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Review of The Towering Inferno (John Williams)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... as part of the 2019 La-La Land Records set if you want to
explore the best of John Williams' endeavors for blockbuster disaster
flicks of the Silver Age.
Avoid it... if twenty to thirty minutes of classic Williams action and melodrama can't compensate for the dated sound of the contemporary 1970's elements rendering the score's character and romance portions.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Towering Inferno: (John Williams) In the early
to mid-1970's, disaster films achieved their greatest heights in
mainstream imaginations. With Hollywood long suffering from a preference
for smaller character films and B-rate action flicks, the
mega-blockbusters of immense special effects were ready for a return.
Irwin Allen, the "Master of Disaster," had just exploded onto the
scene by providing the world with The Poseidon Adventure two
years earlier, a film which stunned Hollywood with its smash box office
success. With the epic-length The Towering Inferno in 1974, the
genre of realistic disaster films reached a climax not to be touched
again until the late 1990's. With two studios, 20th Century Fox and
Warner Brothers, preparing two films based on very similar stories, the
pair made the unprecedented move of combining their resources for The
Towering Inferno, splitting costs and profits. The resulting
production of mammoth proportions led to a monumental cast led by Steve
McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, and William Holden, incredible
special effects, and stunning cinematography and editing, both of which
garnering Academy Award wins for the film. The plot details the opening
of a magnificent skyscraper in San Francisco, parties occupying its top
floors while the architect of the project realizes that specifications
weren't met for safety during construction. Predictably, a fire breaks
out, engulfing the building and trapping the dignitaries in the upper
floors. Gruesome deaths and unlikely rescues are a stuntman's paradise
in the production. The movie will also be remembered for producing one
of the most awkward screen moments of all time, with Fred Astaire and
O.J. Simpson sharing the same frame at its conclusion. Even many decades
later, The Towering Inferno is an awesome film, a guilty pleasure
at the least and a classic at its best. It is therefore appropriate that
quickly rising composer John Williams scored the film. The budding
maestro had worked with Allen several times in the past, reaching all
the way back to the "Lost in Space," "The Time Tunnel," and "Land of the
Giants" television scores, and including, of course, The Poseidon
Adventure.
Aside from Allen's projects, Williams would cement his role as the "Master of Disaster Scores" by also composing for the subsequent Earthquake and Black Sunday, using the genre to shake his reputation as a writer of eclectic music for character films and setting the stage for his shake-up of the industry's music in the Bronze Age. Even when he had all of these disaster scores under his belt, though, it is The Towering Inferno that stands tall as Williams' greatest score for the genre. Williams was already in a position to pull some weight with the studio and director as of 1974, and it was his idea to showcase the score so prominently during the opening helicopter sequence. A highlight of the film, the first five minutes of the score, consisting of one of Williams' best adventure themes of all time, marches across the soundscape almost unimpeded, leading to the magnificent initial view of the massive tower standing at the heart of San Francisco. While the entire film would pass before the theme would receive another lengthy performance of heightened bravado, the inclusion of this landmark main idea is alone usually worth the cost of the score for many Williams collectors. The final two cues, dealing with the aftermath of the fire in "Finale" and "An Architect's Dream," showcase some great shots of the charred and mangled tower, and Williams' score once again swells to magnificence. A brilliant subtheme of triumph highlights the "Let There Be Light" fanfare and introduces the opening of the building with one of the better statements of glistening brass by Williams. The lengthy film launches quickly into the action, not dabbling around in an excess of character development before the fire ignites. In fact, most of the significant character scenes are interspersed throughout the stressful trials of the ordeal, which is one of the greater points of the film. (Also of positive note is the fact that Allen isn't afraid of killing off major, sympathetic characters). Williams handles the mass of suspense and dramatic material in the middle of the film with creative percussive rhythms, highlighted by the very first ignition of the fire. A tapping effect is used to mimic the sound effect of a short circuit ignition, and in an age before synthesizers could accurately produce a "zapping" effect, this technique by Williams is as accomplished as it could be for the time. Manipulation of fragments of the main theme for The Towering Inferno, and especially the opening, rising four-note figure, is well integrated into dissonant sequences that extend the drama into not only the tragic realm but one of terror as well. By the late suspense portions, the initial rising four notes of the theme are omnipresent in overlapping layers of discomfort. In earlier scenes of character development, Williams introduces three subthemes of a more romantic nature, extending his talents in providing casual pop rhythms to place the film in its contemporary time frame. What's most interesting about these contemporary cues is that they haven't aged as badly as one might expect for their early 1970's pop style, allowing the score to hold a more timeless personality. The Maureen McGovern song, "We May Never Love Like This Again," was the highlight of the music for the film in 1974, gaining songwriters Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn an Academy Award win and catapulting the album's success much in the same way "The Morning After" did for The Poseidon Adventure. Williams once again incorporates the song into his own material, translating it into one of the three love themes for the film, turning somber as one of the characters in the duo meets an unfortunate fate. Another one, which, like the previous theme, is sadly doomed both characters succumb, is equally strong, evoking some powerfully emotional moments in the harrowing passages from "Alone at Last" to "Immolation." A lengthy performance of this idea in "An Architect's Dream" is extremely attractive, and Williams collectors will even hear a distinct foreshadowing of the theme for Presumed Innocent in the melodramatic tones of that cue, especially at the 1:05 mark). A theme for the architect and his wife occupies "Something For Susan" and "More For Susan" and also returns in "An Architect's Dream." Foreshadowing of Williams' later classics is all over The Towering Inferno, a mournful horn