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I recently saw Richard Fleischer's BARABBAS (1962) on TCM, and it prompted me to reconsider both this film and, more importantly, its music score.
Credited to Mario Nascimbene, but with, some say, additional music by Ennio Morricone, there really isn't much music in the film per se. I remember getting the original lp of this score, with a spectacular ad campaign on the gatefold cover, complete with giant letters spelling out the title name, with the sun in eclipse shining though some of the letters. (One of those massive, panoramic ad paintings that managed to include practically all the major dramatic elements in the story.)
I remember liking the score very much, especially an "Overture," which included at least one theme I didn't remember hearing later in the film. Years later, I heard this was one of the contributions by Mr. Morricone. I was disappointed this cue was not included on the later Italian CD release, though I'm glad it was released at all. (And it still included a kind of "making of" cue at the end of the music score, in which a narrator explained how the composer achieved several of the startling sounds heard at various dramatic moments in the film.)
When viewing this film recently, however, I wondered just how much had been cut since its premier release. Apparently, it was originally a roadshow. (I still have a copy of the souvenir program, which I acquired at the theatre in Pittsburgh where it was being presented in continuous showings.) The Intermission clearly comes after Anthony Quinn and Vittorio Gassman are rescued after the collapse of the sulphur mine, with a sudden cut to a panorama shot of the fields where they are next found, pulling a plow. So, we have an opportunity for some kind of music announcing the Intermission, as well as a possible Entr'acte cue, heralding the second part of the film.
In addition, I noticed a few jump cuts here and there, which made me wonder if other cuts had been made. At one point, Quinn encounters someone who was reported to have been risen from the dead, presumably Lazarus, and has kind of a creepy encounter with him. Played by actor Michael Gwynn (also seen in both CLEOPATRA, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, and as Hermes in the original CLASH OF THE TITANS), the scene starts out well, then jump cuts to Quinn carousing with Katy Jurado. There are also a few other cuts, such as during Jack Palance's later foray as a sadistic gladiator. And I suspect that some of the sermonizing by scriptwriter Christopher Fry (who also contributed heavily to BEN-HUR), may have been snipped.
In the original New York Times review, which labeled this film "turgid," mention is made of the intermission; so there's one reference to its original roadshow presentation. Did anyone here ever see it as a roadshow? The running time was listed as 144 mins., but the DVD I have lists a running time of 137 mins. Also, from a book I have on roadshows, BARABBAS is listed as having been a roadshow in its original release in Italy a year before, in 1961; so it may have been edited for its U.S. release.
I'd like to seek another release of the score on CD, updated with that "Overture" cue, though it may in fact have been the Entr'acte. But, frankly, there really isn't a lot of music in the film, and the lp, and later CD, apart from the aforementioned "Overture," included most of the music cues.
Comments?
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I want to hear this overture! Does someone want to upload it to youtube? Many of us would be grateful.
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Thanks. I already have that track though, from the cd. That's the Main Title, not the Overture, right?
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Yes, that's the Main Title.
It is heard over the flagellation of Jesus.
The Overture cue is quite different, though it incorporates the BARABBAS main theme.
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Thanks. I already have that track though, from the cd. That's the Main Title, not the Overture, right?
Right.
Sorry - since you replied directly to me I thought you were offering a solution to my request 
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I love the film, but to be honest, that 'Overture' never grabbed me. I have the album.
As stated above, the main theme is merely the mediaeval Kyrie Eleison, and the other two themes of the score are fairly, well, banal.
The piece is not musically an 'overture' at all, being merely the Kyrie theme played against a typical Morricone drum ostinato, first on woodwinds, and then orchestra with eventual chorus attached, built up in layers like Ravel's Bolero with no development.
Clint Eastwood rides into mediaeval monastery and growing crowd comes out to watch.
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The Overture was a dynamic arrangement with chorus of the Kyrie theme created specifically for the LP album by Ennio Morricone. Despite the vast numbers of Morriconephiles in the universe, none has ever posted this cue to YouTube.
Mantovani did a more sedate arrangement of this bolero theme that is available from Vocalion on CD.
