A recent post about Dr Zhivago leads me to London Spy, a recently concluded psychological thriller on BBC TV. The journey has a few stops on the way so, if you’d care to come for the ride, all aboard!
First stop is Maurice Jarre, composer of Dr Z’s soundtrack and so much movie music besides. His output was prodigious – Trollopian, you might say – extending from 1958 to 2001. In addition to his work for David Lean here are just a few of his other films: The Longest Day, Barbarella, Topaz, Dead Poets Society and A Passage To India. I have unknowingly heard so much of his music over the years.
Music was in Jarre’s genes. (Try saying, Beau Geste shared Jarre’s genes after you’ve had a few.) I remember discovering his son, Jean Michel’s, electronic music in the 1970s. Oxygène made him famous, although forty years on it doesn’t seem to pack such a punch. Like his father, Jean Michel’s music reaches a large and diverse audience. He has often played to audiences of more than a million and his biggest gig was to 3 1/2 million Russians in Moscow in 1997. He mustered close to a million in London’s Docklands in 1988.
Francis had a Range Rover in the 1970s. He was an early adopter; they had been launched in 1970. In 1978 he loaded it up with his girlfriend (later to be his wife) and her parents: destination Paris. They had been invited to attend the marriage of Charlotte Rampling and Jean Michel Jarre. I shouldn’t have been surprised; after all Francis can claim Rex Harrison as an uncle by marriage – and divorce.
Charlotte Rampling’s career is long and famous and one of her roles this year is with Ben Whishaw in the five-part London Spy on the BBC, our final stop where this post terminates.