solo at 1:55 into "Finale," for instance, a glimpse of what fans would hear for the "Force" theme in Star Wars. For the majority of such collectors, the action and suspense material, along with the bold thematic statements, will provide about twenty to thirty minutes of outstanding material spread between five tracks, including the lengthy "Planting the Charges," absent of any of the pop tones of the era, though even those maintain their palatability. Always presenting highly on the list of top ten most requested scores during the 1990's, The Towering Inferno was never properly released on CD until April of 2001. The LP record that existed for The Towering Inferno still stood on many film music collectors' shelves, twenty-seven years after its initial release. The reason for the lengthy delay in the transferring of this score to CD undoubtedly rested in the duality of the studio ownership of everything related to the film. The Film Score Monthly label made this project a top priority, one that logically also resulted from their superior presentation of The Poseidon Adventure as one of their earliest entries in the "Silver Age Classics" series that would eventually last longer than a decade. The release of The Towering Inferno was a shot in the arm of that series in 2001, selling out quickly and once again proving the label's top status for collectors. Album producers Lukas Kendall and Nick Redman managed to acquire nearly the entire score for presentation on this album, and although a few incidental cues were lost due to damage, their CD contained twice the amount of music heard on the original LP. The product offered a section of bonus tracks is offered at the end, including the original LP's re-recording of the song to co-exist with the film version. With "The Morning After" from The Poseidon Adventure ironically playing as background source music in a conversational scene in The Towering Inferno, Williams' instrumental re-recording from that moment is provided, too. Finally, a few of the more damaged cues were appended for completists. The first twenty-two tracks were meticulously arranged in their film sequence, and the album reached a notable 75 minutes in length when tallied with the bonus material. The sound quality of the product was as to be expected for the early 1970's (slightly tinny and muted, especially in the pop sections), but Silver Age fans aren't typically bothered by the results of older recording technologies. The packaging of the album is nothing short of spectacular, explaining the complexities of the film's production and providing a cue by cue analysis, intriguing concept art, and a fascinating, if not spooky, picture of the entire major cast enthusiastically walking arm in arm down the studio lot. Not unexpectedly, the limited 2001 FSM product disappeared before long and eventually sold for collector's prices in the several hundreds of dollars. Availability on album for The Towering Inferno remained poor for well over a decade. Warner Brothers and Rhino released the remastered version of the original 36-minute LP album digitally in 2014. Only in 2019 did the score finally receive additional treatment on CD, and it came in the form of a magnificent set from La-La Land Records entitled the "Disaster Movie Soundtrack Collection" that contained a 2-CD expansion of this score alongside equivalent treatment of Williams' The Poseidon Adventure and Earthquake. The work done by the label on The Towering Inferno is remarkable, obtaining a variety of stereo and monaural sources for the recording and piecing together the best possible presentation of the work. This requires some shifts from stereo to mono sound in places, but the differing soundscapes are not significantly jarring. The damaged cues from the 2001 FSM product are reinstated in newly reconstructed form for a full sequencing of the film version of the score on one CD. The other CD contains a variety of alternate takes of major cues, a broader survey of the pop-inspired source music, including the McGovern song, and the original LP album. It's worth noting that the LP album had a significantly different mix to push all the elements to the forefront, and the 2019 product retains that personality. The source cues aren't particularly interesting, though the alternate takes are of interest. The La-La Land set may be worth its price for The Towering Inferno on its own, a definitive offering of 5,000 copies that is an absolute must for enthusiasts of Silver-Age Williams tenacity at its most ambitious; of Williams pre-Jaws output, The Towering Inferno is a top achievement. Fans of the film may notice that many of the maestro's cues are abbreviated or simply absent in the middle portions of the film itself, leading to some arguments that Williams' work for the concept is better appreciated on album than in context. But many of his best passages, including the exciting opening cue, are highlighted in the film's mix. The melody of Joel Hirschhorn and Al Kasha's frightfully short Oscar-winning song remains one of the better of the era even if its rendering is aged by its 1970's tone; more modern covers of this song would be welcome. Williams, for his part, included The Towering Inferno as part of his early concert suites but eventually dropped it as more romantic orchestral majesty dominated later efforts. Still, it remains a classic score for a timeless film, and the 2019 album is an outstanding presentation worth saving from any fire. *****
TRACK LISTINGS:
2001 Film Score Monthly Album:
Total Time: 75:31
* written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn ** performed by Maureen McGovern 2014 Rhino/Warner Album: Total Time: 36:18
* written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, performed by Maureen McGovern 2019 La-La Land Album: Total Time: 155:05
* written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, performed by Maureen McGovern ** monaural source
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 2001 FSM album contains lengthy notes about
the movie, score, and composer, as well as concept art and shots from
the production. That album's track "Helicopter Explosion (Damaged)" is
different from the LP track of a similar name; here, the track features
the actual music for the helicopter explosion while the LP track was for
other scenes. That LP music is not damaged and has been redistributed
into the "Helicopter Rescue" and "The First Victims" tracks on FSM's
album. The tracks "Trapped Lovers" and "Finale" on that product have
more music than previously heard on the LP.
The 2014 Rhino/Warner digital album includes no official packaging. The 2019 La-La Land album contains this score in its own jewel case separate from the outer sleeve that also houses the other scores in the set. Its booklet contains extensive information about the score and film.
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2001-2024, 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 Towering Inferno are Copyright © 2001, 2014, 2019, Film Score Monthly, Rhino/Warner Brothers, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 4/28/01 and last updated 4/9/21. |
