The great British[sic...born in NYC] film composer and arranger John Barry has just died (Jan 30). Released by Network DVD (Region 2) in 2006 was Séance on a Wet Afternoon - arguably Barry's first 'proper' film score (US DVD without extras). Directed by Bryan Forbes in 1962, the DVD has a fascinating audio commentary (when nowadays many are just downright perfunctory) by Forbes and his actress wife from the same film Nanette Newman. "When Derek [York] my editor and I had finished it I was absolutely convinced it was a turkey and would be a failure and I didn't even stay for the first night in England...I had no confidence in it at all." It proved an enormous success in the States and Forbes relates the story of how famed American bandleader Artie Shaw bought the American rights, made a fortune and subsequently lost it all. Forbes can claim to have discovered John Barry having asked him to do something small for The L-Shaped Room. "He was very diffident, very thin and as Michael Caine said you wouldn't believe he had [a breathe or a note] in him." Seance broke all the rules at the time and was one of the Britain's first cinema verite on location films (there were even laws prohibiting tripods on the pavement).

"I asked him [John Barry] to be involved all the way through the film [and we went onto to collaborate that way] on The Wrong Box(1966) (Optimum DVD), King Rat, and Deadfall.(1968) He was a consummate professional, John. The best I ever worked with. [He wrote for Seance ] an inspired sequenced on violins for the kidnapping sequence of the child in the Rolls Royce going from side to side and screaming. You never hear a scream. Those are John Barry's violins, there's no sound with the child at all." The score sounds as if Barry had been composing film music for years.

Another ingenious John Barry Oscar winning score was The Lion in Winter (available back in 2001 on Momentum DVD with director Anthony Harvey's [a former actor and editor] fascinating audio commentary): "...what was so extraordinary about John was that if there was a piece of music that doesn't quite work, you can talk to him about it [he conducts his own scores]and he'll re-write it in 2 minutes and give you something quite different...while you're in the middle of the session, and give you a different sound. Wonderful for the director to have that."

Joseph Losey's Boom! is worth checking out as well.