...With regard to ´Togetherª...
by Roberto Pinardi
Few months ago, I enjoyed myself writing some comments on ´LHª and consequently, analyzing its Bacharach’s OST.
Just this OST, for a strange coincidence, was released on CD in August 1997! So, hoping that my little papers can bring good luck ...I will trust again to this luck with ´Togetherª!
In my opinion, ´Togetherª was gone absolutely unnoticed by Bacharach’s fans and in addition, the American critics don’t know much about it.
Few years ago, I saw the italian version, unfortunately without the Bacharach’s musics, and in spite of this, I was struck by its tipically european beauty! Finally, few days ago, I got the VHS of the movie and so, now I can enjoy the Bacharach’s musics and their connections with the images of the movie.
Since the first time I listened to the Bacharach’s OST I was immediately in raptures by its melancholic and strongly musical atmosphere.
Armenia Balducci, the italian director of the movie, has shot it with a really magic touch, putting together experimental movie and introspective dialogues, with a wonderful photograph, by telling the dissolution/resurrection of the relation between man and woman.
The protagonists (1, 2, 3), with an intense acting, stage a story of betrayals and passions seen by the eyes of a women group: the protagonist (1), her young rival (4) and her friends. They lived in Italy, in the latest seventies, during unrests as the women emancipation and the consequent debates for the affirmation of their free sexuality.
The director, has her reference in the neorealism of some movies directed by a colleague as Michelangelo Antonioni. Consequently, the presentation of the most important feminine protagonist, Luisa, is characterized by an intense psychological analysis which lays bare the tormented spirit of this female in her relations with males.
The dialogues in the movie show thematics already discussed by Ingmar Bergman: the incommunicability between man and woman generated by habits, the need of a change in lifestyle and the concept of ´dreamª, conceived as the only (even if terrible!) way to escape from ´realityª. Armenia Balducci takes possession of the thought of the Swedish director, for which the only ´way outª to the failure of the relation between man and woman must be seen in a strong and real LOVE. This love needs to be built beyond the every day habits; it needs to involve not only sex but first of all tenderness and feeling, together with something else which is impalpable and which persists after the grudges and the conflicts. Love, in synthesis, becomes the only way to overcome the anguishes of a gold prison as ´lifeª.
The Bacharach’s music, supported by Paul Anka’s lyrics, is perfect for these introspective atmospheres. It is not scheming as TLO Love, or sunny as Raindrop, but it certainly gives a right idea of Bacharach, both as cultured composer and arranger which is able to produce little instrumental ´masterpiecesª as (*****).
Both the musical protagonists and all the orchestra support in an excellent way the songs, which are fitted in the movie as a story-teller’s voice, becoming in this way, integrant part of the movie itself.
Well done, Burt!
In this time in which old Bacharach’s recordings are released, in my opinion, the OST of this movie, which shows us the last (?) Bacharach’s great ´longingª (clearly not commercial but strongly ´actualª!) as composer, COULD BE RELEASED ON CD!
I wish to thank once again my wife Antonella for her enourmous patience and for her help in the English translation of my ...thought!
Brief schemes of the movie and of the Lp are shown just later on!