Oh to be a film auteur in those far off days of 1977, when you could essentially wrangle millions out of studios who were desperate to back the latest man with a gigantic vision and sod off to the jungle for months on end to give full vent to your titanic slightly despotic genius.
The legend of the William Friedkin’s film Sorcerer far outweighs the real impact of the film itself. A troubled, costly production by anyone’s standards spiralling out of control in the Dominican Republic, there are all manner of great tales about the production which seems to only have been second to Apocalypse Now in terms of insanity*.
The film, when it did emerge was a sprawling, bleak affair with some great tense set pieces as the protagonists are forced by their own miserable circumstances to transport their two truck loads of decaying unstable explosives along Colombian jungle tracks. You can smell the despair, unhappiness and sweat in the film which does not have a happy ending: Spoiler Alert**.
The film and the score are inseparable.
William Friedkin
The film’s soundtrack? subtle pan pipes and other South American flavourings? roaring heavy metal mirroring the brutish trucks? bongos, just lovely bongos? nope Friedkin decided that what a film set in the backarse of Columbia needed was German synth pioneers Tangerine Dream noodling ihre Ärsches off^.
Friedkin saw Tangerine Dream play in an unlit derelict church at midnight for four hours and it blew his mind. The band initially rejected the commission, before being persuaded by Friedkin and he encouraged them to compose a soundtrack just based on their impression of the script. Thus began Tangerine Dream’s trajectory as soundtrack artists that would sustain them through the decades to come.
Tangerine Dream conjure some of dread and others of clarity in Sorcerer. The opening ‘Main Title’ is strangely amorphous, hard to pin down as swirls of ominous sounds emanate from somewhere you really don’t want to be. It’s a far cry from the soundtrack convention that you turn up, bang out a recognizable, preferably stirring, opening theme and reprise the fucker at the close of the album^^.
The closest we come to such a major chord anthem is ‘Search’, which does indeed have a questing, slightly restless quality, Tangerine Dream serving up separate yet complimentary layers of keyboards, an aural lamination.
The fittingly brief respite provided by ‘The Call’ is a lovely interlude, a blue sky glimpsed on a frightening day. I could listen to a lot more of it. Then we’re back on the trail with the next few tracks, none of which offer much in the way of standalone thrills or kicks, they simply get the job done soundtrackily as the first side of the LP swishes towards a halt.
The major key pulses of ‘The Grind’, the keys aping the sound of brass^* as a fanfare to futility is a real good one. As is the menacing, eerie ‘Rain Forest’, which really is not painted as somewhere you would choose to be.
Then it all peters away into the generic for a while until Edgar Froese rescues us by unslinging his guitar on ‘Impressions Of Sorcerer’, the funkiest track I can recall from Tangerine Dream. I absolutely love this cut, it sounds like primo Pink Floyd to these old ears, in fact that rhythm can definitely be found on The Wall in several places.
Then the band bring Sorcerer on home with the closing ‘Betrayal (Sorcerer Theme), which does tie everything up well, sounding like a conclusion and a summation of it all, without tipping over into being too bombastic.
Dad, you love this dystopian shit don’t you?
Daughter of 1537, last night.
Even after years of owning and playing it I am still not entirely sure what I think about Tangerine Dream Sorcerer. On the one hand there are some great musical moments hereabouts that stand up well to being plucked out and listened to in isolation. There is also a quantity of soundtrack mulch.
From memory, I haven’t seen the film for a couple of years, Tangerine Dream’s music is used very sparingly indeed in the film itself. Their music creates a bit of a disconnect for me and I really don’t think it does fit the film, massively well, with some notable exceptions (‘Search’); so with respect to Mr Friedkin, I disagree film and score are inseparable and I enjoy the bits I like best, divorced from the visual element in this case.
So how did the film do commercially? well, the studios released this pessimistic, downbeat tale of suffering and stress on precisely the same day as some little no hope space story with laser swords and odd-looking robots in it. In retrospect the exact worse day they could have released it on that year/decade.
In keeping with its own gloomy atmosphere, it sank beneath the waters. The soundtrack endured, enjoying a separate success.
1116 Down.
PS: In case I didn’t make it clear, I think Sorcerer is a great film, uncompromising, macho, unpitying and gutshot tense.
PPS: Because you deserve it, a rather better modern trailer – albeit without the soundtrack music at all.
*Friedkin saw Coppola as his main rival and both movies were in production at the same time. I commend Peter Biskind’s brilliant book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1998) to you for this and infinitely more.
**the alertification bit does go after the reveal doesn’t it? that way you know you’ve just read one. Makes perfect sense to me.
^the German word Ärsche, the plural of arse, always seems to have a capital letter; I would like to take this opportunity to formally applaud the German nation and their linguistic priorities.
^^add in some half-baked instrumental crap and a ballad and before you can bellow ‘By the power of Faltermeyer!’ you’ve got yourself a mid 80’s movie soundtrack.
^*trumpet involuntary? or am I just being a smartarsche?
