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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of The Thomas Crown Affair (Bill Conti)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... on the 1999 commercial album if your sole focus is on the
two popular and most prominently featured songs heard in the film
itself.
Avoid it... on the 1999 promotional album or its subsequent bootlegs if you expect Bill Conti's extremely schizophrenic score to live up to the hype that many have generated for it.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Thomas Crown Affair: (Bill Conti) While this
remake of the classic 1968 version of The Thomas Crown Affair
(directed by Norman Jewison and starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway)
didn't receive much sympathy from critics in 1998, it fared relatively
well with audiences who caught Pierce Brosnan largely reprising the more
sophisticated side of his James Bond persona. Director John McTiernan
took much of the heat for the film's failure to meet expectations,
proving perhaps that he doesn't have the touch of stylish wit that a
story like The Thomas Crown Affair requires in its execution. The
famous minute-long kiss between leads in the 1968 film, for instance, is
extended by McTiernan into a sex scene full of extended shots of bare
breasts and buttocks. At least Brosnan and co-star Rene Russo were in
good shape. Eventually, the film became a surprising box office success,
and one of its enduring production elements was its music. The 1968 film
had earned an Oscar for Michel Legrand due to the popularity of the song
"Windmills of Your Mind." It's perhaps no surprise that McTiernan, after
working with many of Hollywood's foremost action-oriented composers,
chose Bill Conti to provide the Legrand-like music for his update of
The Thomas Crown Affair. While Conti's career had stalled
significantly by the late 1990's, with the composer stuck working on
meaningless, trashy comedies, this unconventional score revived his
reputation for a short while. Conti's work added a distinct style and
personality to the film that it desperately needed to compensate for an
otherwise stale atmosphere. It provided a touch of uniqueness to the
film, if only because it defied everything that listeners had come to
expect a 1990's score of this genre to encompass. The unmistakable
1970's style of small-ensemble jazz either provides a tasteful new angle
for the film or causes its ultimate failure, depending on your opinion
of Conti's general approach. Regardless of how that sound played away
from conventions, it was one of the most easily recognizable elements of
the film and the album, therefore, spiced up with a few of the necessary
songs from the film, was an extremely popular bestseller.
Beyond the hype generated by the film and its music upon release, it's difficult to imagine exactly why score collectors would be attracted to this work to the extent to which they typically are. Conti's work is extremely fragmented, creating an appropriate ambience in the whole, but failing miserably in particular scenes. The theme for Crown himself is a fascinating study, but its application in the film is almost too whimsical to function. Using five pianos to perform the theme, staccato rhythms are performed on four while while a dainty and flighty theme is performed in short bursts over the top. The complexity of the layers is an interesting way to represent Crown's multi-faceted personality, but its extremely treble-dominated tone is too innocent for the character. Fuller performances of the theme are used extensively during the catamaran and glider sequences, though the renderings in these scenes are still frustratingly limp. The sultry love theme by Conti is generic noir-imitation material, and its effectiveness in the film is diminished by the more modern acoustics of composer Jamshied Sharifi's contribution (the reasons for which remain unknown). The straight small-ensemble jazz, led by piano and bass, is decent enough and a pleasant listening experience, but when Conti deviates from this equation, the score loses all focus. The most bizarre moments in the score exist early. In the initial trojan horse-style break-in scene, Conti employs an ethnically curious percussive sound, highlighted by toe and cymbal tapping. The sounds of the toe tapping could be considered ingenious if only Conti had used that sound more consistently to represent the dance moves of a criminal mind. In that scene, Conti inserts bizarre electronic sound effects, contributed to by dissonant electric guitar passages that are largely unlistenable. He eventually lets rip with an ultra-cool, Media Ventures kind of guitar rhythm with a gothic, deep male choral accompaniment. Caribbean-style percussion alludes to both the settings later in the film and is consistent with subsequent song use for the later break-in, but it doesn't really make much sense here. A romantic, solo female voice is also out of place. Ironically, it's this set of cues that is most memorable in the entire score, even though it has nothing to do with the throwback jazz. There is an orchestral presence in The Thomas Crown Affair, though its contribution is minimal until some of the more confrontational