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Review of Dick Tracy (Danny Elfman)

1990 Sire/Warner

2016 Intrada

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you can forgive Danny Elfman for merging a pompous and extravagant superhero theme of Batman heritage with grandiose, George Gershwin-style romance to fill the awkward gaps between Stephen Sondheim songs.

Avoid it... if you expect there to be any continuity in film or on any semblance of an appropriate soundtrack album between the Elfman score and Sondheim songs, their chaotic co-existence primed to make your head spin.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Dick Tracy: (Danny Elfman) If ever there was a film that existed solely to stoke one person's ego, it was Warren Beatty's 1990 adaptation of Dick Tracy. Not only had Beatty been so obsessed with the comic book character that he eventually took over directing duties on the film himself, but he later fought a nasty legal battle for the better part of two decades to personally retain the rights to the concept on film. Never mind the fact that the 52-year-old actor was already too old to play the titular crime-stopper in 1990; he continued to stir rumors of a sequel well into the 2010's. The original movie was an attempt by the Walt Disney camp to take advantage of the explosively powerful success of Warner Brothers' Batman a year before, even to the extent of teaming with Warner to produce and market this picture. But due to a poor script adaptation and endless cuts and re-shoots at the behest of Beatty's odd perfectionism, Dick Tracy received mixed reactions from critics and audiences never really embraced the occasionally impressive visuals. Wacky make-up, famous supporting actors (including Al Pacino in one of his most bizarre roles), several Oscar nominations in technical categories, and a sultry performance by Madonna couldn't even save the project; nor could rumors of kinky off-screen activities between Beatty and Madonna generate substantial interest. The soundtrack for Dick Tracy became a nightmare the moment Beatty conceived of the film as a musical. He was so entranced with the 1930's romantic element that he hired veteran stage composer Stephen Sondheim to write five songs for the picture, some of which performed by Madonna in source-like settings. Beatty also asked Sondheim to write the score for the picture, which was a fitting request given that several of the songs in the movie are used for otherwise sound-less montages. Not surprisingly, Sondheim declined to write the score, so the actor/director turned to a composer who would essentially tackle the same task on 2002's ultra-popular Chicago: Danny Elfman. The young rocker-turned-composer was a safe choice after his immense success on Batman a year earlier, and he was well equipped to write to the trio of non-song needs in this film: blustery hero theme, vintage sappy romance, and outright zaniness for the villains.

While one could hope that there would be crossover in melodic structure between the Sondheim songs, one of which won an Academy Award with Madonna's help, and Elfman's score in Dick Tracy, no such coordination was realized. The five Sondheim songs are decent and certainly rooted in the swing of the era, but they are not among the composer's best by any measure. More importantly, they really differ from two of the three functional modes of Elfman's score, so you sometimes have immediate discord between elegant crooning of vintage Sondheim and knock-off Batman music from Elfman. Add to this problem the fact that no adequate soundtrack album has ever attempted to combine these disparate parts into one proper presentation and you have a total mess of a soundtrack. In the evolution of Elfman's superhero themes, Dick Tracy ended up being the odd man out, never quite fitting into the rest of the composer's developing career like his better known efforts. Elfman's approach to Dick Tracy was different from that of Batman because it is evident from the start that he realized the need to inject some character and life into the otherwise restless macho vehicle for Beatty. He did his best to whip up a frenzy of stomping, heroic pomp laced with occasional swinging, jazzy rhythms, deferring when possible to an earnest effort to raise George Gershwin from the dead for his bloated, melodramatic theme of romance. In part because of Elfman's role as a bridge to connect the songs, and in part because of the manic editing of the movie, the music for Dick Tracy operates at a slapstick, cartoonish speed and, without the accompaniment of the film, it becomes a collection of cues that are only loosely held together by Elfman's general style of writing at the time. That style borrows heavily from Batman and Darkman, attempting at every turn to balance the tragedy of those other figures with the flightier needs of Dick Tracy. To that end, a certain amount of Pee-Wee mayhem is to be heard. But with such a schizophrenic score as this one, you can go from the swinging, explosive energy of "Crime Spree" to the tragic Darkman motifs of "Slimy D.A." at any moment. The remainder of the score, with some nudges from Shirley Walker, sounds like leftovers from Batman. With Dick Tracy, you never know what you're going to get next, and it is that lack of cohesive identity, despite some solid material from Sondheim and promising raw ideas from Elfman, that ultimately restrains the soundtrack as a standalone listening experience.

