What´s New Pussycat?

After the Fox

Casino Royale

Music by Burt Bacharach

 

 

 

One of the greatest hitmakers of the story, composer Burt Bacharach was the creator of an incredible sequence of hits and pop classics through the 60´s.

A casual encounter between his then wife, actress Angie Dickinson and producer Charles Feldman, led Bacharach to compose for the comedy What's New Pussycat? (1965). The upbeat pop approach by Bacharach, incorporating rhythmic and the current electrified pop/rock genre, worked perfectly for the comedy directed by Clive Donner, the first screenplay by Woody Allen brought to the screen. But despite being extremely creative in pop, rhythmic and romantic themes, Bacharach had no idea how to compose for a movie narrative at all. His work for movies was restricted to sequences of nice themes and its instrumental variations. The Pussycat´s main theme, with the booming voice of Tom Jones, is one of the kitsch classic of the time and tracks like High Temperature, Low Resistance, surpasses the usual composer´s romantism to become a musical caricature. Considering the assumed farce of the film, the result is perfect. Written for Dionne Warwick, the ballad Here I Am, joined the soundtrack becoming one of its most prominent themes. The expanded edition (double) released by Quartet Records also includes the music for the followup movie Pussycat Pussycat I Love You (1969) composed by Lalo Schifrin.

 

In the following year, another comedy for Bacharach, After the Fox, directed by Vittorio de Sica and starring Peter Sellers and Victor Mature (in a great moment of self-parody). The recipe for the soundtrack was the same as What's New Pussycat: short musical motifs, pop approach and unusual arrangements. The main theme is sung by The Hollies and has the nice participation of Peter Sellers. It is hard to highlight best moments: the work is constantly rich alternating pop moments of the first line (as Italian Fuzz), the instrumental version of the main theme After the Fox, along with tarantelas and satirical themes as Tourist Trap, The Via Veneto and Grotta Rosa. An highly pleasant sound portrait of its time, with a lightness that was not repeated even in the composer's own work.

 

Finally, for the James Bond satire Casino Royale (1967), Bacharach immersed onto the pastiche proposed for the movie and delivered a number of pieces that blended elegance to pop extravagance arrangements. Being so, harpsychords, strings, trumpet solos, satirical arrangements and various sound ornaments sums up in a remarkably extravaganza. Casino Royale is the result of the experiences that Bachrach had tested in the previous films. The track that become a classic was The Look of Love in the velvety voice of Dusty Springfield, covered numerous times, but never surpassed in this original version. The main theme, with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, is another remarkable hit of the period and one of the (many) classics of the composer. Curiously, Bacharach´s soundtracks, resisted to the time better than the movies.