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Rhapsody
2.
The Most Fantastical Romancing
Constantine Soo
April, 2006
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To date, I think there has not been a week here in Northern California since the beginning of the year that
there was no rain. The increasingly extreme weather conditions being experienced the world over makes
one hopelessly reminiscing of the older days past, when our little world didn’t wreak as much havoc.
In the more recent past, such as the 70s through 90s, we were still a people with hopes of the most
fantastical kind, depicting a being of the most fantastical power of benign nature from some extraterrestrial
advanced civilization descending upon us to light our path before us. Today, many envision our own
salvation in the form of our own leap in evolution as the vehicle to possessing the same fantastical abilities
to controlling our environment around us. Such showcase of human determination over its own destiny has
never been more prevalent in history, a most peculiar trend that arose seemingly from humanity’s faith in
the benevolence of science and technology.
Perhaps it was our aspiration to superior morality and strength in the earlier days that got us where we
are. When Christopher Reeve transformed into Superman on the silver screen for the first time nearly 3
decades ago, our witness of it somehow seemed to empower and escalate our own morality as well,
contrasting the feuding, renegade mutants of superior powers of late, whose misery seems to have no
end.
Chaos or not, the one predominant constant in our humanity is our need for love, and seldom has any
media been more successful in heralding romance of sorts than our own Hollywood. Create a world of
crumbling moralities and social structures or what have you, but by injecting a little love story amidst all the
havoc, despair is defeated. It is utterly amazing what something so basic and intangible as love can
overcome in the direst of environments.
Authors and Hollywood producers struggle constantly and endlessly in their frenzy to portray the power of
love in the most improbable of all situations, and none is more fantastical than that between Margot Kidder
and Christopher Reeve in Superman. Imagine a superhuman being of incredible good looks to Earth
girls’ eyes, tasked with rescuing humanity from its suicidal propensity, being depicted in his falling in love
with an ordinary-looking woman. He then takes her to the heavens, literally. I was so crushed after
watching it in 1978.
The most well-known love story at that time continued to be Hollywood’s own Love Story of 1970, which
was immortalized by composer Francis Lai’s music to a very large part. Few silver screen enactments of
love stories of sorts have ever been given a soundtrack as stirring as the Francis Lai composition to this
day, except for the John Williams composition for Superman.
Dubbed “Can You Read My Mind” in a popularized pop-song version, the original orchestral score to “Love
Theme from Superman” was further enhanced to accompany the couple’s “Flying Sequence” on screen,
during which Kal-El took Lois Lane flying over New York’s city lights for a first date. Romance doesn’t get
more romantic than flying your girl to the sky with a John Williams score playing in the background.
Now 74 years old, Williams had some 40+ film scores to his credit, including Jaws, the iconic Star Wars
dual trilogy, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, and many
others. A demanded composer preferred by the most successful of Hollywood producers, namely George
Lucas and Steven Spielberg, more Williams’ tunes have accordingly become cultural identifiers than other
composers’.
Compared to his musical outputs from the past decade, the aforementioned scores throughout the 70s,
80s and 90s are also representatives of his most flamboyantly creative, imaginative and original, signifying
a golden age of American film music. His brilliance is best illustrated in the soundtrack to the original, first
Star Wars movie, with each of the 20+ tracks swamped with catchy motifs and unprecedented creativity in
orchestral film score arrangements. Compared to all other film composers’ work, including the more
recent of his own, that soundtrack continues to catch me breathless every time I listen to it.
The John Williams of late has turned more sophisticated than the casual listener is ready for. Unswervingly
creative, imaginative and original as he always has been, his recent scores, such as Minority Report, War
of the Worlds, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, are all much less catchy or entertaining but incredibly
thought-provoking and mood-setting, perhaps too much so for the sake of theatrical effectiveness.
This is quite possibly the turning point for Williams as he has begun composing Violin Concertos
(Schindler’s List) and others, becoming more self-expressing, and less instantly-gratifying, an eventuality
to which, quite frankly, not too many Hollywood composers had progressed. Jerry Goldsmith, a Williams’
contemporary who, in one of his last scores, Star Trek: Nemesis, also displayed such lyricism in the hybrid
SACD.
But perhaps the accolade of the most brilliant of Williams’ works should go to the Superman score. Apart
from the fact that the most recognized American comic hero is given a score that has become the classic
of classics, conjuring up a symbolism that heralds the protagonist, one tune that all fans aspires to, John
Williams also gave us that timeless love theme that is made even more endearingly so with the passing of
the one man chosen to play the hero, Christopher Reeve.
Charismatic, compassionate, just, resourceful, self-sacrificing and a seemingly perfect specimen of the
human form, Reeve’s greatest moment in the movie was not defined by the “Superfeats” he performed in
his rescue missions; but the most impossibly romantic flying sequence with co-star Margot Fidder. The
movie-producing team of Alexander Salkind and Richard Donna shared their vision of what the ultimate in
romancing ought to be: flying Lois up to the sky, literally. While the sequence fuels the imagination, it was
the music that provides a lifetime’s supply of romance and wonder. Though much belayed, I offer my
heartfelt kudos and thanks to the men and women behind the movie.
Superman Returns shall happen in the coming months, which will not merely showcase how natural
Hollywood can now render the spectacles as performed by the Kryptonian, but also the producing team's
unrelenting fantasizing of a world of simpler moralities, and their definition of the finest in human character.
Of course, we will also witness if the new producers’ vision of Kal-El and Lois Lane is able to sweep our
breaths away again.
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DAGOGO© 2006
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