Michel Legrand, a three-time Oscar winner and composer for the Orson Welles films F for Fake and The Other Side of the Wind, died Saturday, January 26, at his Paris home. He was 86.
Legrand, who scored some 200 films and television programs, was known for such classic film songs as “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “You Must Believe in Spring” and “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”
Legrand died at his home early Saturday morning with his wife, French actress Macha Meril, at his side, his publicist told Agence France-Presse, a Paris-based news agency.
Composing the score for Welles posthumously completed The Other Side of the Wind was one of Legrand’s last cinematic works. He was chosen by producers Frank Marshall and Filip Jan Rymsza, who noted that Welles talked in the 1970s about having Legrand score the film.
Rymsza tweeted on Saturday, “Goodbye, Maestro. It was a pleasure working with you and getting to know you. Even in poor health, you had the energy and enthusiasm of a 20yo. RIP, mon ami.”
Marshall added, “It was an great honor to work with this lovely and incredibly talented man, who always had a twinkle in his eye. May he R.I.P.”
Marshall revealed on Twitter that the score will soon be released on CD by La-La Land Records.
Film historian Joseph McBride, a consultant on The Other Side of the Wind, said of the late composer’s work on the film: “Legrand perfectly understood the intricacies of the dual storylines and the other avant-garde elements of Welles’s feature. With his extensive background in jazz, Legrand was especially in tune with the loose, fragmentary, seemingly improvisatory but actually rigorous nature of Welles’s shooting and his and Bob Murawski’s brilliant and unorthodox editing. I thought Legrand managed to blend the two threads of the film brilliantly and that his music was especially valuable in making the film-within-the-film work so smoothly and memorably in the fabric of the overall construction.”
Legrand said of Welles in a recent interview. “I knew him very well. I tried to write what I thought that Orson would ask me to write for the movie.”
In December, Legrand performed a selection from The Other Side of the Wind at Philharmonie de Paris.
A five-time Grammy Award winner, Legrand was active in all musical fields, composing classical works, stage musicals, arranging and recording albums, playing jazz piano and conducting orchestras in concert, as well as scoring for movies and television.
He once said “I’ve never settled on one musical discipline. I love playing, conducting, singing and writing, and in all styles.”
Goodbye, Maestro. It was a pleasure working with you and getting to know you. Even in poor health, you had the energy and enthusiasm of a 20yo. RIP, mon ami. #MichelLegrand pic.twitter.com/p9SjiWWcav
— Filip Jan Rymsza (@filip_jan) January 26, 2019
It was an great honor to work with this lovely and incredibly talented man, who always had a twinkle in his eye. May he R.I.P. https://t.co/MuRu4CUlc8
— Frank Marshall (@LeDoctor) January 26, 2019
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