CD Review: Black Sunday – Original Soundtrack
Composer: John Williams
Label: Film Score Monthly
Suggested Retail Price: $19.95
Grade: A+
In his 78 years, John Williams has been a composer of many faces, starting out as a two-fisted jazzman for TV’s M SQUAD, changing to a king of frothy comedy with the likes of HOW TO STEAL A MILLION, and then finally ascending to the top of the blockbuster map for all time as a sci-fi / fantasy maestro with 1977’s double-header of STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. But what might be one of his most effective career runs as a master of symphonic disaster also happened to cap off that same year with BLACK SUNDAY. It was a period for Williams that started with an upside-down ocean liner, growing to encompass a flaming super-skyscraper, a gigantic LA tremblor, and what could arguably be considered the catastrophe of having a monster shark ruin your summer tourist season. All were served by the composer’s rousing, and telltale melodic strains that played the terrifying emotions and gripping suspense of a catastrophic extravaganza.
Yet for all of the terror served up by the nature-spawned villains in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, EARTHQUAKE and JAWS, no shattering menace would be quite as unusual, or as prophetically frightening as a giant Super Bowl blimp skydiving into a packed Super Bowl. For these were human threats behind the widescreen pyrotechnics, giving Williams’ approach a far more disturbingly human core, not to mention a relentlessly driving musical threat, all of which made BLACK SUNDAY into what might be Williams most effective “disaster” score, let alone one of the best entries on his formidable resume.
Back in 1977, you could have your bad guys actually be the PLO, as opposed to the politically correct radical-splinter offshoot organization that puts together a cinematic terrorist act these days. And while it’s questionable if the book’s author Thomas Harris (later to invent Hannibal Lector) or master suspense director John Frankenheimer (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE) would envision two planes bringing down The World Trade Centers, BLACK SUNDAY did a painstakingly believable job of showing how an Arab terrorist and an enraged Vietnam Vet might wipe out thousands of Americans as a political statement- a plan thankfully stopped by good guy Israelis led by Robert Shaw at his burly best.
That was no small bit of ethnic pride for an impressionable Jewish kid like myself seeing BLACK SUNDAY in its theatrical run. But even better during my most impressionable film going years was hearing a powerful, instantly striking theme that drove those terrorist’s blimp like a motherf**ker. In addition to immediately being the best suspense picture I’d ever seen, BLACK SUNDAY also showed me the revelatory power of a truly great melodic motif, and one that never seems to stop as Williams’ varied it with the methodical darkness of the film’s conspirators. Sure getting the composer’s complete STAR WARS scores in the intervening years was certainly cool, but Film Score Monthly’s new release of BLACK SUNDAY is real John Williams jackpot for me, an exceptional release that shows just how much there is to BLACK SUNDAY’s score in addition to what stands as Williams’ best theme in my playbook.
But before Williams’ motif comes out with guns blazing, BLACK SUNDAY steadily unravels its suspense, its main “terrorist” theme first appearing as lite percussion backed by a string sustain in “Beirut” A secondary, darkly heroic theme for Kabakov (Shaw) is introduced in “Commandos Arrive,” a cimbalom accenting the exotic surroundings as the major and company take care of business (Jerry Goldsmith would do a similarly exotic take on the scene years later with Steven Seagal in black garb for the terrorist-busting EXECUTIVE DECISION). Williams lethally, and eerily builds the raid with “It was Good/ Dahlia Arrives/ The Unloading,” with subtle military percussion and dark piano chords giving the cue a JAWS-like feeling, except here it’s the PLO sharks who get their due, with Williams chords reaching a fever-pitch piano climax.
