I've always been fascinated by the song "The Windmills of Your Mind," and I blogged about it in 2019 when the composer — the man who wrote the notes on the tips of which the Bergmans found the words — Michel Legrand, died.
That post has many versions of the song embedded, but I'll chose just one here, the 1968 Noel Harrison version that I remember as a hit and that I know was heard in — and won an Oscar for — "The Thomas Crown Affair":
My old post ends: "I think the Bergmans' phrase 'windmills of your mind' was derivative of the well-known 'canyons of your mind' which I believe originated in the 1965 song 'Elusive Butterfly.' In 2015, I blogged (with video) about the history of that phrase — and its mockery, by Frank Zappa and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band."
I'm very fond of the 1960's psychedelic era and the lyrics that portrayed the human brain as a landscape over which those in the know ambled and trekked.
Take a moment to relive the 60s in the Bergman's lyrics: "Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel/Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel/Like a snowball down a mountain or a carnival balloon/Like a carousel that's turning, running rings around the moon/Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face/And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space/Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind/Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own/Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone...."
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36 टिप्पणियां:
…Alice, Maude, Good Times…others?
Chose is a loser with a looser choose.
I think Harrison sings it too fast.
The Thomas Crown Affair featured a motion picture rendition of an MC Escher static production. An enjoyable tale with losers, lovers, and winners.
Here's my review of The Thomas Crown Affair
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) Very stylish movie. Maybe too stylish. All the damn split screens annoy me after a while.
Norman Jewison directed this caper flick. It's an interesting game of cat-and-mouse with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, but there's not enough suspense and hardly any humor. It's really not fair to compare anybody to Hitchcock, but if you play in his division that's what's going to happen. There should be humor and suspense in a movie like this, and it's missing. Still the movie's got sex appeal and amazing cinematography and a very nice jazz score. I love the music and the images. The chess scene in particular is really cool.
On the downside the movie's underwritten, Faye Dunaway kidnaps a child, the third act's lurch into heartbreak is ridiculous, and it's maybe the most aristocratic film I've ever seen in my life. This movie is a frickin' ode to wealth, with glider planes, polo ponies, multiple sex partners and dune buggy beach rides. On the commentary Jewison ties himself into intellectual knots trying to explain how his millionaire protagonist is "striking a blow against the establishment." Yeah yeah, in his three-piece suit. I know, I know, it's a disguise, he's really a hippie. Meanwhile McQueen is sniffing his brandy, saying hi to his servants, and driving a Rolls while he plans his next robbery of all the little people who have to work for a living. It's a profoundly sinful movie, really, and Jewison invites us all to enjoy the sinning, while he attempts to delude the audience with hippie patter.
Still, I liked McQueen a lot better when he was evil cool than when he was sappy guy trying to give the money back. Trying to give the money back? That's so lame. And when the hard ass Boston cop says "No deals," then McQueen veers back into bank robber mode, except now he doesn't want the money. It's a Test of Her Love.
I kinda felt sorry for the whole second group of bank robbers, particularly station wagon driver #2, who got arrested at the cemetery while Steve McQueen is jet-setting to Europe. Man, that sucks. Twenty years in prison for you, little fish. While the big fish suffers his lonely, millionaire heartbreak. Or maybe he's happy, I can't really tell. When Steve McQueen is passionate I think his eyebrow twitches.
The Muppets did a great setup of Windmills..I'll have to look it up.
Here it is
I've seen the remake of the "The Thomas Crown Affair" with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo and liked it. I tried to watch the original once and couldn't get into it. I should try again.
The words sing while the music plays, unless you're Italian, then it's an operatic organization with a tenor of melodic production.
The way we were. Truly only the good die young.
The Razor’s Edge between Life and whitewashed sepulchres.
Rarely has a song's meaning been as internally actualized as this earworm's. Thanks.
It wasn't that way in 1968 but now we have windmills on every damn mountain ridge, not just in our minds.
the man who wrote the notes on the tips of which the Bergmans found the words
Fine, precision work. It took years of practice engraving the bible on the heads of pins to be able to achieve that.