The strangest aspect of Dick Tracy is its inability to establish the film as one of major crime. Elfman relies instead on a few select, wacky character cues of off-the-wall spirit and, of course, the occasionally overblown string themes of romance. Those efforts allow Elfman to achieve a film noir effect in the score, but many of his ideas along those lines are interrupted by the composer's second, more chaotic action stance. The main theme that Elfman assigns to Dick Tracy is pompous, extravagant, and sometimes downright annoying in its tendency to begin its progression but never finish it and leave you hanging. (This is another technique at which Elfman succeeded better in Batman.) The softer interludes and self-contained ideas composed for the two female characters are much more interesting, and they easily develop the heart that Tracy's character never realizes. The slurring of ascending notes in a lush string ensemble is definitely a "tip of the hat," as Elfman calls it, to Gershwin's vintage style of the story's era. Tess's Theme is a lovely one in many ways, intentionally overwrought compared to the theme for Madonna's Breathless character, which Elfman carefully leaves inconspicuous as means of tying it to the story's villains. The Breathless theme doesn't hold a candle to the Tess theme of Gershwin inspiration, though the score is so disjointed in construct that you might not even know than an intentional dichotomy existed there. Elfman's two most zany compositions, "Crime Spree" and "Kid Montage," were dropped in the edit in favor of Sondheim music. The former is one of Elfman's most original compositions and has inspired a few interesting re-recordings on compilations. The delightful fun exhibited in this cue proves that Elfman could have really generated a storm of vivacity to help move this score at a great tempo had the opportunity presented itself. Unfortunately, most of this discussion is moot when considering the score's terrible editing in the film itself and the non-existent satisfactory soundtrack album. The on-screen failure is due to Beatty's meddling (Elfman called this project an "insane" experience), whereas the album situation is a rights and ownership conundrum. No album has ever presented all the Sondheim songs together, Madonna releasing three of them and the other two stuck in limbo. A song-only soundtrack album contained none of them or the score. The original score-only product was a decent summary of the longer cues, but any score-only product for this film is destined to fail. Intrada Records extended the score-only agony to two CDs on a limited 2016 set that includes the many of the endless alternate takes. Even if a mythical, totally complete song and score album someday existed for this film, don't expect it to convince all collectors of Elfman or Sondheim of its merits.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

1990 Hollywood Album:
Total Time: 34:55

• 1. Main Titles (3:36) • 2. After the "Kid" (1:45) • 3. Crime Spree (1:53) • 4. Breathless' Theme (2:13) • 5. Big Boy/Bad Boys (2:10) • 6. Tess' Theme (1:09) • 7. Slimy D.A. (1:41) • 8. Breathless Comes On (2:54)

• 9. Meet the Blank (1:43) • 10. The Story Unfolds (1:59) • 11. Blank Gets the Goods (2:25) • 12. Rooftops (2:01) • 13. Tess' Theme - Reprise (1:17) • 14. The Chase (2:57) • 15. Showdown/Re-united (4:07) • 16. Finale (1:00)

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2016 Intrada Album:
Total Time: 103:08

