
Wild Rovers; it wasn't
uncommon for Goldsmith to pull inspiration from one Western score to
another at the time, and the solemn trumpet performances of the title
theme here are definitely precursors to the better developed and more
memorable
Wild Rovers. The "Main Title" and "Get Out of Town"
cues feature the most notable performances of this theme, with some
subtle fragmented usage in between. Even at its heights, it doesn't
rollick as much as its peers, but it rather rolls along with pleasant
and unassuming friendliness. A notable secondary theme on trumpet (over
snare and ambitious strings) in "First Born" is more unique to
Stagecoach, previewing, oddly enough, some of John Barry's
forthcoming work in the genre. Otherwise, the score is largely
uneventful, especially in "The Aftermath" and other cues defined by
barely audible suspense atmosphere. The jaw harp, guitar, harmonica, and
banjo lead the middle sections of the score through several
capitulations of the main theme during scenes of dialogue, and these
mundane cues have little to offer the experienced Goldsmith collector.
The composer's standard honky-tonk source music is put to work a few
times as well. With only 23 minutes of non-source material spread
throughout
Stagecoach, and with so few passages of Goldsmith's
exciting traveling styles for the West (a cue such as "The Stage is
Coming" is horrifyingly short), it's difficult to recommend the score on
album. Equally subdued is the film's primary and disappointingly brief
song, "Stagecoach to Cheyenne," performed not by the movie's star,
Ann-Margret, but rather by Las Vegas regular Wayne Newton. While failing
to incorporate Goldsmith's thematic material for the score (and
resembling the progressions of Dimitri Tiomkin songs for his Westerns of
the era), the song does ultimately leave a greater impression upon the
listener because of its rather defiant personality.
In its long history on album,
Stagecoach has
been released four times on CD, not considering the pseudo-bootlegging
Tsunami label's 1995 product. In 1991, the majority of the score was
released by Mainstream Records on the same CD with Goldsmith's
concurrent
The Trouble With Angels. Seven years later, the score
became the first entry in Film Score Monthly's "Silver Age Classics"
series, along with a couple of Goldsmith mini-scores for the television
series "The Loner" on the same product. In 2012, La-La Land Records
revisited the FSM item and presented the same contents (plus additional
incidental/alternate music) from
Stagecoach and "The Loner"
rearranged and in improved sound based upon better master access.
Intrada Records rearranged the tracks and improved the sound again in
2015 on an album with Malcolm Arnold's comparatively muffled
The
Heroes of Telemark. Unless you're a die-hard Goldsmith collector,
however, none of these releases will probably be worth your time; in
subsequent years, several offerings of
Rio Conchos and
Take a
Hard Ride proved superior experiences by significant measures. But
if you're in the market for
Stagecoach, then there are pluses and
minuses to each of the offerings. The Mainstream album lacks some source
music cues but includes the film's second featured vocal performance.
The FSM album presents the score in proper order but suffers from a less
vibrant mix. More importantly, the Mainstream album features extra
banjos in its mix; in the process of providing an intimate mix of the
score, FSM sucked the life out of the recording. The additional scores
included on the albums also favor
The Trouble With Angels, which
features a preview of the snazzy style of Goldsmith's much later
Gremlins rhythms. It has the lovable attitude of
The Flim-Flam
Man and a few funny source cues for vocalists and marching band.
While "The Loner"'s episodic scores do feature some of the same
techniques used in
Rio Conchos, the lack of a string section for
those recordings (typical for cost-conscious television scores of the
era) leaves you wanting more. Its only true highlight is its enjoyable
opening titles with narration. When La-La Land presented a better
overall mix of
Stagecoach on a limited album similar to FSM's in
2012, the contents were again rearranged, and the same circumstances
arose again with Intrada in 2015. The additional cues are not
particularly noteworthy, though improved sound quality on the later
products is an attraction. In the end, however,
Stagecoach is too
mundane a Goldsmith score to merit so much attention.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on Mainstream and FSM Albums: **
- Music as Heard on La-La Land and Intrada Albums: ***
- Overall: **
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 128 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.28
(in 153,786 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
