: (John Barry) So much had been known about
Charlie Chaplin's movies and the public persona he attempted to enhance
in his own autobiography, and yet the significant (and, to some extent,
self-imposed) troubles in his personal life went largely undocumented
until Sir Richard Attenborough attempted a revealing biographical epic
of the early film star in 1992. As to be expected from this sort of
Attenborough venture, the film's scope was grand, and the acting credits
contained a dozen well-known names. In the title role, Robert Downey Jr.
(like Chaplin himself, mired in legal trouble) is convincing both
aesthetically and in mannerism, and the film is littered with other
high-quality performances. But the major faults of the movie are the
pace at which it steams through Chaplin's life, the emphasis on the sex
and other turmoil (an encounter with J. Edgar Hoover is invented to
explain that a snub of Hoover by Chaplin at a party is a reason why the
FBI pursued Chaplin as a Communist during his later days), as well as
the flashback format of the film that includes Anthony Hopkins
attempting to get the juicier details out of Chaplin before his decline
in the 1970's. Despite these critical complaints about the project,
Attenborough's film received decent recognition during awards season,
and an Academy Award nomination was given to John Barry for his dramatic
underscore; it represented the last nomination for the man who had won
four "Best Score" Oscars from the late 1960's through the early 1990's.
Barry had met Attenborough back when the composer was still the
nameplate on a jazz group, and Attenborough hired Barry to one of his
first film score assignments to provide additional jazz source music for
. After a collaboration that lasted a few years,
the director and composer were never able to work together until
, and despite the great anticipation of their reunion,
reports indicated that Attenborough was originally horrified by Barry's
primary theme for
. But after matching this theme for the
character with the tragic opening scene in which Chaplin is seen taking
off his makeup, the director was brought to tears and Barry was
reaffirmed.
Adaptations of vintage film music by Chaplin and others
were a vital part of the new score, with Chaplin's own "Theme From
Limelight," "Salt Lake City Episode" (from the movie
City
Lights), and famous "Smile" all intermingled with the score, "Smile"
serving as one of Barry's themes and performed by Downey Jr. as a
supplemental pop song. Also informing the score as a secondary theme
quite effectively is "The Honeysuckle and the Bee" by William Penn and
Albert H. Fitz. While "Smile" represents the melancholy of Chaplin's
life, the Penn and Fitz idea represents, to some degree, his love life.
As for Barry's original contributions, few surprises awaited his avid
collectors. In the 1990's, Barry's music was becoming far more confined
to a narrow scope of application, with his slow, rolling, lushly
romantic style finding fewer and fewer applications on the screen. This
style had culminated in so much positive public recognition in
Out of
Africa and
Dances With Wolves that he won Oscars for those
efforts, and in so doing he had created a situation in which anything
similar for films thereafter would be considered by detractors to be
stagnant re-hash. To some extent, his work for
Chaplin is highly
derivative, though this project represented one of the last, if not the
final film for which this style of pensively dramatic music could be
considered a perfect match. This sense of epic tragedy has never been
captured quite as well as Barry had accomplished in the last two decades
of his career, and his quiet piano and string score for
Chaplin
is both predictably deliberate and melodramatic. The delicate piano and
string main theme for Chaplin yields to several secondary ideas
throughout the film, most moving at an extremely slow tempo and
exhibiting the same chord progressions and ascending bass string and
cello counterpoint technique that was heard in
Raise the Titanic,
High Road to China, and
Out of Africa. Brass whole notes
in supporting roles and occasional woodwinds taking the lead from
strings are familiar refrains from the composer. Pleasant to the last,
each of Barry's themes is simple in construction, painstakingly
emphasized in every note, and adhere to his technique of repeating
phrases twice within theme to make sure you don't miss the elegance of
the progressions.
For veterans of film music, these quietly meandering
themes will be exactly as expected, so the far more interesting parts of
Chaplin will be Barry's more upbeat, out-of-character cues for
dancing, chasing, and the excitement of Chaplin's initial visits to
America ("Charlie Goes to the U.S.") and debut fanfares ("Premiere
Fanfare"). The most upbeat cues are set to light snare rhythms and
pulsating brass, eventually dancing with woodblocks in parts that
emulated Rachel Portman's more playful moments. The two "Roll Dance"
cues show a glimpse of the old big band and
Monte Walsh days for
Barry, with the second one offering a snazzy brass rhythm over honky
tonk piano. The charm in these two cues is infectiously undeniable.
Barry's chasing techniques are less tied to the era, starting with a
stately presence in "Workhouse Chase" that dates all the way back to
Thunderball. A spritely variant of this material generates more
positive ambience in "The Wedding Chase," its playful motif carrying
over to "Funny With a Hose." On the flip side of this hopeful music is a
sour, less palatable motif carrying the suspenseful "Joan Out of
Control" and "Joan Barry Trouble." By these late passages, the "Smile"
melody really begins to take hold in the score, to some degree
displacing Barry's own theme for the character. Barry shows ample skill
in adapting Chaplin's musical compositions into his score, and the
generous usage of the "Smile" melody fits almost seamlessly with his
original ideas. On the other hand, there is a definite reason why the
Downey Jr. club vocal version of "Smile" wasn't heard in the film; to do
so would probably have killed Attenborough from humiliation. As with
most of Barry's albums, the recording and mixing of
Chaplin is
exquisite, the layering of strings and delicate piano easily
distinguishable in crystal clear quality. Where the simplicity of the
constructs can sometimes tax one's patience, the fantastic ambient sound
of the mix is always a salvation. Nevertheless. The La-La Land Records
label remastered the score again for a 2023 release, adding another 17
minutes of music that reveals several of the weightier later cues of
darkness. This additional material is poignant and supplies a better
balance to the narrative, meriting exploration by any Barry enthusiast.
The product includes bonus recreations of tracks that had combined
several cues on the original album, too. One of the last truly effective
scores from Barry,
Chaplin remains an easy and pleasurable
listening experience for any of his collectors on either album.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For John Barry reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.86
(in 28 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.54
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