I keep seeing online commentators raving about John Williams musical scores. Here’s a list of some of his projects.
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- Valley of the Dolls (1967)
- Towering Inferno (1974)
- Sugarland Express (1974)
- Fiddler on the Roof (1971) * (unfair really: the music in “Fiddler” is from the musical by Sheldon Bock and Sheldon Harnick)
- E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Catch Me if You Can (2002)
- Beach Blanket Bingo (just kidding)
- Harry Potter (first three films, 2001-2004)
He has received the National Medal of the Arts (2009) and he is an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
And he is boring as hell.
I have watched a lot of movies. I don’t think I ever thought a John Williams score was evocative or compelling in any of the films he has scored. He is almost always bombastic, always predictable, and never striking or original or fresh. His music is there for insecure directors who don’t have faith in their own work and want to make sure the audience knows what they are supposed to be feeling.
Here are some movies that I thought did have strong scores:
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- Amelie (Yann Tiersen, 2001)
- Elevator to the Gallows (Miles Davis, 1958)
- Psycho (Bernard Herrmann, 1959)
- The Graduate (Paul Simon, 1968)
- Blade Runner (Vangelis, 1982)
- Once Upon a Time in America (Ennio Morricone, 1984)
- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Ennio Morricone, 1966)
- Dr. Zhivago (Maurice Jarre, 1965)
- Paris, Texas (Ry Cooder, 1984)
- Wings of Desire (Jurgen Knieper, Nick Cave, 1987)
- Godfather (Nina Rota, 1972)
- The Third Man (Anton Karas, 1949)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (Elmer Bernstein, 1961)
In most of those movies, there is at least one sequence in which the music plays a powerful role in shaping your emotional response to the action on the screen. The wistful, luminous score of “Amelie”, for example, has tinge of melancholy that deepens our response to the loneliness and regret expressed by characters she meets in the film. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” gives scenes of stark tension, fear, and waste. Maurice Jarre’s music for “Dr. Zhivago” conveys the long and desire of Zhivago for his lost love, and life. Vangelis contribution to “Blade Runner” helps create that disorienting, broken, shabby environment of the dystopian future. Paul’s Simon’s music accentuates the generation gap at the heart of “The Graduate”. The moody, exhausted landscape of a broken city and culture reverberate in Anton Karas’ zither music in “The Third Man”.
I am astonished that Steven Spielberg chose John Williams to provide the music for “Schindler’s List”. And then I am not astonished. Spielberg is a good director of schematic action sequences, and he can give you some good drama, but he invariably sloshes into sentimentality and contrivance, as in the last scene of “Schindler’s List”, and the awful, awful last scene of “Saving Private Ryan” (Ryan, as an older man, weeping at a graveyard in Normandy).
So, yes, John Williams is perfect, for a movie maker who never trusts his audience to “get it”. The music is there to tell you how to feel, just in case the drama itself didn’t sink in.