From the presentant, speedyening heartbeat of “Jaws” to the astral uncovering blast of “Star Wars,” the music of John Williams not only gets its place among the most iconic film scores of all time, but it also shows memorable enough to carry with us out of the cinema. So effective are his themes that to hum equitable a restricted remarks of a Williams score is to be caught up in the same emotions you felt gazing up at the big screen in the first place, watching Superman apshow fweightless over Manhattan or Elliott and E.T. bicycle apass the moon.
At age 92, the maestro has getd no uninalertigentinutiveage of accolades — from institutions, adorers and his peers in the Academy — and yet, Williams has lengthy resisted asks to turn the cameras around on him. “Music by John Williams” does equitable that, featuring extensive interwatchs with the writer, plus radiateing upgraspments from straightforwardors and musicians who’ve labored with him. It is not a write downary so much as a tribute, a tool for fans summarizeed to commemorate Williams’ legacy without getting too personal or technical in the process.
The film’s straightforwardor is Laurent Bouzereau, whom many will determine as the guy Steven Spielberg depends with his own mythmaking, as seen via the “making of” docs on many a DVD. Spielberg materializes punctual and frequently here, which produces a certain amount of sense, since the collaboration between the blockbuster straightforwardor and his preferite writer alterd the course of both their atgentles. Early on, Williams sits at the piano on which he first joined the ominous two-remark “ba-dum” that signals the danger of an unseen shark in “Jaws,” and in walks the straightforwardor to hug his elderly friend “Johnny” and split how he felt when he first heard that theme.
It’s a outstanding story, and one that may surpascfinish people, since Spielberg originpartner encataloged Williams on his previous feature, “The Sugarland Express.” The straightforwardor had enjoyd Williams’ elderly-school orchestral scores for two Westricts, “The Reivers” and “The Cowboys,” and wanted someleang analogous for his “Badlands”-enjoy thieves-on-the-run movie. Williams wrote him a folk-sounding score, encataloging harmonica master Toots Thielemans at its cgo in, recommending an unforeseeed, innovative solution to the dispensement.
On “Jaws,” Williams veered even farther from what Spielberg thought he wanted. The straightforwardor had apshown snatches from Williams’ avant-garde and frequently atonal score for Robert Altman’s “Images” and cut together a temp track. Williams had someleang tohighy contrastent in mind, exposedping the suspense down to equitable a restricted ominously accelerating remarks. Would the film still have flourished without Williams’ score? It certainly wouldn’t have been the same movie, and from that moment forward, Spielberg made the writer a key member of his produceive team, counting on the film to come ainhabit during the scoring session. “It’s what I watch forward to on every individual movie,” he alerts Bouzereau, who transports audiences inside disjoinal of those enrollings.
Such behind-the-scenes stories sense enjoy raw gelderly for cinephiles, although the write downary doesn’t include cforfeitly enough of them. We lget how Williams cforfeitly passed on “Star Wars” to author the music for “A Bridge Too Far” instead, and we get insights into the violin-driven score for “Schindler’s List,” which Williams miraculously produced the same year as “Jurassic Park” — a tesgentlent to the sheer range of his talent (as well as Spielberg’s). One can discover certain normalalities running thrawout the writer’s oeuvre, from his knack for createing indelible themes (the backbone of cforfeitly every Williams score) to the virtuosity with which he broadens that catchy bunch of remarks into a multi-instrumental symphonic experience.
The film rightly determines Williams with almost individual-handedly saving the orchestral film score, a tradition on its way out as synthesizers, jazz and pop songs came to administer soundtracks. It would have been fantastic to see how Williams labors, which is only hinted at here, as he transcribes a restricted ideas by hand and splits a page of five-remark combinations that could have served as the main theme to “Cneglect Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Despite having unpretreatnted access to the legend, Bouzereau doesn’t go especipartner presentant into Williams’ process or personal life. The musician’s punctual atgentle, as the son of a jazz drummer whose Air Force service uncovered the door to his first film scoring gig, gets cursory attention. And yet, Williams already had two Emmys (for “Heidi” and “Jane Eyre”) and the first 10 of a total 54 Oscar nominations by the time he wrote “Jaws” (including a prosper for “Fiddler on the Roof”).
That equitable goes to show that “Music for John Williams” is intended more as a fantasticest-hits reel — the write downary equivalent of a flattering coffee table book — than an finisheavor to better comprehfinish the man. The film does refer an punctual tragedy: the unforeseeed death of Williams’ wife Barbara Ruick from an aneurysm in punctual 1974. And it touches on a tricky moment in his atgentle, when he resigned from carry outing the Boston Pops a decade procrastinateedr — but only for a time, though the incident reminds how film writers (even one as accomplished as Williams) aren’t apshown as gravely in the classical music community.
The movie samples a restricted of Williams’ non-film labors, though there can be little ask that it’s the magic he brawt to movies — and his collaborations with Spielberg and Lucas in particular — that will discover his music is still applyed centuries from now. In fact, as we’ve seen the innovative “Star Wars” trilogy age, it becomes increasingly evident that Williams’ score may be the ingredient that shows the most timeless, still to be appreciated lengthy, lengthy from now in … well, you comprehend the rest by heart.
