Good movies? Or not?

Swashbuckler: Suite; John Addison, composer; BBC Concert Orchestra; Rumon Gamba, conducting

I had fun in junior high science. Mrs. L. taught science and coached cross country and track when D. and I were in junior high. She had a great teaching style. She would teach a unit from our science textbook for about two weeks. Then we would spend one week learning from a science periodical geared toward the junior high age. Generally, each periodical contained five to six articles dealing with current and up-to-date issues concerning modern science. Mrs. L. would choose four articles to discuss, one for each day from Monday through Thursday, and then give us a test on Friday.

I’m sure that we talked and learned about many fascinating things in those discussions. I only distinctly remember two. We talked about a human-powered aircraft called the Gossamer Albatross that flew across the English Channel on June 12, 1979. On another day, Mrs. L. introduced us to “The Lord of the Rings”. I don’t know how much science we learned in that discussion, but I loved the topic. I had never heard of the books before. In the year 1978, film director Ralph Bakshi and his team created an animated motion picture of “The Lord of the Rings”. Our science periodical chose to feature the story in one of its issues.

Apparently the story made a big enough of an impact on me that I mentioned it upon arriving home from school one day. Mom kept an eye out for the movie’s arrival at the State Theatre or the Cinema Unique in the Brookings Daily Register. When the show finally reached Brookings, Dad had decided that it sounded like something that he would like to see. So Dad and I went to the movies.

I remember that I really liked it. So did Dad. He admired the character of Gandalf and every now and then he would reference it. Movies for me, in the 1970’s and 1980’s, were all about plot. “The Lord of the Rings” has a good story, so, logically, I enjoyed the movie.

On the day before Christmas break, during each of my high school years, they would show a movie in the gym for the student body from a projector onto a huge screen. The first year, we saw a horror/thriller flick called “The Car”. The second year we saw a horrible movie called “Hot Stuff” featuring Dom Deluise and Jerry Reed. The third year, they showed a movie called “Swashbuckler”. I liked this movie. I didn’t really understand anything about the plot because the boomy acoustics in the gym muddied up the dialogue. But I remember the music sounding fantastic. It reminded me of Richard Strauss.

Through some research done over the world wide interweb, I’ve discovered that, in addition to the score to the score for “Swashbuckler”, Mr. Addison composed the music for “Tom Jones”, for which he received an Academy Award, “A Bridge Too Far”, for which he received a BAFTA Award, and the theme music to “Murder, She Wrote”, for which he received an Emmy Award.

I happened across a John Addison CD on iTunes that included a musical suite comprised of some of the score from the movie “Swashbuckler”. This time, I lost. It didn’t sound anything like what I heard in the boomy gym back in the 1980’s. Either I’m remembering something that I never heard, or the music that I remember didn’t get included on this CD. So I have a minor dilemma.

I recently watched the animated “The Lord of the Rings” movie. Very disappointing. All the elements that I’ve come to enjoy at the movies didn’t hold up in the re-viewing of this movie. The movie night I had with my Dad isn’t anything less than what it was nearly thirty years ago, but now when I think about that evening, the stigma of a mediocre movie may crowd its way into my memory. So, now I’m hesitant to re-view the movie “Swashbuckler” because the music might not come close to what I remember.

I’m reminded of David Letterman when he announced that he didn’t intend to go to see James Cameron’s “Titanic”. Mr. Letterman had seen the Roy Ward Baker’s movie “A Night To Remember” from 1958 and he didn’t want a newer movie about the same subject to have an impact on his memory of Mr. Baker’s movie. Sound thinking.

Credits: To Mrs. L., for making science fun.