People say the remake was actually better than the original, but Steve McQueen was worth 50 Pierce Brosnans.
The question is who is to be modulator: lyrics or melody?
Someone left the windmills in the rain.
I've seen both versions, yes it celebrates envy and jealousy, in a way the remake doesn't, a bow to the international set, the thieves are Romanian in the remake, and Rene's character just happens to speak Romanian,
the latter uses the Nina Simone score, which I really wasn't aware of them, at that time in '97, of course there is the Bond overlay with Brosnan, at that point in time,
windmills is more evocative than the repurposed nina simone track, Thomas Crowne is painted not as a hero, but anti hero against the establishment, a ridiculous conceit
but the film does look good, even if the pacing is slow at times
"It wasn't that way in 1968 but now we have windmills on every damn mountain ridge, not just in our minds."
They were a lot more picturesque when they were all in Holland.
That turtleneck.
Thanks for that one too, tcrosse. I wonder if there is a list of earworm songs? Surely we could use it on terrorists.
I spent far too much of my childhood tring to figure out why the cake was in the rain and they just didn't cover it, and then I grew up and had to listen to my older board members frothing at the mouth about the guy who was the lineman for the county.
No wonder I have only three songs I like.
Interesting. For decades whenever I heard the song mentioned in print, my mind immediately went to Elusive Butterfly.
I've never heard this record in my life until now. Wikipedia says it reached 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967. I was an inveterate listener of WLS in 1967 (if one can be inveterate of something at age 13), and if it was played there in rotation I would remember it.
Tina Trent said..."No wonder I have only three songs I like."
They'll never have that recipe again.
Bloch Concerto Grosso 2 has a particularly nice melody in the opening (up to the fugue at about 2 minutes), I was appreciating just the other day. It's not crying for lyrics.
Not to mention of course Thomas Tallis third mode melody, probably the most impressive melody written, with lyrics
Why fum’th in fight the Gentiles spite, in fury raging stout?
Why tak’th in hand the people fond, vain things to bring about?
The Kings arise, the Lords devise, in counsels met thereto,
against the Lord with false accord, against His Christ they go.
Piano competition winner Musical offering 6 part fugue which still needs words. Best rendition I've heard. The guy has a Glenn Gould sensibility.
In the remake’s society/charity ball scene the band plays an instrumental cover of “Windmills”.
McQueen was just as focused on his career as Thomas Crowne was on his capers. McQueen campaigned hard for that part, because he wanted to show he could play a sophisticate, having played only antiheros or cowboys or lower-class characters up till then. Too bad he died so young, he was a good actor.
McQueen was a very impressive and magnetic physical actor. Watch him move in "The Sand Pebbles", for example.
I think I like the Bonzo Dog Band “Canyons of Your Mind” better…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_HobJRse9A
And on a slightly more serious note, one of the few Sheryl Crow songs I like is “Steve McQueen”, although it’s missing a killer guitar solo (Crow often needs help arranging songs) But she’s playing a sweet red Telecaster in the video, which helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlywcuw-1TU
Much better than the windmills of your sphincter.
Two-eyed Jack: how cruel. Now it's back.
Mozart's Symphony Number 40
Iggy Pop's I Wanna Be Your Dog
Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody
I'll throw in Ave Maria.
McQueen fans should definitely check out Tom Horn, arguably his strongest performance. I also dig Bullet, of course, and The Getaway. And while it's not a great film, I have a soft spot for his last movie, The Hunter, about a modern day bounty hunter.
There's a lot of cross-hairs in that trailer. If they remade that movie with Tulsi Gabbard, I would totally watch it!
"They put her on a terrorist watch list. That was a mistake."
oh yeah, Hell Is For Heroes. Don Siegel, in black and white. Really good.
This song (sung by Mel Torme) was used to great effect in the season finale of Severance.
https://youtu.be/YNszc308wtA?si=kYOFw6R-LRjGDDUr
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