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I've always had a fondness for BARABBAS. Maybe because it tells the same tale we've seen from other sources, but in a much more down-to-earth fashion. All the main characters are the equivalent of blue-collar workers, if that, with the Romans as unapproachable authority figures, whose only role is to mostly abuse all the other characters, in one way or another. Even the sort of benevolent Roman owner of the sulphur mine never veers into anything resembling compassion, and his wife is a twit.
I've read the Nobel-Prize-winnng book on which the film is based, and the movie is much more inflated, with all that gladiator stuff added, given the tenor of the time. (BARABBAS was released in Italy only a year after SPARTACUS, and has many of the same kind of gladiator-training scenes.)
If you have it, the lp is actually a better rendition of the music score, even though the sound makes it seem as if it had been recorded in a goldfish bowl, like so many other Italian scores from the period.
This is something that DigitMovies might release at some point, though that's probably the best we can hope for.
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I'm probably one of the few who saw BARABBAS in it's initial NYC Roadshow run at the DeMille Theater.
The sound at that showing was a lot better than the 'stereo' of the dvd.
Don't know if it's been previously stated but the LP OVERTURE that everyone is asking about was not in the film when I saw it. The OVERTURE and ENTR'ACTE utilized the same music and it is indeed available on the CD as INTERMEZZO.
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Don't know if it's been previously stated but the LP OVERTURE that everyone is asking about was not in the film when I saw it.
As I stated above it was only featured on the LP... whereupon it vanished from the face of the earth.
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Don't know if it's been previously stated but the LP OVERTURE that everyone is asking about was not in the film when I saw it.
As I stated above it was only featured on the LP... whereupon it vanished from the face of the earth.
Does anyone know the origins of the LP Overture? How it came about? Who recorded it?
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RCA Serie Europa PML-10306 has the title of the track as "Versione moderna nel tema Adattamento e direzione di Ennio Morricone ", basically the modern version of the theme adapted and conducted by Morricone.
The 45 rpm states the the choir was the "Coro di Franco Potenza." I always supposed the Morricone bolero piece was included only on the U.S. release.
QUESTION: If it was included on the soundtrack album in Italy, why was it dropped from all subsequent CD releases?
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Posted: |
May 3, 2014 - 7:32 AM
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By: |
pp312
(Member)
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The "Morricone Bolero piece" was used here in Oz as the Overture, but not included on the soundtrack album (it came out as a 45). It may have been the individual cinema's decision.
Barabbas was a roadshow and lasted several months in Sydney, though no one I know who saw it liked it. Too dark, too slow, even a bit whacky at times. Not like the Hollywood product? No, but not in a particularly good way. Whatever you do, you must first and foremost entertain your audience; whatever you may achieve apart from that goes for nothing if you don't first achieve that. I'm surprised Fleischer, a Hollywood director who'd worked for Disney, didn't remember that dictum. (I've read his autobiography, but can't currently recall what he had to say about Barabbas). He obviously had a talent for the noir, as witnessed by The Boston Strangler, but it was probably misplaced in a Biblical extravaganza. Many will disagree, I know. That's forums for you.
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I saw it as a teenager in a local theater. While I respected Anthony Quinn as an actor, or perhaps because I did, I remember leaving the theater wondering what on earth he could have been thinking when he agreed to be in that film. It was a herky-jerky affair with a lot of unexplained jumps from one scene to another, variable sound volume that went from muffled to over-loud, and the narrative quality of a dubbed Steve Reeves "Hercules" film. The Colpix soundtrack album was pretty much a bust as well, its only saving grace that amazing bolero-style "Overture" which I later learned had been arranged by Ennio Morricone. While Nascimbene's score may have been considered "cutting edge" for its use of electronically-created whipping sounds etc., the sound quality was poor and musically it was, for me, barely listenable. A friend made me a transfer of the original LP a while back, and in listening again after all these years, only the Morricone arrangement remains impressive. BARABBAS for me is/was a "spaghetti Biblical" with little polish or continuity.
My guess is that the reason the bolero was not included on the Italian CD release is that they would have had to pay Morricone money had they included it, or were simply unable to license anything but the Nascimbene tracks. Nascimbene...well, that's another thread.
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