Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #2,313
Written 10/22/24
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Buy it... for its charming but somewhat anonymous love theme, which
dominates the short score in John Williams' comfortable, early 1970's
methodology.
Avoid it... if you strive to hear satisfying substance in the
suspense and comedy portions of the score, these passages losing their
battle with surrounding source music.
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| Williams |
The Paper Chase: (John Williams) Among the
countless stories feeding off the angst of college students in
challenging Ivy League programs, the 1971 novel "The Paper Chase" is
among the better remembered. Adapted into a 1973 movie and two later
television series of the same name, the concept's highlight was veteran
actor John Houseman as an impressively daunting Harvard Law School
professor, a character and performance that earned Houseman an Oscar and
carried over to the television series. The plot of the movie follows a
group of male students who band together in an all-but-doomed study
group to help them survive their year in the school, and the personality
quirks between them lead to countless struggles. The heart of the story
of The Paper Chase, however, is that the lead student falls in
love with a woman who is eventually revealed to be the married daughter
of professor. As the two youngsters navigate that relationship, the
student must choose between his attraction to the woman and desire to
impress her father. Copulating in the professor's home isn't exactly a
good decision, but such shenanigans help provide the comedy of the tale.
Because of the story's era, there is a carefree element of indifference
by the end, the counterculture aspect of society definitely pulling at
the edges. Ultimately, though, it's Houseman's performance as Professor
Charles W. Kingsfield Jr. that wins the day, and the film was further
buoyed by widespread praise for its script. Still, while critically
acclaimed, The Paper Chase was never particularly popular, and
the project fit into a period of time when composer John Williams was
content writing intimate character scores for films of this stature.
There isn't a significant amount of original music in the movie, with a
handful of source pieces and a fair amount of silence used to accompany
the plot. The opening of the movie and most of the classroom-related
sequences were left unscored. For the studying scenes, Williams applies
rather routine, stuffy classical source recordings from Bach and
Telemann as a sophisticated counter to the wilder jazz material he
coined for one of the more comedic students in the study group, their
preparation sessions juxtaposing the two sounds for humor. With the
entirety of the score for The Paper Chase amounting to about 31
minutes when including the various source materials, there isn't much
depth to the remainder. Williams divides his actual score compositions
between three modes: the love theme, a stature motif, and frazzled
comedy.
The three musical modes in
The Paper Chase don't
entirely work all that well together stylistically, but they do manage
to very clearly convey a common Williams aesthetic that allows them to
inhabit the same film without too much friction. The ensemble is
balanced by the composer's usual, light romance instrumentation for
piano, strings, and jazz group on one side and a more traditional
classical, orchestral approach for the other two modes. A harpsichord is
applied as the most notable soloist, a clear representation of the
professor and his Harvard formality. The use of contemporary 1970's
elements in the jazz source music is particularly intriguing in that it
proved that Williams was perfectly comfortable in that domain, but it
doesn't fit much with the rest of the score. The classical pieces are
somewhat hindered by the limited ensemble size, but they function on the
intimate level the movie required. Far and away the highlight of the
work is Williams' love theme, which is reprised extensively throughout
the score once the professor's daughter's identity is revealed.
Summarized in the unused (and likely album-specific) "Love Theme From
The Paper Chase" and pervasive in the film cues "Be Irrational,"
"Thinking of Susan," "Real Identity/Into the Sea," and "End Title," this
idea is one of Williams' more attractive. A song variant was recorded at
the time but has never been combined with the score on album. The second
portion of the score is dedicated to the austere, almost mysterious
mystique of the school and professor, explored with its own horn motif
and sensitive, suspenseful atmospheres with a slight electronic touch in
"The Passing of Wisdom" and "Kingsfield's Study/The Empty Classroom."
These passages are interesting but not substantial. The same can be said
of the comedic chasing as an extension of the classical material in
"Hart in a Hurry" and "To the Hotel," which are really too short and out
of place to fit well with the rest of the score. The entirety relies
upon the romantic, jazzy pop-inspired theme to yield an unassuming,
genuinely enjoyable and relaxing tone. Its eclectic personality begs for
the love theme to be separated into its own extended suite of 10+
minutes. The score has only been released once. Paired with
The
Poseidon Adventure and the essential opening music from
Conrack,
The Paper Chase was presented on an early Film
Score Monthly entry in 1998 in varied sound quality. Only some of the
classically-inclined cues are in stereo while all of the love theme
renderings are in mono. This limited and rare album, despite presenting
the music out of film order, is wholly sufficient as a representation of
this charming but ultimately somewhat anonymous score, and Williams'
music didn't survive to inform the subsequent television series.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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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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