... seen Sorcerer now and it strikes me as a properly countercultural film very much in the vein of Zabriskie Point (1970) in the way that it is extremely nihilistic and ends up with destruction. Zabriskie Point had Pink Floyd doing the soundtrack here we have Tangerine Dream and in both cases the soundtrack is indissociable from the film itself. In the case of Sorcerer William Friedkin actually said that the music Tangerine Dream made cannot be taken away from the film otherwise the film would not exist or something to that extent. Sorcerer was their first film score and led to many more in the 80s and beyond
I had no awareness of the filmmaker William Friedkin but then realised that I had seen The French Connection (1971) the first part which he had directed and also The Exorcist which I have never seen and have no appetite for .... he also says somewhere he wanted Tangerine Dream to score The Exorcist
To summarise I would say Sorcerer is a good film to recommend to folks who enjoy counterculture the music of Tangerine Dream and who are students of the 1970s Zeitgeist. I was not overimpressed with the cast; apparently he could not get the high-hitters he wanted : Steve McQueen Lino Ventura etc and had to do with Roy Scheider whom I found here to be a tad wooden as the lead; none of the main 4 were really stellar ; adequate at best and there is value in saying that a more stellar cast would have swung this opus into a higher sphere. Anyway it got made we heard Tangerine Dream so all good
It is no masterpiece and was not well-received at the time and lost over $10 million as it cost $22 million to make and only brought in about five or nine million anyway watch it make up your own mind.
- I still think Zabriskie Point is a superior movie to Sorcerer but Sorcerer has got quite a moody feel and although the storyline is very simplistic it takes you somewhere and says something about the Zeitgeist Of the second half of the 70s. Also not to discount the vistas from the Dominican Republic and Mexico
- In these two films to which you could add More (1969) by Barbet Schroeder the main characters end up a-cropper and quite frankly it reminds one of the Baader-Meinhoff saga which took place at around the same time as those movies.
I had no awareness of the filmmaker William Friedkin but then realised that I had seen The French Connection (1971) the first part which he had directed and also The Exorcist which I have never seen and have no appetite for .... he also says somewhere he wanted Tangerine Dream to score The Exorcist
To summarise I would say Sorcerer is a good film to recommend to folks who enjoy counterculture the music of Tangerine Dream and who are students of the 1970s Zeitgeist. I was not overimpressed with the cast; apparently he could not get the high-hitters he wanted : Steve McQueen Lino Ventura etc and had to do with Roy Scheider whom I found here to be a tad wooden as the lead; none of the main 4 were really stellar ; adequate at best and there is value in saying that a more stellar cast would have swung this opus into a higher sphere. Anyway it got made we heard Tangerine Dream so all good
It is no masterpiece and was not well-received at the time and lost over $10 million as it cost $22 million to make and only brought in about five or nine million anyway watch it make up your own mind.
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