[Today: A staggering work of pure imagination...]
From a strictly musical perspective, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory is no masterpiece – but it deserves a place in every music collection nonetheless. What it lacks in pure songcraft and tunesmithery is more than counterbalanced by rich layers of imaginative fun that are as scrumdidilyumptious as anything Wonka himself ever cooked up.
Featuring Gene Wilder in the title role, the 1971 film that spawned this soundtrack has become an offbeat American classic. Wilder’s Wonka holds an impish gleem in his eye and a hopeful song in his heart, and he’s impossible not to love. And not just for children – Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s inspired work on this score netted the album an Oscar™ nomination.
Wonka may be known for his chocolate, but what he really deals in is dreams, and the bigger and more outlandish the better. “Come with me/and you’ll be/in a world of pure imagination” Wilder sings, in perhaps the most seductive musical moment this side of Marilyn Monroe’s birthday serenade to JFK. It’s a breathless lullaby of an invitation, capable of stirring the starry-eyed kid in anyone.
And it’s that kind of magical, dreamy idealism that makes this album such a golden ticket in my music collection. Anytime I want to feel like a 10 year-old kid, and visit a world of cotton candy skies and chocolate rivers, where Oompa Loompas dance and sing, I go here. It’s a place where chaos rules but the selfish, mean kids are banished to hell, while the good kids are rewarded with kingdoms full of fun and games. And all it takes to get there is a little imagination. Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it…
Listen: Pure Imagination
Tags: Anthony Newley, Gene Wilder, Leslie Bricusse, soundtrack, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory
9 March 2008 at 7:49 pm |
Wonka spit in chocolate.
9 March 2008 at 8:00 pm |
And every globule of WonkaSpit™ made his treats that much more delicious…
25 August 2009 at 9:05 am |
The half of the Wonka mobile went in and the second half went out. It is inspired by the method of the movie something like the Memories of the Nutty Cameraman by Alvin Victor Knechtel.