Chinatown: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
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Composer: Jerry GoldsmithEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 1995-11-07
Music Label: Varese Sarabande
Soundtracks:
- Love Theme From Chinatown
- Noah Cross
- Easy Living
- Jake and Evelyn
- I Can't Get Started
- The Last of Ida
- The Captive
- The Boy on a Horse
- The Way You Look Tonight
- The Wrong Clue
- J.J. Gittes
- Love Theme from Chinatown
Free Music Notes for Chinatown: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Free Music Review: Sparse But Remarkably Elegant, Memorable, Powerful
Hit: 5 Stars
The film score for CHINATOWN is as famous for the conditions under which it was written as it is for the music itself. Shortly before the film was to debut, producer Robert Evans discarded the score written by composer Phillip Lambro and handed the project to Jerry Goldsmith, a composer then best known for his work on such television series as The Waltons, Barnaby Jones, and Room 222.
Goldsmith had ten days to both write and record a new score before CHINATOWN debuted. The resulting score was extremely sparse, making use of several songs popular during the 1930s and resting upon a single original theme--but it proved the perfect additive to the film, and it is extremely difficult to image CHINATOWN without it.
CHINATOWN is one of a wave late 1960s-early 1970s films noted as much for substance as for style, and more than a quarter of a century later it continues to be regarded as one of the great artistic triumphs of the era. Directed by Roman Polanski from a remarkable script by Robert Towne, the film paints an ultimately pitch-black portrait of greed, corruption, and evil in 1930s Los Angeles. The primary theme blends several idioms, opening first with a shimmering, metallic-like chord from harp and the rising with other strings to create a oddly American, oddly Asian tone; it then glides into a slightly plaintive trumpet solo that seems to blend both 1930s and 1970s music styles. The overall effect is inviting yet mysterious--and mingles elements of romance and danger.
Both the basic theme and elements from it repeat throughout the film, sometimes making a full musical statement, at other times echoing within more distinctly unsettling tones. The film also makes use of several songs popular in the 1930s, perhaps most notably the memorable "I Can't Get Started" and "The Way You Look Tonight."
The original 1974 vinyl release of the CHINATOWN soundtrack ran just over half an hour. It did not offer the entire soundtrack, which in this context would have been somewhat repetitive; instead, it presented the musical cues that offered the fullest statement of Goldsmith's various constructions. The vinyl edition went out of print during the 1970s and it was not until the Varese release of 1995 that CHINATOWN became available on CD. The Varese release duplicates the original vinyl release exactly in both sequence and content and has very good sound quality; it also offers enjoyable and informative notes as well. Recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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