130. Chinatown (Main Title)

Chinatown - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (ABC, 1974);
composed by Jerry Goldsmith

I have never gotten with the phrase “Love Theme from” although that is the official designation of the music that plays under (or with) the opening credits of this great rewired noir written by Robert Towne and directed into perdition by Roman Polanski. But here the designation is more than fair – love is fucked up. And sometimes a film’s makers reject one score and hire you to compose an entirely different one in ten days, and somehow under deadline you come up with a theme that acts like a full recursion of the film’s emotional mayhem – the deepest longing handcuffed to an unconsolable abyssal plunge. The music starts in one bright key with a strum of muted harp strings and wispy upward phrases, and seconds later drops precipitously into a theme on solo trumpet with piano counterpoint played in a completely different key like a trap door opening under you. I do not know of any other movie theme that touches it – maybe one or another of Nino Rota’s – and it is so wedded to its context that covering it is out of the question – unless you are John Zorn and precede your version with three minutes of thrash punk.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day through Advant and at least semi-regularly until Donald goes away.