Word: franju
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Born in Lyons, France, in 1924, Jarre made his way to Paris after the war and contributed incidental music to theater pieces. In 1951, Georges Franju, maker of uncompromising documentaries, hired Jarre to score Hôtel des Invalides, his study of wounded veterans; it was the first of many Jarre pieces (The Longest Day, The Train, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) that found a sepulchral undertone in martial music. Old masters like William Wyler (The Collector) and Alfred Hitchcock (Topaz) and Young Turks like Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction) and Jerry Zucker (Ghost) called on Jarre to provide music that was subtle...
...prodigy; he was in his late teens before he decided to study music. In Paris after the war he hooked up with two exceptional impresarios of French theater: Jean-Louis Barrault and Jean Vilar. For Vilar he wrote incidental music for modern readings of classical plays. In 1951, Georges Franju, a director of spare, uncompromising documentaries, hired Jarre to score his film essay on wounded veterans, the 1951 Hôtel des Invalides. In the next dozen years they would collaborate on two more shorts and five sepulchral features, including Head Against the Walls and Eyes Without a Face. Franju...
...Jarre had been commuting between French films and Hollywood-financed ones for a few years before Lawrence. He graduated from short films (for Alain Resnais and Jacques Demy as well as Franju) to international employment with the 1960 doppleganger mystery The Crack in the Mirror; perhaps writer-producer Darryl F. Zanuck had been impressed by Jarre's scores for the early Franju features. Zanuck used him for two other Fox films, The Big Gamble and his D-Day superproduction The Longest Day. But it was not this work that led Jarre to Lawrence; it was his music for Serge Bourguignon...
...sounds wise, looks slim and relatively youthful, dominates the weekend with her personality. She's obsessed with what will happen to her property and belongings but declines to spell it out in her will. Scob, who nearly a half-century ago was the muse of the remarkable director George Franju (Eyes Without a Face, Thérese Desqueyroux, Judex), has an ingrained insight into the character that not only presents Hélene in her 70s but suggests the kind of mother she must have been. There's also a taut sensuality that hints at a family secret not revealed...
...along-on the Late Show, in Woman of the Year or Pat and Mike, models for Kasdan's artful updating. His script, and the movie, improve as they progress, and the ending is especially satisfying-Kasdan's signature on this valentine to an old movie genre. Georges Franju would be pleased. -By Richard Corliss