Diamonds Are Forever Musical Score
Hugo Drax
Leeds, United Kingdom.Posts: 210MI6 Agent
Its wonderful. From the riveting gunbarrel sequence to the soft DAF tune playing in Tiffany's apartment to the music where Bond goes to Whyte's summerhouse.
One of John Barry's best I'd say, if not the best.
One of John Barry's best I'd say, if not the best.
Comments
Bottom line: All in all, another noteworthy effort from Barry and far superior to most of the non-Barry scores in the series.
Barry's best musical score I would say.
Interesting about the Mancini idea. I agree with you there.
While I think that DAF's score is very good, I think that OHMSS is still the best. Both are pretty hard to compare.
Then there's the cheesy organ music when Bond meets Morton Slumber, the heavenly choir when they dispose of the body, and hell's furies for when Bond is in the coffin.
Fantastic.
Overall it's light-hearted music for a light-hearted film
That's a very good point Dortmunder which I agree with completely. The DAF score fits in well with the locations. We have a jaunty, fruity tune playing in the casino, a soft piece playing in Tiffany's apartment so we can hear all the wonderful one-liners clearly, the seedy sounding music when Bond and Plenty enter the apartment, setting up his one-liner nicely, the light, camp music preceding the camp fight between Bond and Bambi and Thumper (OK it's not a fight he gets pummelled)
I would say that it is John Barry's best score.
Being a bit late, I have to disagree with you too Hardy. I noticed a few percussion notes from OHMSS and horns from Thunderball, but I wouldn't say DAF "borrows heavily" from either. That said, you cant expect a composer who scored 5 films (up to DAF's time) in a series of movies not to revisit a couple of brass or percussion notes.
I watched DAF the other night, because Ive been posting a lot about how much better a film it could have been.
What suprised me most when I watched it was how good the score was. Ive always been a fan of the OHMSS score and this is right up there in lending strong atmosphere to the action and adding character through music (witness the recurring theme when W&K appear) Barry also forsoke the slightly "CarryOn" feeling he sometimes evokes when Bond is confronted with a potential bedmate. It was really good and probably the best thing about the movie in general.
I agree with you on that one, BarryFan. For me 'Bond Meets Bambi and Thumper' is the standout cue. Which is quite unusual because on most Bond scores my favourite cue tends to be one of the fast paced action cues.
For more indepth opinions of the daf score, check out this article on my web site: http://gr007.sitesled.com/dafscore.html
I first listened to the DAF soundtrack album when I was only seven - when the film was released - and it enthralled me completely. It was on vinyl of course, and my parents had borrowed it for a couple of weeks from the public library. Listening to it brought back the experience of seeing the film in a crowded cinema, which at that age I thought was simply wonderful (even though I was too young to follow the plot: probably an advantage!) I used to pore, fascinated, over the cover art for the album while listening to the tracks. (Again, I was too young to register that the image of the diamonds cascading from the hands of the two Vegas bimbos alongside Connery's crotch is actually smutty and tacky!) I went on to take any opportunity I could to see the film again (nagging my parents to take me back to the cinema whenever DAF was re-released in a double bill) - and later on TV - just so that I could 'learn' and hold in my head the rest of the score (i.e. the many cues not included in the original soundtrack album).
So John Barry's DAF music has been a friend for life, and it remains my favourite - even over OHMSS. For me (perhaps controversially), DAF, OHMSS and TMWTGG are the best three soundtracks overall, with Barry's scoring reaching a sly stylistic peak despite the fact that the films themselves were in an uncertain phase of transition during this period.
1) Anything by John Barry
2) The rest
1. Top rank John Barry, as in firing on all cylinders- in no particular order OHMSS, DAF, TB, YOLT, MR, LTD
2. The other JB scores- GF (sic), FRWL,AVTAK, OP, TMWTGG in that order
3. David Arnold's work, especially the slower pieces, on TND, CR, TWINE and DAD (in that order)
4. Tied between LALD and TSWLM, both being fine work
5. Burt Bacharach's fun CR67 score
6. Monty Norman's DN stuff has its moments
7. The uninteresting LTK and FYEO
8. The utterly dire NSNA
9. Now let's see, what does that leave....?