cues later in the film. The exuberant piano performances of the title theme, however, don't receive the depth they need, relegating them to the silliness of some of Elmer Bernstein's less appealing comedy material. The score, as a whole, lacks clear direction. Apart from the film, the combined soundtrack of songs and score only barely suggest the same allure. The album was a hastily-arranged, last minute token effort to meet the demand of a mainstream audience that likely noticed the limited song usage more than the score. Unfortunately, that Pangaea Records album lacks appeal for both crowds of soundtrack buyers; it doesn't provide enough consistency or length in songs, nor does it include more than fifteen minutes of oddly selected score. The songs, though partially maintaining a bridge between the era of the original film and this new version, don't stand together as a strong foursome. The Sting performance of "Windmills of Your Mind" is surprisingly uninspired and deflating. The cover of the famous 1960's "Sinnerman" song, while providing the best memories from the late scenes of deception in the film and harboring a sense of enthusiasm lacking in the rest of the soundtrack, crawls along for an unbearable ten minutes. Some of the percussive and piano rhythms in Conti's score are obviously inspired by this song. The two Caribbean songs that follow contradict each other; the Wasis Diop song, "Everything (Is Never Quite Enough)," is arguably the best selection on the album because it well represents the steamy romance of the film. The following "Caban La Ka Kratchie" is distractingly celebratory. The fifteen minutes of Conti material chosen by Pangaea for inclusion is definitely not representative of the entire score, missing the composer's more experimental sounds and Sharifi's cooler shades. It's likely that the label specifically chose to include the most conservative moments, which may have helped sell albums with a consistent flow, but the choice certainly didn't give score collectors an adequate taste of the highly diverse score. Ultimately, the lack of any flair in this material took a score that was prominent in the film and made it sound geriatric. Not surprisingly, Conti's score was released in full promotional form to assist in the composer's unsuccessful push for consideration during the awards season (other than his usual conducting of the orchestra at the Academy Awards). This 32-track promo represented an extremely faithful 66-minute presentation of the music as heard in the film, with strong sound quality and the incorporation of the first two songs from the commercial album in their appropriate places in the narrative. A Latin arrangement of "Windmills of Your Mind," as well as Sting's version, are joined by a shorter mix of "Sinnerman" that is strangely missing all the bass-heavy mix of the commercial album's presentation (it's really not that enjoyable in this form, begging for fans to hold on to their copies of the original album even if they find the expanded one). The promo is a superior product in that it provides so much more of the score, though not all of that material, as mentioned previously in this review, is enjoyable in either the context of the film or on album. Between "From the Horse's Belly" and "Closing the Gallery" are several minutes of barely tolerable material, though the inclusion of a cue like "Catamaran," while a bit redundant, is a plus. The promo does expose Conti's reliance on his title theme on piano, which appears throughout the score in equally upbeat variations. The lack of the theme's adaptation for the darker cues in the latter half is a problem, however. Still, the listening experience of The Thomas Crown Affair on the promotional album will be far superior for true fans of the film than the commercial product. Bootlegs of the promo, which also followed very shortly in 1999, were inevitable. It's important to remember that the Pangaea album will remain more attractive for the mass of viewers hung up on the "Sinnerman" performance. The songs on that product remain clearly dominant. They can be thanked for the product's massive sales figures, and, at the very least, they are also responsible for the fact that the album was very cheaply available on the used-CD market within a year or two. Conti's score, unfortunately, failed to revive his sinking career. It remains one of the most overrated scores of the 1990's, stylish in some regards, but completely schizophrenic in its genre and application.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1999 Pangaea Album:
Total Time: 37:51
1999 Promotional Album: Total Time: 65:45
* composed by Jamshied Sharifi (several bootlegged variants with differing contents exist)
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert for the Pangaea album includes no extra information about the score. The
packaging on the promotional album is sparse (with a plain white cover).
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1999-2024, Filmtracks Publications. All rights reserved.
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 Thomas Crown Affair are Copyright © 1999, Pangaea Records, Promotional and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/20/99 and last updated 9/27/08. |
