Maurice Jarre - biography

“Soon I worked during twelve years in theater works of the prestigious Theatre National Populaire.  It was the best time of my life, the most difficult, the most interesting, the most exciting.”

“A Passage to India.  It is my favourite movie.”

“Nowadays, if a studio assumes that his film is bad, there is always an executive that gets more nervous than usual and thinks that if they change the music, the film will become a masterpiece.”

“In that long sequence, when Lawrence enters in the desert to rescue a lost man, Lean listened the music I wrote and wanted to extend the scene to let my work stay completely.”

“My parents did not have any interest in music.”

“The idea in The Man that Would Be King was that the music should recreate all that majestic surrounding and emphasize the adventure, but also speak about the frustration or, rather said, the curse of both protagonists, even before happened what happens them.”

“When I was 15, I did not know nothing about what concerned the world of music.”

“Some months ago, while I was preparing a new work, I told a young cinema executive my intention of including in a soundtrack two themes from Bach.  But when he asked me which has been the last hit from that Bach?, then I knew that I had no longer place in cinema.”

“But, yes, now I wouldn’t do some of those soundtracks the way I did them.”

“For Ryan’s Daughter I used a total of eight harps, something that was, at least, weird.”

“I began to write a kind of waltz and in a little more than an hour I had the theme written.”

“With Hitchcock I had little relationship.  I was called to replace Bernard Herrmann, his favorite composer, in Torn Curtain, after the bitter fight between them.”

Maurice Jarre composed the score for the following films:
Hôtel des Invalides (1952)
Toute la mémoire du monde (1956)
Le théâtre national populaire (1956)
Sur le pont d’Avignon (1956)
Le bel indifférent (1957)
Le feu aux poudres (1957)
Vel’ d’Hiv (1959)
La tête contre les murs (1959)
Les dragueurs (1959)
La bête à l’affût (1959)
Les étoiles de midi (1959)
Vous n’avez rien à déclarer? (1959)
Les yeux sans visage (1960)
La main chaude (1960)
La corde raide (1960)
Crack in the Mirror (1960)
Recours en grâce (1960)
Le président (1961)
Pleins feux sur l’assassin (1961)
The Big Gamble (1961)
Le puits aux trois vérités (1961)
Amours célèbres (1961)
Le temps du ghetto (1961)
L’oiseau de paradis (1962)
Les travestis du diable (1962)
Ton ombre est la mienne (1962)
Les oliviers de la justice (1962)
Le soleil dans l’oeil (1962)
Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962)
The Longest Day (1962)
Les dimanches de Ville d’Avray (1962)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Les animaux (1963)
Pour l’Espagne (1963)
Mourir à Madrid (1963)
Un roi sans divertissement (1963)
Judex (1963)
Behold a Pale Horse (1964)
The Train (1964)
Week-end à Zuydcoote (1964)
Le dernier matin d’Arthur Rimbaud (1965)
David Lean’s Film of Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Le dernier matin de Guy de Maupassant (1965)
The Collector (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Paris brûle-t-il? (1966)
The Professionals (1966)
Gambit (1966)
Grand Prix (1966)
The Night of the Generals (1967)
La vingt-cinquième heure (1967)
Villa Rides (1968)
5 Card Stud (1968)
The Fixer (1968)
Isadora (1968)
La caduta degli dei (1969)
The Extraordinary Seaman (1969)
Topaz (1969)
Una stagione all’inferno (1970)
The Only Game in Town (1970)
El Condor (1970)
Ryan’s Daughter (1970)
Plaza Suite (1971)
Soleil rouge (1971)
Jean Vilar, une belle vie (1972)
Pope Joan (1972)
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)
The MacKintosh Man (1973)
Ash Wednesday (1973)
Grandeur nature (1974)
The Island at the Top of the World (1974)
Mandingo (1975)
Posse (1975)
Mr. Sycamore (1975)
The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
The Message (1976)
Al-risâlah (1976)
Shout at the Devil (1976)
The Last Tycoon (1976)
Crossed Swords (1977)
March or Die (1977)
La tortue sur le dos (1978)
Two Solitudes (1978)
Die Blechtrommel (1979)
Winter Kills (1979)
The Magician of Lublin (1979)
The Black Marble (1980)
The American Success Company (1980)
The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark (1980)
Resurrection (1980)
Lion of the Desert (1981)
Die Fälschung (1981)
Taps (1981)
Firefox (1982)
Young Doctors in Love (1982)
Don’t Cry, It’s Only Thunder (1982)
The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)
Au nom de tous les miens (1983)
Top Secret! (1984)
Dreamscape (1984)
A Passage to India (1984)
Witness (1985)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
The Bride (1985)
Enemy Mine (1985)
Tai-Pan (1986)
The Mosquito Coast (1986)
Solarbabies (1986)
Le palanquin des larmes (1987)
Shuto shoshitsu (1987)
No Way Out (1987)
Fatal Attraction (1987)
Giulia e Giulia (1987)
Gaby: A True Story (1987)
Wildfire (1988)
Moon Over Parador (1988)
Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (1988)
Distant Thunder (1988)
Chances Are (1989)
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Prancer (1989)
Enemies: A Love Story (1989)
After Dark, My Sweet (1990)
Ghost (1990)
Solar Crisis (1990)
Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Almost an Angel (1990)
Only the Lonely (1991)
Fires Within (1991)
Rakuyô (1992)
School Ties (1992)
Shadow of the Wolf (1992)
Mr. Jones (1993)
Fearless (1993)
A Walk in the Clouds (1995)
The Sunchaser (1996)
Le jour et la nuit (1997)
Sunshine (1999)
I Dreamed of Africa (2000)