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MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON – Michael Small
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Mountains of the Moon is an adventure-drama directed by Bob Rafelson, based on the novel Burton and Speke by William Harrison. A passion project for the director, it starred Patrick Bergin and Iain Glen as the real-life explorers Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke, and is a dramatic chronicle of their expedition to Central Africa in 1857 which culminated in Speke’s discovery of the source of the River Nile. Although it was well received when it originally opened in February 1990 – it was described as ‘an epic of sweep and intimacy’ by Peter Travers in Rolling Stone – it is virtually unknown today, which is a shame because it is a film of genuine visual grandeur (it boasts cinematography by Roger Deakins), and has a terrific supporting cast including Richard E. Grant, Fiona Shaw, Omar Sharif, and Delroy Lindo in a very early role. Read more…
Michael Small, 1939-2003
Composer Michael Small died in New York City on November 25, 2003, at the age of 64, from prostate cancer.
One of the most distinctive American film composers of the 1970s, Small became especially associated with psychological thrillers, creating unsettling, frequently unconventional scores for Klute, The Parallax View, Marathon Man, The Stepford Wives and Night Moves. Over a career lasting more than three decades he scored more than 50 films and television productions.
Small was born in New York City on May 30, 1939, and grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey. His father, Jack Small, was an actor who became general manager for the Shubert theatrical organization, and Michael initially dreamed of becoming a Broadway composer. He studied English at Williams College, where he wrote musicals and played jazz piano, and later spent a year studying at Harvard. Only after returning to New York in 1962 did he undertake formal musical training, studying orchestration privately with composer Meyer Kupferman.
Small entered films almost accidentally when producer Edward Pressman heard his work through the BMI musical-theatre workshop and hired him to score Out of It (1969), starring Jon Voight. Two years later he began the collaboration that would define his career when director Alan J. Pakula hired him for Klute (1971). Small’s sparse chamber score used unusual percussion, microtonal xylophone, electronics and a ghostly female voice to reflect both the danger surrounding Jane Fonda’s character and her complicated psychological world. Read more…
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