But the Israeli’s seeming triumph has come to late as Dahlia (Marthe Keller) and her blimp piloting lackey David Lander (Bruce Dern) have all the tools they need to proceed lacing the Goodyear undercarriage with steel darts. Williams enters the score’s darkest portion here, conveying equal parts of the characters’ deadly determination with the unspoken regret and anguish of their awful business, be it for right or wrong in such cues as the sadly noble “Moshevysky’s Dead” and the unhinged bells of “The Test.” Williams almost playful percussion for “Speed Boat Chase” recalls his latter crime busting music for SUPERMAN, the composer ups the ante, and further develops his main theme with the dark, steady piano and drum beat of “Nurse Dahlia,” giving just a hint of black humor to the femme fatale before she claims a victim to PSYCHO-like strings.
Many of Williams’ best cues have been about the wonder of flight, whether it’s done with superhuman powers, magic or via spaceship. But Williams’ soaring orchestra has never been as darkly wondrous as it is in BLACK SUNDAY, as his main theme takes glistening flight in “Building the Bomb.” One of the main pleasures of Frankenheimer’s pacing is how luxurious it is as the plot for Super Dead Sunday unveils itself, the machinations of which Williams propulsively follows with lush, jazzy propulsion for “Miami / Dahlia’s Call.” The sorrowful strings of “Last Night” pack dense, melancholy sound redolent of Bernard Herrmann, whom Williams would pay full tribute to with THE FURY. Then it’s game time with a mix of classical rhythms and patriotic brass for “Preparations.”
With “The Flight Check,” BLACK SUNDAY enters its amazing last act, a stretch of incredibly tense and exciting suspense for which Williams infinitely varies his major themes. Of course, the huge, evilly guilty pleasure of movies like this is the dark what if anticipation of the possibility of the bad guys actually winning, as Williams plays Dahlia and Lander’s elation at seeing their plot come to fruition with revels in sweeping bursts of strings. Williams finally unleashes the full-throttle ostinato of his terrorist theme with “Airborne / Bomb Passes Stadium,” which keeps bombastically building for “The Take Off,” his counter theme for Kabakov desperately racing against doomsday.
Where so many composers today approach this kind of elongated suspense sequence with meaningless rhythmic beats, hearing how Williams accomplished this awesomely endless sequence with actual piano and percussion-driven orchestral melody is a revelation, especially for its two part, nine-minute “Air Chase,” as every motif collides with the force of destiny- it’s music every bit as exciting as what Williams would come up for the final Death Star run. And it’s a testament to SUNDAY’s thrilling climax that the film, and music keep one-upping themselves as a flurry of vengeful, outraged orchestrations give way again to the ticking theme beat of “The Explosion,” with Williams’ ever-escalating themes cutting between Lander’s desperate attempts to light the blimp-bomb with Shaw (and his exceptionally brave stunt double) pursuing, and then jumping aboard the dirigible as it wreaks havoc. It’s a time bomb of a piece, relentlessly ticking off the moments to the big boom.
Surprisingly, a lot of Williams’ music didn’t get used here, or was restructured by Frankenheimer. But thankfully, FSM has made sure to present the composer’s original intentions in thrilling full. And while Williams’ music originally played “The End” with the somberness of all the destruction and death that’s preceded it, the final, fully triumphant version of “The Explosion” and “End Title” as heard in the movie’s ultimate soundtrack are here. While they definitely end the movie on an upbeat note, there’s no small irony that Dahlia and her like would ultimately complete their horrific flight into the heart of the American dream.
It’s not that John Williams hasn’t gorgeously played biblical destruction since BLACK SUNDAY with the likes of 1941 and WAR OF THE WORLDS. But there’s just something about hearing his sweepingly symphonic tones playing over the real world struggle between good and evil for its last hurrah, with all of its tones of grey that he’d use to much darker, and understandably less exciting effect in MUNICH. Sure he may have really kicked off after this cinematic Super Bowl game, but nothing’s quite as sweet as finally catching this helium-filled blast for John Williams’ past, its ever-escalating game of cat and mouse game becoming something truly mythic in the maestro’s hands.
Kick off for Super Bowl mayhem with John Williams here
