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Category:    Home > Reviews > Appointment (Limited CD)

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


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