Filmtracks: The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (John Williams/Michel Legrand)

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Written 9/15/24

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Buy it... on its sole album for an excellent survey of the moderately decent John Williams score and wretched Michel Legrand rejected score for this picture.

Avoid it... if you hope to hear Williams express the same enthusiasm or appeal in the western genre as he mustered for The Reivers and The Cowboys.

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The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing: (Michel Legrand/John Williams) Despite the immense initial hype generated by Marilyn Durham's novel, the film adaptation of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing was destined to leave a sour taste in many mouths. A model of countless production nightmares, the 1973 movie became a long-running, simmering struggle over its storyline, one that saw its lead, played by Burt Reynolds, surviving a journey through the Old West looking for revenge, thievery, and redemption while taking on a hostage in form of a woman, Catherine, fleeing her own husband. The tale was meant as a feminist's view of the era, but by the time the story is done, it's full of penises trying (and sometimes succeeding by rape) to invade the woman's crotch along most of the way. Reynolds' outlaw, Jay Grobart, kills much of the remaining case while the woman, a defiant Sarah Miles, manages to blow away her annoyingly pursuing husband. It's a dirty look at the western genre, but The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing became better known for the high-profile death of Miles' personal assistant and lover on location, with authorities questioning whether he died by suicide or foul play. Regardless, after everyone had washed their hands of the production, Reynolds himself refused to comment on the movie because of its painful memories. The post-production nightmare extended to include the film's score, which had been written by the highly popular Michel Legrand. Having never written a western before, Legrand was enthusiastic about the opportunity, and he somehow managed to consequently record one of the most awkwardly hideous western scores in history. The filmmakers, in a panic with little time remaining, approached Miklós Rózsa about writing a quick replacement but found their answer in the efficiently workmanlike John Williams instead. Nestling this frantic assignment into his busy schedule, Williams wrote almost 40 minutes of music and recorded it less than a week after Legrand's sessions. He even adapted his main love theme of the score into a song, "Dream Away," with Paul Williams, later performed by Frank Sinatra, but those vocalizations didn't make it in time for the film's release. Still, Williams provided the movie with the sounds it needed to be respectable, even if the end result is music not competitive with the composer's better genre works.

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The ensemble collected by Williams for The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing consisted of only 42 musicians, the orchestra utilizing a few woodwinds and brass along with a harp on top of the strings. The instrumentation is more eclectic than the composer's popular score for The Cowboys, serving as an extension of The Reivers with its banjo, harmonica, acoustic guitar, keyboards, xylophone, and celesta. Overblown flute tones and percussion represent the Native American element sparingly. Timpani and other drums ominously follow the posse chasing the protagonists in "Jay and Catherine," "The Mask," and "To Camp." Expect a few contemporary stylings with electric bass, especially in "Deserted Hotel" and at the beginning and end of the score, but they're nothing as modern as Legrand's alternative. Williams crafts a reasonably well-coordinated narrative, but not one executed as tightly as his other scores of the era. His three themes use very similar harmonics, progressions, and repeated notes, and several cues apply atmosphere rather than thematic development, a circumstance that may be a result of the time constraints he felt on the project. The latter half of the work is significantly less thematically cohesive and fails to maintain the same level of interesting material as the first half. Early on, for instance, a unique scherzo in "Follow That Horse" provides western flair of The Reivers complexity and enthusiasm. But there is no melodic development of note during "Little John," a wasted opportunity in the narrative, and the same lack of motific coordination really dulls the climactic confrontation scene. These later cues instead use rather mundane music that is stock, B-roll material by Williams standards, and they spoil all the promise that the score had in its early passages. Of the composer's three themes for The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, none is as frustrating as the one for Catherine, which outright disappears halfway through the score. It uses the same chord progressions as the main love theme but offers different, fragmented parts of that melody as its construct. Heard tentatively at 0:10 into "The Telegraph Pole" on harmonica, Catherine's theme teases minimally on guitar and harmonica in "Mud in Your Eye," becomes solitary on harmonica early in "Moving" before turning nicely orchestral for a riding shot, and is defiantly upbeat on harmonica and guitars late in "Billy's Fall." After that moment, the theme is simply gone despite the character's continued independence.

