Early in director Laurent Bouzereau’s “Music by John Williams” documentary (streaming November 1 on Disney+), Steven Spielberg (who produces with Ron Howard and Kathleen Kennedy) explains that he was worried about the demise of orchestral film scoring in the early ’70s while embarking on his directing career. He was determined that this emotionally stirring, if anachronistic, format would not die on his watch, so he hired John Williams to score his first theatrical feature, “The Sugarland Express” (1974).
Williams surprised Spielberg with an intimate harmonica solo (played by Toots Thielmans) that helped elevate the movie in a way he didn’t expect. Thus began the greatest director-composer collaboration in the history of movies, with Spielberg making 29 films with Williams and admitting that the composer has been indispensable to each and every one of them.
But it was their second film together, “Jaws” (1975), that propelled their careers. With two notes for that blockbuster, Williams went from a journeyman composer (the “Lost in Space” TV series and “The Reivers” movie) to superstardom, elevating orchestral scoring to new musical heights for nearly 50 years.
“I would say that during those first 10 years with Steven Spielberg, you have John Williams composing for a monster in the ocean in ‘Jaws,’ but you’re also in the stars and everything in between,” Bouzereau told IndieWire.
Spielberg’s initial impression of the shark theme was a joke until Williams continued playing it over and over, which convinced the director that it was a stroke of genius. Because the mechanical shark didn’t work, Spielberg was forced to pull back on it and instead rely on the theme as a stand-in for its unseen evocation of terror.
“It shows the instinctual confidence that Steven had in him,” Bouzereau said. “It was a production that was extremely difficult, and Steven’s career was on the line. And here was a composer who gave him something that he was not expecting, and for him to understand and accept helps you understand the brotherhood that they had.”
After “Jaws” came “Star Wars” (1977) with George Lucas, Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982). This marked Williams’ busiest and most successful creative burst of energy, in which he redefined the thematic power of orchestral film scoring.
However, an unforeseen tragedy profoundly impacted Williams’ career trajectory: The death of his first wife, actress Barbara Ruick (“Carousel”), who suffered an aneurysm at the age of 41 during the filming of Robert Altman’s “California Split.” “I felt like she was helping me,” Williams said in the doc. “I think in some way I grew up artistically or gained some kind of energy, or penetrated what I was doing a little more deeply.”
Bouzereau first learned of the tragedy during his interviews with Williams. “What I said to John was that I love the first violin concerto that he did, and he went into explaining how it came to be [as a dedication to his late wife, who adored the violin],” he said. “I discovered really that when you talk music with John, it’s how you talk about his life and you talk about his inspiration, and I think you understand him through music.”
When it came to “Star Wars,” Williams was tasked by Lucas with incorporating the spirit of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s swashbucklers (“The Adventures of Robin Hood”) with Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” Establishing themes for every character was cinematically important to the director, and Williams did so with transcendent force.
“I think that had the score to ‘Star Wars’ been something otherworldly or science fiction-y, I don’t think we would have been pulled into that film and that universe that easily,” Bouzereau said. “So I think John recognized that and recognized the power of creating themes that would bring the pathos to those characters that was very much a part of a brand new universe. And then with ‘Raiders,’ bringing so much depth to his themes that you feel like you know Marion [Karen Allen], even though you don’t see a lot of her.”
Williams approached “Close Encounters” with great confidence, exemplified by his famous five-note alien theme, which he explained in the documentary as representing the most spiritual musical progression he could think of. “I just love that exchange,” said Bouzereau, “because I had said to John, ‘I’d love for you to play the other themes, the alternate takes.’ And he said, ‘No, no, because it’s too iconic. I’d be betraying the film.”
Although Williams was initially overwhelmed by the emotional weight of “Schindler’s List” (1993), he was inspired to compose his most sublime theme built around Itzhak Perlman’s stirring violin solo. Indeed, when the composer first played his sketches on the piano for Spielberg and actress wife Kate Capshaw at the Berkshires, they were both brought to tears.
“I think there’s a realization on John’s part of the sort of legacy that that story conjures and and what it’s about,” added Bouzereau. “And I think the way that theme came about is just absolutely super moving.”
And what was the biggest revelation for Bouzereau in making his doc? “The fact that as an art form, film scoring was not appreciated for a long time,” he said. “I didn’t realize that when John joined the Boston Pops [Orchestra as conductor in 1980], the musicians were not necessarily in line with that way of thinking and felt that film music was not real music. So John, through his music, and his being tenacious in imposing film music to the concert venues, really legitimized film music as an art form.”
