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Maurice Jarre, 1924-2009
Composer Maurice Jarre died on March 29, 2009, at his home in Malibu, California, after a battle with cancer. He was 84.
Maurice Alexis Jarre was born in Lyon, France, in September 1924, and originally studied engineering at the Sorbonne before turning to music at the Conservatoire de Paris, where he studied composition, percussion, and conducting. His early career included work in French theatre, notably as musical director for Jean-Louis Barrault’s Théâtre National Populaire.
Jarre’s began scoring films in France in the 1950s, notably for acclaimed director Georges Franju, and came to international prominence in 1962 for his epic, percussive, sweeping masterpiece score for director David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. The film’s stirring main theme, performed by a full orchestra and augmented with Middle Eastern instruments, became one of the most recognizable in cinema and won Jarre his first Oscar. He capitalized on the success again in 1965 with another David Lean film, Doctor Zhivago, where his romantic and melancholic “Lara’s Theme” became a popular standard. Read more…
SUNSHINE – Maurice Jarre
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It seems to have taken forever, but Maurice Jarre is finally back in the scoring saddle again. After enduring the least-productive decade of his entire career, and after taking the longest sabbatical of all the top film composers, Jarre’s return to form has been cemented with his score for Sunshine, an epic drama tracing the social and political history of a Hungarian family before, during and after World War II. Director Istvan Szabó’s film traces the lineage of the Sonnenschein family, Hungarian Jews whose lives alter forever with the onset of the Anschluss and the Nazi take-over of what was then Austro-Hungary. The three male members of the family are all played by Ralph Fiennes (with varying degrees of facial hair, both in quantity and success): firstly Ignatz, a lawyer and pharmacist whose “miracle tonic” makes the family a fortune; then Ignatz’s son Adam, a lawyer and Olympic fencing champion who falls victim to the Holocaust; and finally Adam’s son Ivan, whose influential role in post-War politics allows him to bury the ghosts of his past. With a supporting cast that includes William Hurt, Jennifer Ehle, Rachel Weisz and Deborah Kara Unger, Sunshine is every bit an “epic period drama”, running for almost three hours in length and featuring stunning production values. Contributing immeasurably to the latter is Jarre’s captivating orchestral score, easily his best work in years. Read more…
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