Here’s a nice one for you (and Simon).

Did you know that the tune the brassband plays during the Olympics opening ceremony is effectively Vangelis’ own “L’Enfant” from his Opera Sauvage (1979) album, in a different arrangement? I recognised it while watching the film on Saturday, and have just checked with the original.

He’s done this before. The love theme in Blade Runner is “Memories Of Green” from See You Later (1980).

But “Reds” was an colossal commercial flop while “Chariots of Fire” was a colossal commercial hit, garnering over US$58.8 million at the box office in the U.S. alone (adjust for inflation that translates into over US$155 million dollars today. Not shabby then, or now, for an historical drama.)

As the great director Billy Wilder said, “An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark – that is critical genius.”

So I have both films in my permanent collection and enjoy watching both — for different reasons.

And I like the music. Not only Vaneglis’s but the Gilbert and Sullivan songs. Particularly effective was how “He is an Englishman” was woven into the end of Act 1 montage to comment and underscore Harold Abraham’s motivation for running.

I really believe that great symphonic scores are timeless. Electronic music isn’t, because the sound always refers back to the time when those particular instruments, effects, and processes were en vogue.

Didn’t DRIVE (and IT FOLLOWS) go deliberately for that analogue 80’s sound? There is a massive revival of that sound, and those instruments. These days, so many music plugins are being released that emulate those analogue synths.

But I agree, the Chariots Of Fire main theme is not the greatest. That synth + piano mix is just super corny. On the other hand, I remember there is one particular cue in Chariots Of Fire that gives us a hint of where Vangelis would be going next… a remote flavour of the Blade Runner main theme (it’s not the scene this article talks about).

I think it’s one of those films that announces itself as an Important Film, and there’s always something off putting about that. I’m not against important films with a small i and a small f, but as with The Terminator, School of Rock or Groundhog Day, I find that importance is most effective if it’s buried deep under a thick layer of genre.

On the music, I’d go as far as to say that all film music has a tendency to age badly. Movie music is important in establishing mood, and the mood that a piece of music establishes in one era might not do that in another. That said, the synth music that you allude to I think has aged better than most, in films like Assault on Precinct Thirteen, Manhunter or A Clockwork Orange (let’s see how the music to Drive fares in years to come). Its also can’t be that the Chariots music is so familiar – Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now still sounds as good as it did 37 years ago. Perhaps we have to conclude that the Chariots music just sucks!