The cinema has lost one of its most emblematic figures. the greek composer Vangelis, the man with a thousand keyboards, passed away this week at the age of 79. The loss is sensitive, since his work, although not as prolific as other great film composers, has given some of the most memorable and epic works that we have been able to hear in a movie theater.
Beyond his early work making music for Greek films, their projects have been very selective, given his refusal to have a too commercial trajectory. Which is ironic, since these same three proposals are three great successes, and their music has contributed to making them truly formidable. Let’s remember the important figure of him recovering some of these pieces on streaming platforms.
‘Chariots of Fire’ (1981)
director: Hugh Hudson. Distribution: Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Cheryl Campbell, Alice Krige, Ian Holm.
It is impossible that you have not heard Vangelis’s memorable piano melody accompanying images of corridors or of people performing some sporting feat -or some parody of someone trying to do a sporting feat-. This is how this classic sports drama that was the great winner of the 1981 Oscars has crept into the collective memory.
Hugh Hudson makes a very academic and classic effort, trying to replicate epics from the past and bring them to the tone of 80s cinema. If ‘Chariots of Fire’ is capable of achieving this, it is, in part, thanks to the formidable synthesizers of the Greek musician, who these images spread vigor and strength of running athletes who are common in great reviews of the history of the seventh art.
View on Disney+
Blade Runner (1982)
director: Ridley Scott. Distribution: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos
Almost all there is to say about the masterpiece of Ridley Scott It’s already said. Visionary, thoughtful, seminal and absolutely brilliant. ‘Blade Runner’ is a triumph of science fictionwhich starts from Philip K. Dick to create the definitive model of futuristic dystopia that we will see replicated over and over again.
Vangelis’s music is essential to consolidate the cyberpunk atmosphere to which this work aspires. His incredible use of keyboards charges his story with strength and emotion. full of androids obsessed with its obsolescence and its practically slave condition. Her notes put the icing on the cake to masterful sequences such as the unforgettable speech by Rutger Hauer that has established the film as a classic.
Watch on HBO Max | Criticism in Espinof
‘Alexander the Great’ (‘Alexander’, 2004)
director: OliverStone. Distribution: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto.
It hasn’t become as timeless a classic as the other two, but there’s no denying that the work of Oliver Stone it has decidedly classic ambitions, very much from another era. Perhaps that is why he wanted to bring the Greek composer out of a prolonged retirement since he made ‘1492: The Conquest of Paradise’, also for Ridley, in 1992.
And it was possibly the best of all the decisions that Stone makes in this enormous portrait of the figure of Alexander the Great, since Vangelis’s music maintains a classic epic that gives solidity to the setting and accompanies the moments of enormous action. Even though the film may be more unbalanced than other epics of the time, such as ‘Troy’, it has some strong points that are difficult to question, including the music.
See on HBO Max and Movistar | Criticism in Espinof