Bear Mann's video: TunePlay - FRANTIC Ennio Morricone 1988

Every filmmaker aches for the opportunity to do their homage / ode to Alfred Hitchcock. And with the possible exception of Robert Zemeckis' 2000 thriller WHAT LIES BENEATH (supernatural elements notwithstanding), Roman Polanski's FRANTIC (1988) rates as one of the best. Both coincidentally would star Harrison Ford. The most "Hollywood"-style production of Polanski's career, FRANTIC would also emerge as one of the director's most critically acclaimed, if not financially successful, endeavors. Ford, nicely breaking from genre film mold (WITNESS, THE MOSQUITO COAST, WORKING GIRL and PRESUMED INNOCENT were all made within five years of FRANTIC), and CATS stage icon Betty Buckley, star as American couple Dr. Richard Walker and wife Sondra, in Paris for a medical conference and unofficial second honeymoon. When Sondra mysteriously vanishes from their hotel, and local and embassy authorities are unable to help, Walker discovers her disappearance had to do with their suitcase, mistakenly switched at the airport with a near identical one; the new one containing a Statue of Liberty souvenir, inside of which has been hidden an object (the Hitchcock-ian "McGuffin") coveted by a cadre of international drug runners and terrorists. Guided by young smuggler / party-girl Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner) - the owner of the second suitcase, Walker journeys into the drug infested nocturnal underbelly of the City Of Lights in an increasingly frantic search to find and rescue his wife before her abductors realize she's not the person they think she is, and she therefore becomes expendable. Co-written by Polanski, CHINATOWN scribe Robert Towne (uncredited) and frequent Polanski collaborator - the late Gerard Brach (REPULSION, TESS, and Jean Jacques Annaud's QUEST FOR FIRE and THE NAME OF THE ROSE), with FRANTIC Polanski wanted to avoid the cliched trappings of "touristy" Paris in favor of the far more gritty "vampire club" world of the era. "The idea was to make a film about the things I know", the director stated in an interview, "To show MY Paris, as I consider it to be very much my town". In spite of it's title, FRANTIC is a deliberately subdued, even quiet, exercise in suspense - less analogous to the intense beating of a drum, and more akin to the long slow tightening of a violin string which can pop at any moment. As such it's music score would have to carry a great deal of emotional / psychological weight. Enter the legendary Ennio Morricone. Best known for the "Spaghetti Westerns" of the 1960s, Morricone (like Harrison Ford) was also in the midst of a popular "breaking of the mold" during the mid to late 1980s; his scores to ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, THE MISSION, THE UNTOUCHABLES and CINEMA PARADISO all composed within five years of FRANTIC, and all pop music album hits on U.S. charts. As previously mentioned in the notes of our THE UNTOUCHABLES TunePlay suite ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h63XfvN3GwQ ), Morricone was a child prodigy who wrote his first compositions at six, went on to study under Goffredo Petrassi, then compose (at present count) over 500 film scores and dozens of concert works, as well as arrange pop and classical albums for artists ranging from Morrissey ("Dear God Please Help Me) to Hayley Westerna ("Paradiso"). Over the years his pop culture influence would be such that his music would also be covered, sampled and cribbed by everyone from John Zorn and Jay-Z to Quentin Tarantino and Metallica. Much of Morricone's score for FRANTIC was written based on discussions of the story with Polanski BEFORE the shooting of the film, and as such his compositions (note in particular the stand out cue "On The Roofs Of Paris") contain long, elegant and moody lines suspensefully layered one atop the other - all augmented with contemporary jazz bass guitar, synthesizer and even cliched organ grinder used to stunning effect. The music's use in the film itself would be significantly edited and re-purposed. CEJ 1) Frantic (0:00 of 14:31) 2) On The Roofs Of Paris (4:07 of 14:31) 3) In The Garage (10:11 of 14:31) For more "TunePlay" mini movie music suites go to http://www.gullcottageonline.com/TunePlay-ClarkeApril_12.html "Bear Mann" is a YouTube channel of The GullCottage/Sandlot, a film blog and growing reference library "Celebrating The Art of Cinema, ... And Cinema As Art" Visit us on the web at: http://www.gullcottageonline.com And on FACEBOOK at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-GullCottageSandlot/129683480458380 All rights held by copyright owner. Presented here for educational and criticism purposes only.