John Carpenter

John Carpenter is one of the most influential directors of the American generation of the 1970s – a decade that saw a reappraisal of so-called B-movies – alongside contemporaries such as Brian De Palma and David Cronenberg. With these filmmakers, Carpenter has always shared several traits, in particular an almost artisanal approach to filmmaking, built on a passion for genre cinema, tight budgets and a wealth of visionary ideas. But it was Carpenter above all who, reworking the B-movies of previous decades through a distinctly personal lens (from the Universal monster movies to the sci-fi films of Don Siegel and Wolf Rilla), helped bring about the rebirth of the genre, gifting us a string of cult works of enormous visionary power.

All this, however, may not be enough to justify the almost mystical aura surrounding the director. One decisive factor, which pushed the idea of artisanal filmmaking to its very limit, is that he was also the composer of the soundtracks to all his own films. This was made possible by the fact that Carpenter had studied music since childhood, thanks to his musician father, who even had him sit in on several sessions with Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison. Despite these experiences, which he would later draw on, John soon realized his future lay in cinema and, guided by clear ideas from the outset, managed to fuse his overwhelming passion for film with his musical training to create something truly unique.

In both film and music, Carpenter never had the chance – nor, probably, the desire – to make high-budget works, unlike other directors of his generation who also started out in genre B-movies (Spielberg or Lucas, for instance) but went on to have that opportunity. This approach translates into a thoroughly hands-on style of filmmaking, capable of churning out cult movies on shoestring budgets, blending typical genre settings (horror, sci-fi) with a thoroughly distinctive and alternative political and social vision (most notably, the anti-capitalist, left-leaning 1988 film "They Live"). On the soundtrack side, this translates into homemade electronic music that nonetheless couldn't do without the collaboration of a professional, Alan Howarth, brought in to make up for Carpenter's technical limitations.

The instruments used by Howarth are the ARP and Prophet-5 synthesizers and a Linn LM-1 drum machine, along with an acoustic piano and one, perhaps two, electric guitars. Typically, Carpenter comes up with the melodies, and together with Howarth builds and arranges the tracks step by step. This gave rise to a long and fruitful collaboration, starting with the soundtracks to his early films "Dark Star" (1974), "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976), "Halloween" (1978) and "The Fog" (1980), reaching its peak with Escape From New York (1981). For the occasion, Carpenter conjures up the setting of a wholly visionary dystopia, halfway between political fiction and comic book. His bleak view of humanity's fate leaves no room for any alternative other than the end of everything. This decayed New York is no better than the rest of a world that has survived a devastating war, nor certainly better than the men who now rule over what's left of it. The one man who stands apart is no classic "hero", but a disillusioned anti-hero like Snake Plissken, who does everything he can to save himself while giving up on saving the world, which he considers lost for good.

The film's dark settings (it is set entirely at night) are underscored by pounding electronic rhythms and drum-machine beats, as if marking the relentless march of time toward an inevitably disastrous ending. The exception is the opening track, the now-legendary "Man Title". While Carpenter himself has cited Tangerine Dream and even The Police as the main influences on this track, it's impossible not to think of how important listening to the soundtracks of Italian genre films must have been, from Goblin to Morricone and Micalizzi. Either way, the synthesis achieved by Carpenter and Howarth is flawless: a few synth notes, an electric piano, a loop, a drum machine, a memorable melody, and the job is done. But although this is the track that anyone today could recognize within seconds, it's probably not the reason why "Escape From New York" deserves to be considered a landmark.

It's in the tracks that follow, in fact, that Carpenter's musical influence truly becomes immense. It's hard to say just how much later electronic music owes to his intuitions. A track like "The Bank Robbery" is emblematic. Everything is built through the progressive addition of elements, one after another. First a kick drum, then a guitar, then a sound reminiscent of maracas, moving on to snares, electronic effects, handclaps, percussion. It's a constant accumulation of sonic elements, following in the footsteps of American minimalist composers like Steve Reich. The track shifts slowly while keeping a consistent structure, built around a handful of recurring reference notes. The same approach is repeated in two other classics, "The Duke Arrives/The Barricades" and "President At The Train", where the repeated guitar notes change only slightly. As always, repetition breeds hypnosis, and Carpenter's rhythms feel as though they could go on forever without ever growing tiresome. In "He's Still Alive/Romero" and "Police Action", it even takes just two repeated notes to build the necessary tension.

Tracks like "The President Is Gone" and "Romero And The President" seem to anticipate landmark electronic acts – Boards Of Canada spring to mind, a band hard to imagine without some of Carpenter's own intuitions. "Engulfed Cathedral" is an interpretation of Debussy's prelude "La Cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral)", a highly risky attempt that can be considered successful and well suited to the film's imagery. Extremely minimal, and clearly descended from the "Halloween" soundtrack, are instead "Arrival At The Library" and "Across The Roof", the two moments most tied to the sound of the piano.

If there are traces of cosmic music here, they are to be found in the two versions of "Back To The Pod" – particularly the second, which ignites at the moment the lunatics arrive – and in "Descent Into New York", which plunges us for the first time into the darkness of a city without light.

The music of "Escape From New York" was first released in 1981 by Varèse Sarabande, in an abridged thirteen-track edition; in 2000, Silva Screen issued a definitive, remastered complete version containing twenty-eight tracks (eight of which are dialogue excerpts from the film). This review refers to the complete 2000 edition.

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30/05/2021