The Appointment (Limited CD)
Sound:
B Music: B
If at
first you don’t succeed, try, try again, but sometimes that does not work
out. In the case of Sidney Lumet’s 1969
drama The Appointment, at least
three scores were made, and they have all been collected by the FSM label of
Film Score Monthly Magazine on this limited edition CD, pressed at only 3,000
copies. The story is about the affair
between isolated Italian attorney Omar Sharif and high-paid hooker Anouk Aimée,
but is far from the formula of Pretty
Woman (1990), no matter how melodramatic it itself gets. We’ll have more on the film whenever Warner
gets around to a DVD of it.
First,
there are two long suites of Michel Legrand’s score, running 19 minutes in
all. It is not bad and has the feel and
signatures typical of all such Legrand scores in his field of specialty, dramas
and melodramas. Then there is the second
music section by John Barry and Don Walker.
This became the “official” theatrical music and has characteristics of
Barry’s work that make this more serious and in-depth than its
predecessor. Whether that fits the film
is another story. Walker added tracks later. Some of this music had been issued before on
vinyl. The music here runs over 26
minutes long. Then a TV-only score was
made by Stu Phillips as MGM had re-edited the film trying to get more money out
of it instead of keeping to the vision Lumet was intending. Though also not bad, it tries to (as the very
informative booklet explains) expand on the action while it happens instead of
letting the audience think, which is why it is the TV version. It runs about 32 minutes, pushing this single
CD just over 77 minutes in all. In
stand-alone form, it is not bad though, rounding out a very unique soundtrack
experience.
All in
all, this is quite a study in how films do get scored, but to the extent this
went is almost obscene, though it makes for an outstanding study of how film
music works. It is not that the film was
such a failure that it needed al these scores, especially since Lumet lost
control of the final cut. However, it
also seems there was an attempt to make this film have post-Easy Rider appeal with each change,
which was a mistake. Barry may have been
best known at the time for the James Bond scores, but that was still not new
enough for MGM. When Warner (who owns
all the older MGM films to 1986) puts this out on DVD, all three versions with
these scores in place ought to be offe3red, likely on two DVDs. It is safe to assume the TV version is a full
screen version of the film, while the film itself was likely shot with at least
1.66 X 1 framing in mind. That will make
as interesting a study, no doubt.
The PCM
2.0 Stereo throughout is pretty good and makes comparison easier since any gaps
in sonic quality are relatively minor between the three versions of the
score. MGM obviously had high hopes a
generation gap love affair film could hit big and the film did business, if not
blockbuster business. Had it been a huge
hit, I doubt they would have commissioned a TV score. The booklet, the usually informative kind FSM
supplies to all its CD soundtracks, is even more key that usual in
understanding how all these versions materialized. Find out more about this and other great
soundtracks by going to www.filmscoremonthly.com
for more details.
- Nicholas Sheffo
