Filmtracks: The Poseidon Adventure (John Williams)


Williams

The Poseidon Adventure: (John Williams) After the surprising success of Airport in 1970, the stage was set for a series of highly popular disaster films in that decade, led by a leap from television to big screen by producer Irwin Allen. Having offered several documentaries and fantasy TV series in the years prior, Allen would jump from the massive success of The Poseidon Adventure in 1972 to The Towering Inferno in 1974, before The Swarm later in the 1970's would end his run. These films usually put stellar casts on display, and along with its mammoth production values for the time, The Poseidon Adventure would receive nine Academy Award nominations (winning for song and special effects). Among these nominations was one for the score by John Williams, who had himself morphed from the "Johnny" Williams of 1960's jazz into a capable symphonic action composer by the time his collaboration with Allen reached the big screen. Despite his soon-to-come reputation, however, Williams' work here is largely atmospheric. His harsh, brass theme of epic proportions for the title is utilized often, but always in the context of a tumultuous rhythmic base. It stylistically resembles the title theme for The Towering Inferno, and also shares similar chord progressions with some of David Arnold's 1990s disaster themes. But unlike The Towering Inferno, in which the title theme receives a glorious performance before the disaster strikes, Williams makes The Poseidon Adventure doomed from the very start. There is little setup time before the cruise ship is struck by a tidal wave and flipped, and the music that introduces the liner at the opening doesn't vary much from the troubled environment of escape attempts during the rest of the film.

Only one source cue of jazz in the main dining hall interrupts Williams' perpetually gloomy string and brass rumblings in the deep layers of bass. Even the piano is tethered to these dark bass regions, often crashing to accentuate an orchestra hit or rambling without direction in the more tentative cues. The nonstop dread finally yields to a slightly more upbeat variation on the tumbling string rhythms in the finale cue, slowly building in E.T. fashion to cymbal crashing statement of triumph in the title theme (during the rescue scene) that remains the highlight of the score. At the time, the score was unfortunately overlooked by the general public (even though the film was a smashing success) because of the Academy Award winning song "The Morning After" tacked on to the film; Williams uses the song's theme only briefly in the score and had no association with its production. On album, The Poseidon Adventure has suffered from poor sound quality from the start. A 40-minute bootleg was released in 1995 with all pertinent cues, and though its sound quality was horrendous, it remained the only available source of music from the film and sold for as much as $150 in the years that followed. In 1998, the Film Score Monthly magazine was introducing its fledgling Silver Age Classics CD series to collectors, and after a somewhat lackluster opening entry with Stagecoach, FSM sent cheers through the crowd with a compilation of three John Williams scores of the early 1970's on CD #2. The selling point of the album was The Poseidon Adventure, with a source cue added to the bootleg material and the entire score recorded directly from the original tapes; unfortunately, only the mono backup recordings remain viable at this time for most cues. Listeners will note a significant improvement in quality for two seemingly random cues in the middle of the score for which the stereo tapes were available.


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The album also features premier recordings of The Paper Chase and Conrack, both of which differ in style from the disaster classic. The contemporary drama The Paper Chase exhibits both some of Williams' more romantic, jazzy pop themes and modern classical interpretations. An unassuming, relaxing score, its pop-influenced love theme is genuinely enjoyable, swinging with a small ensemble through an eclectic collection of cues that includes some classical source material. The societal commentary of Conrack, on the other hand, runs parallel musically to Sugarland Express, and its heartfelt theme is dominated by vibrant solos. Presented on the album is the only surviving music from the film (roughly a third of the overall length of Williams' composition for the project), but easily the most important. This cue, as Jon Voight prepares to teach school in a backwards Southern community, features guitar and flute solos that mark some of the best thematic material Williams composed for small-scale drama in that period. Overall, sound quality will remain a touchy issue. While the scores of John Barry from the early 1970's can be heard today in perfect, crystal-clear vibrance, it's hard to imagine how a composer of Williams stature (equal to that of Barry by the early 1970's) wouldn't afford extra recording capabilities above the shoddy ones that studios often used at the time... The recordings of the 1970's were often worse than those of the 1960's, and The Poseidon Adventure is clear evidence of that misfortune. Contrary to original rumours, the Film Score Monthly release features better sound quality than the bootleg, but still not satisfying by any means. Nevertheless, the three scores together sound equivalent in their muted qualities, and this shouldn't stop any ardent Williams fan from seeking the FSM album. Along with FSM's even more impressive release of The Towering Inferno, the limited The Poseidon Adventure edition of 3,000 copies disappeared within a few years and has escalated in price on the secondary market in the years that followed. Indeed, these two have proven to be FSM's most popular releases ever.

The Poseidon Adventure

****

Bias Check:

For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.72 (in 63 reviews)
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