Table Of Contents
- Film Details
- Music Credits
- Essential Discography
- Quotes and Commentary
- Videos
- Bibliography and References
Film Details
Year: 1990
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Producers: Sydney Pollack, Mark Rosenberg
Executive Producer: Susan Solt
Writers: Frank Pierson, Alan J. Pakula, based upon the novel by Scott Turow
Main Cast: Harrison Ford, Bonnie Bedelia, Brian Dennehy, Raul Julia, Greta Scacchi, Paul Winfield, John Spencer
Genre: Drama – Thriller – Mystery
For synopsis and full cast and crew credits, visit the IMDb page
Music Credits
Music Composed and Conducted by John Williams
Music Editor: Ken Wannberg
Scoring Mixer: Armin Steiner
Orchestra Contractor: Sandy DeCrescent
Orchestrators: Herbert Spencer, John Neufeld
Recorded at 20th Century Fox Studios Scoring Stage, Los Angeles, California in April 1990
Essential Discography
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1990)
Varèse Sarabande – VS-5280 (LP) – VSD-5280 (CD)
Produced by John Williams
Executive Producer: Robert Townson
Recording Supervisor: Tom Null
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – CD (1990)
Soundtrack Listeners Communications Inc./Varèse Sarabande – SLCS-7038
Japanese CD pressing
The Deluxe Edition – CD (2022)
Varèse Sarabande – VCL 0622 1227
Reissue Produced by Mike Matessino
Executive Producer: Cary E. Mansfield
Edited by Neil S. Bulk
Mastered by Mike Matessino
Liner notes: Jeff Bond
Expanded film score presentation with additional bonus tracks
Quotes and Commentary
Composer John Williams has created one of his most hauntingly beautiful scores for Alan J. Pakula’s film adaptation of Scott Turow’s best selling novel Presumed Innocent.
The film is a highly complex and suspenseful telling of the plight of prosecutor Rusty Sabich (Harrison Ford) who becomes caught up in the murder investigation of a beautiful colleague with whom he had been carrying on a heated extra-marital affair.
John Williams’ score is a fine example of the composer’s truly special
understanding of film scoring requirements.
Williams’ dramatic sensibilities are beautifully reflected in his restrained undercurrent of love beneath the dark and somewhat foreboding surface of the music. His love theme is more of a love motif which is always searching but never fully realizes its true romantic quality. This is a masterful score which takes a prized position in the repertoire of a composer who is likewise always searching for new forums of musical expression.
-Robert Townson 1
Presumed Innocent hearkens back to the subtly gothic atmosphere of suspense Williams brought to earlier projects such as Images (1972), The Eiger Sanction (1975) and the period telefilm Jane Eyre (1970).
Unlike the composer’s grand-scale works that followed Star Wars, Presumed Innocent is spare (the two-hour-plus film features under 40 minutes of music), understated and contemporary in featuring synthesizers, something Williams rarely employed prominently in his symphonic blockbuster scores.
Opening with a motif for piano and a melancholy main theme (first played by a lonely solo horn and later by piano and keyboard), the work seems at first monothematic, but gradually reveals a wealth of additional material and complexity.
Williams’ main title is bookended by a haunting motif for piano, a kind of siren call associated with Rusty’s and sometimes other characters’-memories of Carolyn, its repeating final notes giving the melody a circular quality that speaks to Rusty’s obsession and the corrupting quality of Carolyn’s appeal.
The score’s primary melody, heard first on horn in the main title, has a feeling of resignation and loneliness that encapsulates Rusty’s feelings of regret, the dark web in which he seems hopelessly ensnared and the bitterness hanging over his marriage.
These two themes play in almost every cue, and it’s a testament to the composer’s elegant shaping of the melodies that they never wear out their welcome but instead seem to seep into the listener and the film, effortlessly informing its mood.2
-Jeff Bond
Videos
Main Title from Presumed Innocent | Warner Bros.
Brett Mitchell performs his original solo piano arrangement of the main theme from John Williams’s score for Presumed Innocent
Bibliography and References
. Bond, Jeff – Presumed Innocent – The Deluxe Edition liner notes, Varèse Sarabande Records, 2022
. Dyer, Richard – “Williams Talks of Pops’ Past, Future,” The Boston Globe, 19 July 1990
Footnotes