Anthology CD Liner Notes

Few film series have been as popular as Warner Brothers' Dirty Harry movies starring Clint Eastwood.  From the original Dirty Harry in 1971 to The Dead Pool in 1988, San Francisco homicide detective Harry Callahan went his own way, tracking down killers while fighting his own battles with an ineffective criminal justice
system.  One of his trademark lines -- "Go ahead, make my day," from Sudden Impact-- has even entered the American lexicon.

In four out of five of those outings, Harry's exploits were accompanied by the music of Lalo Schifrin.  The six-time Oscar nominee composer-arranger-conductor created sounds designed to heighten the suspense, drive the action and emotionally enhance personal stories being told in each case.

The choice of Schifrin to score Dirty Harry was automatic.  Director Don Siegel had already collaborated with Eastwood and Schifrin on Coogans Bluff (1968) and
The Beguiled (1970).  "It was a real collaboration," recalls the composer. "the first thing Don would tell you is, 'I
don't know anything about music.'  But he knew.  He would inspire you by talking."

Schifrin's memorable Dirty Harry score, with its signature motif for Harry (played on electric piano) and unsettling theme for the psychotic killer Scorpio, is a
masterpiece of the genre.  Several critics - who rarely notice film music, much less write about it - mentioned the composer's contribution.  Time cited the "excellent, eerie jazz score by Lalo Schifrin":  Variety said "Lalo Schifrin's modernistic score is very effective."  The L.A. Weekly referred to "Lalo Schifrin's watery, ghostly score," and The New Yorker declared that "Lalo Schifrin's pulsating, jazzy electronic trickery drives the picture forward."

It was hardly trickery, of course; that's the art and craft of composing for film.   In the case of Scorpio's theme, the use of wordless voices came from the fact that "the killer was very disturbed, deranged," Schifrin explains.  "He was hearing voices."

It was a highly original choice, like so much of the score: the combination of jazz and rock elements; an avant-garde use of strings; and in Schifrin's words "a motif of pathos" (also on electric piano), heard when the kidnapped girl's body is found and again at the end of the film after Harry finally dispatches the madman.

Magnum Force (1973) demanded a different approach.  This time Harry was out to stop motorcycle cops who banded together into a clandestine vigilante force.  For the main title, Schifrin again used voices, "to establish a link between the originals Dirty Harry and the sequel."  And while Harry's motif returned briefly, the killers of this film were denoted instead by military-style snare drums and synthesizer.

As with the first film, the music was both dynamic and exciting, and once again, the critics noticed.  "Lalo Schifrin's moody score is both restrained and appropriate," wrote Variety.  "Lalo Schifrin's score strengthens the movie's mounting suspense," noted The Hollywood Reporter.  The composer returned with a fresh new sound for Sudden Impact (1983), the sole entry in the series to be directed by Eastwood himself.  "I wanted to do something a bit more contemporary for the newer audiences who might not even have known who Dirty Harry was," Schifrin says.  Against panoramic shots of San Francisco at night, he created a partly electronic, partly orchestral and undeniably hip soundscape that also incorporated the sounds of police sirens and radio transmissions.

"We're talking about audio-visual counterpoint," the composer notes.   "The visual is giving you an image that is very attractive, but the music is telling you to be careful because something is going to happen here.  Prepare to be not only entertained but thrilled, and sometimes we're going to give you some nasty surprises."

Schifrin finds musical inspiration in unusual places.  For a sequence in which Harry is chasing a robbery suspect, he drew on an ancient arithmetic series invented by a Renaissance mathematician.  For the suspenseful finale set on an old merry-go-round being restored by Eastwood's quarry, a rape victim (Sondra Locke) taking revenge on her long-ago attackers, the composer cleverly interpolated a calliope sound.  Schifrin also turned the sad motif from the original Dirty Harry into a song, "This Side Of Forever," that was sung in the film by Roberta Flack.

Eastwood the actor-director and Schifrin the pianist-composer clearly admire one another, and the results are audible in this collection of music from the three most popular Dirty Harry films.  With this disc, Lalo Schifrin has made our day.   -Jon Burlingame