The bulk of the weight in the score for The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing is carried by the attractive but unassuming main love theme and its more spirited sibling identity for Reynolds' Jay Grobart. The love theme debuts at 0:13 into "Cat Dancing" on stylized guitar, electric bass, and piano in a contemporary feel and later follows the Jay theme to quietly close the cue. It recurs briefly on clarinets at the start of "I'm Running Away, Too," receives carefully subdued performances throughout "Bound Up," barely survives on flute in the morbid "The Aftermath," and opens "Braiding" lightly with secondary lines in tow, continuing that mode on guitar in "Just Whistle." The theme is expressed on horns and trumpets early in "Deserted Hotel/What's Your First Name?" and becomes quite warm in the latter half of the cue with plucked strings, harmonica, and the piano motif. It is troubled in the dissonant haze of "Jay and Catherine/The Mask," soothing on flutes at the start of "I Love You, Jay," and reduced to solitary solo guitar performance during "In the Snow." The love theme oddly does not appear at all in "Together Again" as demanded by the story, and it's barely surviving by the beginning of "End Title" before eventually picking up steam as the film ends on a full orchestral performance of the idea. The love theme is generally effective but isn't one of Williams' warmest, and while the composer does handle it fairly well in foreshadowing early in the picture, he doesn't provide it the needed reminders in the final third before allowing it to suddenly dominate the closing moments. Of more interest is Williams' identity for Jay Grobart, which mingles throughout the score as an equal representation of the film as a whole. It uses the same repetition of notes and harmony as the love theme but instills far more flair in its performances. Heard at 0:51 into "Cat Dancing" on harmonica, this theme extends out of the contemporary spirit of the love theme before shifting to woodwinds. It reemerges with some comedic tilt in "Bound Up," the appended rejected version of the cue on album really flourishing with the harmonica and ensemble. The theme kicks the pace up a notch with winds in "Braiding," its secondary phrasing conveyed, and returns to its initial personality with acceleration in "End Cast." The Grobart theme's irreverence is missed in the remainder of the score, and Williams may have been better served applying its attitude as the primary identity of the work instead of the love theme, though he attempted to move this direction with his initial, rejected "Bound Up" version.

These three themes by Williams The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing are aided by a few secondary motifs that range from attractive to mundane. The composer applies a repeated, descending piano figure that provides some snazziness to the atmosphere of the major thematic performances. This piano riff defines the start and end of "Cat Dancing," though the fade out of the idea at the end is so 1970's in technique that it may make eyes roll. This motif contributes significantly to the rejected version of "Bound Up" and "What's Your First Name?," closing the film at the end of "End Title" and during "End Cast." The aforementioned timpani and snare identity for the posse really slows the pace in the latter half, and some of it was so repetitive that it was intentionally cut short on the album release, but this material was an economical way for Williams to quicken his process. Had he been allowed the time to develop this score, perhaps more moments like the bright scherzo in "Follow That Horse" could have resulted. All of that said, at least his score is infinitely more appropriate than the music that Legrand provided the film. The only album release for The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing is a limited 2002 product from Film Score Monthly that appended 37 minutes of Williams' score with 28 minutes of Legrand's rejected work. The Williams portion is a decent, self-contained listening experience despite the score's slow parts and narrative degeneration in its second half. The Legrand portion is insanely weird and a fascinating listening experience. In addition to his orchestra of 40 musicians, he employed extensive flutes, cimbalom, recorder, ocarina, sarod, and electric guitar. Legrand even tried to use his own voice to emulate Native American chanting, with unfortunate results more comfortable in Williams' controversial Images than this. He approached the topic from a mystical, native viewpoint, all of it spiritual in nature, even for the main characters' relationships. With little suspense in that equation, the score didn't work at all. Everything wrong with the score is summed up in "Main Title," and the improvised version of this cue takes an even more contemporary approach on the theme with piano for ultimate strangeness. Awkwardly, "Suite, Part 2" contains the totally misplaced Legrand vocals that are by no means appropriate for the setting and era. It may not be the worst music you hear, but one can only imagine the filmmakers' panic after having paid for it. The 2002 album is an excellent survey of both scores, though Williams fans will want to consolidate the upbeat renditions of the two top themes in a summary suite of highlights. @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Music as Written by Legrand for the Film: *
Music as Written by Williams for the Film: ***
Overall: ***

Bias Check:

For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.68 (in 91 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.54 (in 363,716 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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