From the deep, racing heartbeat of “Jaws” to the opening starburst of “Star Wars,” John Williams’ score not only earns its place among the most iconic movie scores of all time, but also proves memorable enough to carry with you. We left the cinema. His themes are so effective that just humming a few notes of one of Williams’ scores is to fall into the same feelings you felt staring at the big screen in the first place, watching Superman fly over Manhattan or Elliot and E.T.’s bike through it. the moon.
At 92, the maestro has received plenty of accolades — from institutions, fans and his peers at the academy — yet Williams has long resisted requests to turn cameras on him. “Music by John Williams” does just that, featuring extensive interviews with the composer, as well as glowing endorsements from directors and musicians who worked with him. It’s less a documentary than a tribute, a tool for fans designed to celebrate Williams’ legacy without getting too personal or artistic in the process.
The film’s director is Laurent Bouzereau, who many will know as Steven Spielberg’s trusted myth-making man, as seen through the “making of” documents on numerous DVDs. Spielberg appears early and often here, which makes some sense, given that the collaboration between the director and his favorite composer changed the course of their careers. Early on, Williams sits down at the piano on which he first plays the ominous two-note “ba-dum” note that signals the threat of an unseen shark in “Jaws,” and the director walks over to hug his old friend Johnny and share what he felt when He heard this topic for the first time.
It’s a good story, and one that might surprise people, since Spielberg originally recruited Williams for his previous film, “The Sugarland Express.” The director had admired Williams’ old orchestral scores for two Western films, “The Reivers” and “The Cowboys,” and wanted something similar for his own film, which was similar to “Badlands,” about thieves on the run. Williams wrote a folk-themed piece for him, enlisting harmonica master Toots Thielemans at its centre, offering an unexpectedly original solution to the task.
In Jaws, Williams deviated further than Spielberg thought he wanted. The director had taken excerpts from Williams’ avant-garde score and the often atonal score for Robert Altman’s “Portraits” and cut a temp track. Williams had something entirely different in mind, stripping the suspense down to a few ominous, accelerated notes. Would the film have worked without Williams’ score? It certainly wouldn’t be the same film, and from that point on, Spielberg made the composer a key member of his creative team, counting on the film to come to life during the recording session. “That’s what I look forward to in every film,” he tells Bouzzero, who brings viewers inside many of those recordings.
Behind-the-scenes stories like this seem like raw gold to cinephiles, although the documentary doesn’t have enough of it. We learn how Williams almost skipped “Star Wars” to write the music for “A Bridge Too Far” instead, and we get an insight into the violin-based score for “Schindler’s List,” which Williams miraculously produced in the same year as Park’s “Jurassic.” – a testament to the enormous scope of his talent (as well as Spielberg’s) one can find certain commonalities throughout the composer’s oeuvre, from his gift for crafting indelible themes (the backbone of almost all of Williams’ scores) to the deftness with which he expands that compelling range of music. Tones to a multi-instrumental symphony experience.
However, Williams never seems to repeat himself – not even in the sequels – except in the most musical way, by returning to theme (or character-centric leitmotifs, as in “Star Wars”) in order to adapt those essential . Harmonies in a new context. If that sounds gushing, that enthusiasm is perfectly in keeping with the film’s tone, as the A-list collaborators (including George Lucas and JJ Abrams), the instrumentalists (Yo-Yo Ma and Anne-Sophie Mutter) and the assorted lovers (Thomas Newman and Seth MacFarlane) sing along. In his praise.
The film credits Williams with almost single-handedly saving orchestral film music, a tradition on its way out as synthesizers and jazz and pop songs dominate the soundtrack. It was fascinating to see how Williams works, which is only hinted at here, as he hand-copied some ideas and shared a page of five-tone suites that could serve as the main theme for “Close Encounters of the Third.”
Despite having unprecedented access to the legend, Bouzereau does not delve particularly deep into Williams’ operation or personal life. The son of a jazz drummer, young Johnny got his first film recording gig not by relying on family connections, but through his service in the Air Force. Williams’ early career receives only superficial attention, even though he had already racked up two Emmy Awards (for “Heidi” and “Jane Eyre”) and the first 10 of 54 Oscar nominations (including a win for “Fiddler on the Roof”) by then. “Jaws” came.
This shows that Music for John Williams is intended more as a fascinating tape – the documentary equivalent of a great coffee table book – than an attempt to better understand the man. The film does mention an early tragedy: the unexpected death of Williams’ wife, Barbara Rueck, from an aneurysm in early 1974. The film touches on a difficult moment in his career, when he resigned as captain of the Boston Pops a decade later — but only for the sake of time. While this incident reminds us that film composers are not taken seriously in the classical music community, Coldplay’s Chris Martin calls Williams “the biggest pop star ever.”
The film showcases some of Williams’ non-film work, though there’s no doubt that it’s the magic he brought to films – and his collaborations with Spielberg and Lucas in particular – that will ensure his music will continue to be played centuries from now. In fact, as we’ve seen the era of the original “Star Wars” trilogy, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Williams’ score may be the element that proves it’s most timeless, and one that still deserves to be appreciated long, long from now on… well, you know the rest by heart.