Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου

 

I was visiting the Albums I Wish Existed blog & d'led a tribute to Vangelis (Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíon) who died from complications due to treatment of COVID-19 on May 17, 2022 in a Paris, France hospital. The album is the Blade Runner score. This work caps a forty years journey Michael Solof has taken to finally create the perfect soundtrack. Go check it out & tell'em NØ sent ya.

I spent last evening listening to the two discs & re-envisioned the entire movie via the music. It was a far better mind-movie than even the near perfect original film was. Dics One's full length version of "Blade Runner Blues" is a stunning masterpiece & Disc Two's "Zhora's Retirement" is the epitome of what Vangelis was all about in a concise nugget of musicianship mastery.

While I was listening to this fine find, I thought about another soundtrack that mines a similar vein that I also think is top-notch go-to musick. Tangerine Dream's soundtrack to William Friedkin's Sorcerer released in 1977. Sorcerer is the third adaptation of Georges Arnaud's 1950 French novel Le Salaire de la peur. The first adaptation was the 1953 French thriller film The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la peur) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot & starring Yves Montand. The film won both the Golden Bear & the Palme d'Or at the 1953 Berlin Film Festival & Cannes Film Festival. 

 

I had first viewed that film at an underground art house in San Francisco in 1968. I thought it was fantastic. It is an existential thriller, one of the most original & shocking French melodramas of the 50s. It is a parable about man's true power or lack thereof over his own fate in the modern world. The film's extended suspense sequences portray violence as a vision of human existence. The combination of nonstop suspense with biting satire is first rate. The film was ranked #9 in Empire's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema". 

 

After viewing The Wages of Fear, I sought out the second adaptation, Violent Road, also known as Hell's Highway, a 1958 American film version directed by Howard W. Koch starring Brian Keith. With a less talented cast, weaker story line, & poorer production, I was less than thrilled.

The French Connection - 1971.

The Exorcist - 1973.

...when I heard that in 1977 William Friedkin was releasing a remake of The Wages of Fear, I was there.

 Actually I was in Cleveland, OhighO in June 77 when the film hit the theaters. I dug Roy Scheider from Friedkin's earlier The French Connection & of course, Spielberg's Jaws so I figured everything would be fine. I was not disappointed. The thing I remember the most was the great effect the score by Tangerine Dream had on the overall experience.

I guess I should explain that in Clouzot's version, an oil well owned by an American company Southern Oil Company catches fire & the company hires four European men, down on their luck, to drive two trucks 300 miles over mountain dirt roads around Las Piedras in some unnamed outback, loaded with the nitroglycerine needed to extinguish the flames. 

In the much inferior Koch version, an out-of-control test rocket causes massive death & destruction. This forces the company to the relocate the rocket development plant. Trucker Mitch Barton (Brian Keith) assembles a team of several other men for a nearly suicidal mission to drive three trucks to move the rocket fuel made from hydrazine, nitric acid, & concentrated hydrogen peroxide safely over a rough mountain road within three days. 

In Friedkin's take on the material, four outcasts from varied backgrounds meet in an off-the-beaten-path South American (Colombia actually recreated in Ecuador) village of Porvenir, where an oil well explodes. The only way to extinguish the fire is to use dynamite. The men are hired to transport the cargo of aged, poorly kept dynamite that is so unstable that it is 'sweating' its dangerous basic ingredient, nitroglycerin over 200 miles to the oil field. 

 

"One of my themes is that there is good and evil in everyone. I was not out to make these guys heroes. I really don't believe in heroes. The best of people have a dark side and it's a constant struggle for the better side to survive and to thrive."
— William Friedkin

Spine-tingling, nail-baiting, edge-of-your-seat fun. Go watch any or all.

Here I present directly from Tangerine Dream Sorcerer 2014. It is the first live 2CD recording from the Eastgate Music & Arts Theatre in Vienna. CD1 is a quality studio sound remake of the original analog version of 77s Sorcerer. CD2 is additional sensational new material Edgar Froese composed but that was not used for the movie that will hopefully blow yer mind. Come along for this adventurous travel with two trucks through the Latin American jungle. The film title Sorcerer comes from the name Socier (Fr. - sorcerer) painted across the hood of one of the trucks. The other truck is Lazaro (i.e. - Lazarus)

As to the music, Friedkin had attended a Tangerine Dream concert in a derelict church in the Black Forest. He was an immediate & avid admirer of the band. He stated in the liner notes for the soundtrack that had he heard them sooner he would have asked them to score The Exorcist, & that he considers the film Sorcerer & Tangerine Dream's score to be "inseparable".

Enjoy this one from my memory via prompt from Vangelis from the stars above Porvenir, that remote village in... 

 

 

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer 2014 (Cinematographic Score) 2xCD, Eastgate 068 CD, 2014.
all decryption codes in comments

CD One -

Search    
The Call    
Creation    
Vengeance    
The Journey    
Grind    
Abyss    
Mountain Road    
Impressions of Sorcerer    
Sorcerer Theme (Betrayal)    

CD Two -

 
Approaching the Danger    
Servant of Misery    
Rain & Thunder    
In the Mist of the Night    
Nebulous Jungle Path    
Distance & Hope    
Jungle on Fire    
Crash at Dawn    
Fast Ride to Disaster

From Jackie Scanlon / Juan Dominguez to the world,
NØ