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1 MAIN TITLE 2 THE SMOKING FROG 3 BEDTIME AT BLYE HOUSE 4 NEW CLOTHES FOR QUINT 5 THE CHILDREN'S HOUR 6 PAS DE DEUX 7 LIKE A CHICKEN ON A SPIT 8 ALL THAT PAIN 9 SUMMER ROWING 10 QUINT HAS A KITE 11 PUB PIANO 12 ACT TWO PRELUDE: MYLES IN THE AIR 13 UPSIDE DOWN TURTLE 14 AN ARROW FOR MRS. GROSE 15 FLORA AND MISS JESSEL 16 TEA IN THE TREE 17 THE FLOWER BATH 18 PIG STY 19 MOVING DAY 20 THE BIG SWIM 21 THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS 22 BURNING DOLLS 23 EXIT PETER QUINT, ENTER THE NEW GOVERNESS; RECAPITULATION AND POSTLUDE MUSIC COMPOSED AND CONDUCTED BY JERRY FIELDING WE DISCOVER WHAT When Marlon Brando arrived in THE NIGHTCOMERS had allegedly come HAPPENED TO THE Cambridgeshire, England, during January into being because Michael Winner wanted to of 1971, his career literally hung in the direct “an art film.” Michael Hastings, a well- GARDENER PETER QUINT balance. Deemed uninsurable, too troubled known London playwright, had constructed a and difficult to work with, the actor had run kind of “prequel” to Henry James’ famous novel, AND THE GOVERNESS out of pictures, steam, and advocates. A The Turn of the Screw, which had been filmed couple of months earlier he had informed in 1961, splendidly, as THE INNOCENTS. MARGARET JESSEL author Mario Puzo in a phone conversation In Hastings’ new story, we discover what that he was all washed up, that no one was happened to the gardener Peter Quint and going to hire him again, least of all to play the governess Margaret Jessel: specifically Don Corleone in the upcoming film version how they influenced the two evil children, of Puzo’s runaway best-seller, The Godfather. Flora and Miles, and subsequently met their Depressed, unwell, and a little desperate for deaths at the children’s hands. Winner’s money, Brando had accepted just $50,000 somewhat highbrow project had languished for a month’s work in a low-budget UK for a few years because no one was willing production called THE NIGHTCOMERS, to finance it. Eventually, the producing triptych largely because one of its producers was of Kastner/Ladd/Kanter came on board, and his friend and former agent, Jay Kanter, and it was Kanter who suggested Brando for the secondarily because there was nothing role of the charmingly malicious Quint. else on offer. However, a little light was beginning to shine, because between the Winner at this time was extremely sought- conversation with Puzo in late 1970 and after, doing film after film in quick succession, his trip to England the following January, he and he was already contracted to shoot had actually managed to film an audition for CHATO’S LAND in Spain when the money the gangster epic (not that the executives for NIGHTCOMERS came through. In fact, in charge were all that impressed with the he would have barely five weeks between the results). The greatest actor of his generation completion of principal photography on one, was in decline, and his most recent effort, before starting the next. However, determined QUIEMADA, had disintegrated into muddled to work with Brando, Winner forged chaos. So, as Brando reported for work on ahead, knowing calamity would strike if the a large, chilly country estate in the middle of recalcitrant star lived up to his reputation for an unkind British winter, the assembled cast creating havoc. Luckily, fortune would smile on and crew held their collective, frozen breath. both men. Barely two weeks later, Paramount Pictures in Hollywood announced that Marlon affair would be potentially catastrophic for Brando had been cast as the title character her, she resisted, although remaining dewy- in THE GODFATHER, marking the legend’s eyed at the thought of him, even at the end of return to the big leagues. This was music filming when he was still obsessing about his to Winner’s ears, for he knew that Brando bulk. He told her: “We are but ships that pass could not now misbehave. He wouldn’t dare in the night - or in my case, a tug.” jeopardize the chance-of-a-lifetime comeback opportunity THE GODFATHER represented, Entering the equation late, as all composers and according to many observers, the do, was Jerry Fielding, who was on top form. actor was about as content, playful, and He scored five consecutive pictures with cooperative as one could imagine - the very Michael Winner, and in the process both men antithesis of what the company feared. British over-achieved - and neither would scale these actress Stephanie Beacham, who plays Miss heights again. Fielding was particularly driven Jessel, was captivated by the volatile, larger- during this time. He was overloaded with than-life Brando, and clearly developed a assignments for both films and television, but crush. She