
“Music by John Williams” would have been a wonderful documentary for me even if it only went on to talk about the orchestral music that was composed for a film, such as a montage alongside exquisite visuals, because it does a wonderful job at igniting the nostalgia within us. But the interesting part is the nuts and bolts of music explaining which pictures go with which does not come off as too difficult as the latter makes an effort to explain this complex process to people who don’t work with music professionally.
Laurent Bouzereau is the official historian for the Spielberg family, the Lucas family, and a plethora of other well-known American film directors, and because of this, he has been able to make great films for Disney including the one centered around John Williams.
A particular comfort level is apparent in the interviews with Williams, now 92, as he discusses with us the theory and practice of his work, which starts from TV scores in the 1960s (“Lost In Space”, incidental music for “Gilligan’s Island”, playing sent piano on “Peter Gunn” theme) and proceeds with the blockbusters of the 70s (“Star Wars”, “Jaws”, “Superman” etc.) and continues in 21 century ( “Harry Potter” honey melody, the main theme of “Star Wars” sequels and prequels and more films by Spielberg). Williams’ last work before retirement was the score to Spielberg’s cinematic memoir “The Fablemans” completing the arc of their collaboration.
John Williams’ music may be seen, in some respect, as a product or advertisement from Disney since they acquired Lucasfilm which helped make both Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Star Wars franchise: not to mention the fact that they also took over 20th Century Fox, which puts them in ownership of other movies featuring Williams’ music (such as the Home Alone films) alongside films made by Robert Altman, Oliver Stone and many more. But such a complex isn’t exposed in the film: this documentary is hardly another infomercial promoting a media so niche as William’s music when talking about Japanese composers.
It never aims for such anonymity and silence, and it enjoys allowing its interviewees, which comprise Branford Marsalis, Elvis Mitchell, J.J. Abrams, Thomas Newman, Alan Silvestri, and many more noted musicians, to bumble through endearing William’s praise whenever they can. After the so-called ice-breaking trailer that will probably be obligatory in the future of streaming as well, William Williams redirects the view to a comfortable and vivid stage setting that lies between his vivid biography about the life of a prominent American and a lesson to guide those interested in the world of cinema. No wonder the film culminates towards the climax: Williams himself has become too noble an act.
Bouzereau remains practical throughout the journey of directing a film and composing its score. He masterfully combines biographical details with significant moments during Williams’ life, for instance, we get ample information about Williams’ family life. Losing his first wife, marriage, Barbara Ruick at the age of 43 had a huge impact on him too. But much of it is focused on Williams at the piano, accompanied by the detail of numerous commercial, technically compelling, and important significant blockbusters of the previous 60 years. Additionally, there is a critique of how Williams sometimes alters rhythm or highlights certain aspects of a memorable tune that could change how a film segment is perceived.
Williams is frequently seen on screen with Spielberg, who he regards as his greatest collaborator and an exceptional teacher/mentor who is just as articulate as Williams when talking about how the visual image and music come together to form an even bigger thing than the two independently can create. Sometimes Williams’ scores are used in excerpts as the music for the biographical parts of the films he composed them for in novel connections with their subjects (“The Fablemans” is shown above during the section which covers William’s childhood and teen years).
Similar to how “The Fablemans” provides a new context to many of Spielberg’s films and motivates you to watch them again, ”Music by John Williams” will prompt you to listen to his music again, as part of a film or on its own, and reminisce on what you discovered about his life and artistic development here.
For instance, Williams’s score for Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” is not simply a throwback to the brass-laden jazz orchestral scores of the 1950s and 1960s done by Elmer Bernstein for movies like “A Walk on the Wild Side” and “The Sweet Smell of Success” (Bernstein was amongst many great score composers who sought the services of the young Williams who is acknowledged here as providing the piano interlude on Bernstein’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” score). It is also a blast from the past to Williams’ pop jazz scores he did for various TV Shows in the 1960s under the name of Johnny Williams; a testament to his work as a jazzy for Robert Altman on series TV and to the feature films “The Long Goodbye” and “California Split”; and also an oblique homage to his father who was a jazz drummer and to being surrounded by jazz musicians in his formative years. “My parent’s friends were all musicians,” says Williams, “and that is what I imagined one would do when one grew up.”
The jazz factor indeed comes up in the part dealing with the original 1977 “Star Wars” Marsalis who refers to Williams’ piano playing on the “Peter Gunn” theme as “‘the basis of jazz funk’ “says Wrenshall “It is rather difficult to visualize somebody composing a piece such as the cantina scene in the film above while being completely and uninformed about jazz.”
“I’ve heard a lot of bad pieces like that, and that’s not even the worst part. It sounds like overacting at best. A documentary like this one is a tribute to Williams, who appears to be the lone survivor of a dying breed: motion picture composers. K. In the early 1960s, he started being involved in the last decade of the old studio system after getting polished in Air Force bands, and his initial work in these studios was scoring documentaries about the maritime Canadian provinces. Singers including Bernard Herrmann, Henry Mancini, and Franz Waxman led studio orchestras at Columbia and 20th Century Fox, and he began his career as they drove them. To this day, he has never been aided by a computer preferring to work on a piano and write character sheets by hand so he still composes in the manner of a traditional musician. He is something who slaved throughout his life gaining skills, would contend Ethan Gruska, for example, at this moment, one could capture music from an AI prompt.”
“I have amassed film scores in how I have books that consist of a collection of vinyls and I have been a devoted fan during my lifetime, never stopped being devoted, thankfully for Williams but there were also many things I was able to learn from that movie and the art.”
Williams’ comments on Silvestri’s silence of the “Jaws” piano theme and Williams’s analysis of aliens in “Close Encounters” (It can or apropos the three syllables “and”, “If”, “but.”) are filled with remarkable first commentaries
Abrams explicates it nicely that, “Any one of his scores would be any other composer’s lifetime accomplishment”. In my opinion, Spine and warmth as well as much of humor to the movie would not have been possible without the friendship and partnership between Williams and Spielberg. For instance, Williams explains how he was in tears watching the first cut of Schindler’s list without entertainment but still said to Spielberg, who said “I know, but they’re all dead,”, through Williams, that is, a better composer should be used. 12 short musical letters embedded in separate texts a few minutes long could have been included in a ten-part series. As a result, abounding efforts are skipped. At 100 minutes, the movie music by John Williams is quite short. So there is no room for xonal depathologisation as explained earlier, such is the nature of the beast, you can’t balance everything out whether it be with words music, or any other form.
This is a critical piece of not just Williams’ work but a large section of composers, role models, and filmmaking colleagues. This is also about filming. It’s going to be in classrooms and enjoyed by others. Like the work of John Williams, it tends to stay with you even after the movies finish rolling.
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