Silva Screen Records release John Barry’s score from the 1982 neo-noir movie Hammett. The film follows the fictional account of real-life mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, and his involvement in the investigation of a beautiful Chinese cabaret actress' mysterious disappearance in San Francisco. With Hammett, Silva Screen has gone back to the original studio session tapes and reconstructed the score as written, with some additional cues and alternate versions...

This is one of the four reissues from Francis Ford Coppola's (who was the movie's executive producer) American Zoetrope catalogue, the first two being The Godfather Suite and The Conversation, followed by Hammett and The Escape Artist.

It's always a pleasure to unearth a new John Barry score that had previously passed me by. For fans of the composer's work there's plenty here to sink your teeth into. There are numerous themes and set pieces that could have come straight out of his extensive work on the James Bond movies, whilst his background in jazz comes to the fore in other areas of the score.

The opening of 'The Opium Den / Escape from Fong's' reminded me, for some reason, of Laurie Johnson's theme to the The Avengers TV series.

Barry creates a sparse and concise period score, capturing the mood of 1920s and mixing enjoyable jazz and suspense cues. Here, his usual large string section was reduced to just twenty-two players and supported by the two principal soloists, Ronny Lang on clarinet/alto sax and Mike Lang on piano. The brass section was cut down to just three - a French horn, trumpet and trombone. Barry impressed Wenders with his demo of the main theme, rolling blues arranged for piano and clarinet, and went on to use it throughout the score. Sometime after, Barry reflected on his work on Hammett: "I loved doing Hammett. That was a terrific movie. If the director’s got it correctly onto the screen and that intimacy is present, it’s just great to be able to write that simply and orchestrate that sparsely."

I loved the fact that Silva Screen Records has included additional cues and alternate version of some of the tracks. This alone makes it worth while repurchasing if you already own the original release. This is a thoroughly enjoyable score.

9

Darren Rea