had many difficult scenes with him somehow the confluence of circumstances involving violent, sado-masochistic sex and on the Winner films really brought out the best considerable nudity, but she was touched by he had to give. He loved the movies, loved his anxious, and often shy concerns regarding England, and especially loved recording there his weight. Although nowhere near as large with fine musicians and his trusted engineer, as he would become in later years, his girth Richard Lewzey. There was a symbiosis of bothered him, and he conspired with Beacham thought, an ease of understanding, and the to hide his “pot”; the sex scenes were re- sound that Lewzey wrung from Fielding’s NO OTHER GROUP blocked to have her body cover his as much marshaled forces is unique. It is this writer’s OF SCORES FROM as possible. Only twenty-three at the time, contention that no other group of scores Stephanie gamely struggled to accommodate from any period of film sound like these ANY PERIOD OF FILM his needs at the expense of her own vanity, do: dark, lustrous, silky, ominous, beautiful, bearing, as she did, the camera’s remorseless brilliant. There are melodies aplenty, but SOUND LIKE THESE scrutiny. She told Brando’s biographer, Peter not open to easy access. They are there, Manso, that she wrote in her diary: “Heavens, woven deep in the texture of this gorgeous, DO: DARK, LUSTROUS, the sight of Oliver Hardy, as Marlon thinks fine-tuned fabric. As with all great, tailor- SILKY, OMINOUS, of himself, in jockey shorts and Wellington made works of art, it takes an eagle eye to boots, just made me die!” Knowing that an BEAUTIFUL, BRILLIANT see the workmanship, the craft and detail. of movies I have done were to provide me with And in this illustrious company of scores the comparable degree of pride, pleasure, - in all of Fielding’s canon - there is nothing and satisfaction throughout the doing, and on else quite like THE NIGHTCOMERS. It’s a observation of the whole, then I would indeed one-off; a faux-classical exercise befitting its march through life grinning like a mule eating subject, Debussy-esque, but shot through thistle and in a constant state of euphoria. with the composer’s trademark gun-metal The task was to deal with the period, the real sensibilities. There isn’t another period film estate, and that peculiar scent which must like this in Fielding’s career, so we don’t know brush the ear ever so gently to remind us that what he would have done in the instance of all is not well and that we are dealing with THE CHALLENGE OF being handed another, but with the current two children who become depraved killers vogue for literary films with English country in their honest, naive sweetness. The setting THE NIGHTCOMERS IS settings, it’s tempting to imagine one of them is English winter landscape, and the mood is possessing the scintillating wrap-around classical - heading into abysmal darkness in a THE STORY’S MIXTURE swirl of Fielding’s engulfing string-section, lush, warm, playful, tragic, proper, and terrible appearing as if by magic after dark, coming way.” OF ROMANCE AND out to play, as it were, with the impish swagger HORROR, ITS MACABRE of demons on the prowl. There is so much here to “brush the ear.” Available for the first time in its entirety, the NOTION THAT LOVING The challenge of THE NIGHTCOMERS is score is one pure (and occasionally impure) the story’s mixture of romance and horror, its pleasure after another: the “Main Title,” SOMEONE LEADS constant twinning of love and hate, and its with its piano-driven promise of adventure, macabre notion that loving someone leads eventually descending into a martial-drum INEXORABLY TO inexorably to killing them. Fielding himself motif of sinister foreboding; “An Arrow for KILLING THEM commented at length on his work here, to Jay Mrs Grose,” startling us with its dark and Alan Quantrill, and his words bear repeating: lonely violin; the trumpet voluntaries that “The assignment was, for me, truly a labor of signify the cruel jokiness of “The Smoking love - and I caution the reader not to cringe Frog”; and the skewed dance-like melodies at the use of that well-worn phrase, too of “Bedtime at Blye House,” which curiously often tossed about in desperation in order invokes THE WILD BUNCH in style and to camouflage the truth. I really mean it. The form, perhaps equating the barbarous antics job did not pay well and the movie was not a of Flora and Miles with the child-like killers of blockbuster. And yet if even the small number Pike Bishop’s gang. “Pig Sty” is shockingly illustrative of the violence inherent in Quint audience and found a mixed response from and Jessel’s foreplay, and “Like a Chicken on critics.

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