With British folk songs done by a New Yorker, the soundtrack disappeared for decades – but has now become a touchstone for artists journeying to a nation’s dark heart
It’s one of the most disturbing juxtapositions in British cinema: a gigantic wicker figure blazes in a moment of shocking violence as a semicircle of people smilingly incant a traditional English folk song.
The 1973 British film The Wicker Man drew its horror from Britain’s pagan past, and indeed its music – the soundtrack, fusing traditionals with new compositions and bawdy pub singalongs, is now widely recognised as a classic. But the film’s initial failure and the long disappearance of the recordings meant that when the little-known US theatre director and musician Paul Giovanni died in 1990, he likely believed his soundtrack had been entirely forgotten. Instead, its importance is being minted this month by a concert at London’s high-cultural Barbican centre.