CD1: (57:19) 1990 Original Score Album: (34:59) • 1. Main Title (3:36) • 2. After the "Kid" (1:45) • 3. Crime Spree (1:54) • 4. Breathless' Theme (2:14) • 5. Big Boy/Bad Boys (2:11) • 6. Tess' Theme (1:13) • 7. Slimy D.A. (1:41) • 8. Breathless Comes On (2:53) • 9. Meet the Blank (1:43) • 10. The Story Unfolds (1:59) • 11. Blank Gets the Goods (2:25) • 12. Rooftops (2:01) • 13. Tess' Theme - Reprise (1:16) • 14. The Chase (2:56) • 15. Showdown/Reunited (4:07) • 16. Finale (0:58) Unedited and Additional Original Score Cues: (22:29) • 17. Main Title - Part 1** (1:08) • 18. Main Title - Part 2** (2:25) • 19. Flattop's Entrance** (0:34) • 20. Tracy's Entrance (0:31) • 21. Lips Gets Nailed (0:38) • 22. And They're Off** (1:45) • 23. Meet Big Boy** (0:33) • 24. Lips Needs a Bath* (0:28) • 25. Lips Needs a Bath (Alternate) (0:28) • 26. Lips Gets a Bath** (0:54) • 27. Walnuts (0:39) • 28. Breathless Comes On** (1:19) • 29. Crime Lab** (0:23) • 30. Crime Lab (Alternate)* (0:14) • 31. Kid Montage* (1:40) • 32. Love One (1:15) • 33. Breathless Again** (2:56) • 34. Tracy Spies (0:24) • 35. Spaldoni Go Boom (1:14) • 36. Tracy Gets Nabbed (0:38) • 37. Boiler Go Boom!*/*** (2:24) CD2: (45:49) Unedited and Additional Original Score Cues (Continued): • 1. Badge* (0:21) • 2. Badge (Alternate)* (0:21) • 3. Badge (Alternate 2)* (0:21) • 4. Slimy D.A.** (1:43) • 5. Peach Juice* (0:57) • 6. Peach Juice II* (0:38) • 7. Peach Juice II (Revised)* (0:38) • 8. Peach Juice II (Alternate)**/*** (0:24) • 9. Meet the Blank** (2:02) • 10. Tess Farewell (Alternate) (1:07) • 11. Bug Rescued** (1:41) • 12. Bug Rescued (Alternate)** (1:41) • 13. At the Dock (1:20) • 14. Blank Gets the Goods** (1:49) • 15. Tess Nabbed* (0:21) • 16. Tess Nabbed (Alternate) (0:14) • 17. Bait** (0:54) • 18. Gasser** (0:57) • 19. Fletcher Shot/Framed (1:35) • 20. News Montage* (0:16) • 21. Crime Spree Montage* (1:54) • 22. Jail Cell (0:41) • 23. Kid/Tracy Hits the Street (0:43) • 24. Chief Gets a Call (0:29) • 25. Tracy Finds Tess (A/B)** (0:46) • 26. Tracy Finds Tess (A/B/C)** (1:55) • 27. Tracy Finds Tess (A/B/C) (Revised)** (2:05) • 28. Mine Enemy (Revised)** (0:57) • 29. Rescue - Part I (0:22) • 30. Rescue - Part II (0:15) • 31. Rescue - Part III (0:15) • 32. Rescue - Part IV/Rescue - Part V (0:57) • 33. Blast Out (0:25) • 34. Tracy to the Rescue II** (2:57) • 35. Mano a Mano** (2:21) • 36. Revealed/Reunited** (2:32) • 37. Revealed/Reunited (Revised)* (2:29) • 38. Finale (Revised)** (0:58) • 39. Finale (Alternate) (0:58) • 40. Finale* (1:08) • 41. Breathless #1* (0:58) • 42. Breathless #2* (0:48)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert of the 1990 album includes no extra information about the score or film. That of the 2016 Intrada album includes extensive notes about both.

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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 Dick Tracy are Copyright © 1990, 2016, Sire Records/Warner, Intrada Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/20/98 and last updated 3/18/17.