The Ipcress File
Music by John Barry
"If you want to see an example of what music does for a movie, go see Ipcress File. Then you will understand what John Barry is all about" - Michael Caine
More realistic (or maybe less pop) than James Bond, the series Harry Palmer, starring Michael Caine was one of the better spy series of the 60s. In the same year of Thunderball, John Barry did the music for the first Harry Palmer film. The melodic proximity of the main themes of Thunderbal and Ipcress File is curious. But while the adventures of James Bond asked for more muscle and presence, Harry Palmer's missions were more realistic (at least in this first adventure) and relying more on dramatic musical tone. If James Bond always tended to pop, Harry Palmer called for a jazz soundtrack no doubt. With the ballad A Man Alone as the main melodic material, the Ipcress File´s music is made up of respectful jazzy variations of the main theme as in Jazz Alone and Alone Blues, this late with its six minutes of after midnight loose atmosphere. British cool jazz, to summarize. The main theme (Main Title) is inspired by The Third Man, but with Anton Kara´s zither (European zither) replaced by harpsichord in a solitary motif over chord progressions. The comparison between the music of James Bond and Harry Palmer reveals how music is essential to "dramatic packaging" a film and why John Barry, with its functionality and elegance without excess, was one of the greatest names of this art.
“Is Ipcress a figure from Greek mythology?”
“No, it´s a distorted word invented from Induction of Psycho-neurosis by Conditioned Reflex with Stress”
– from Len Deighton´s book
Royal jazz
10
in