Can you read my mind?
This essay was originally posted to Twitter between August 8, 2021 and August 17, 2021. It was composed of 934 words across 20 tweets.
I would gladly show SUPERMAN to anybody as an example of adventure cinema at its finest. I would be unembarrassed, for the most part, to show them my unbounded enthusiasm for it.
For the most part.
There is just one thing, one little hair in the soup.
No, not the time travel ending. (Which I've discussed in a previous essay.) I'm talking about "Can You Read My Mind," the song "sung" by Margot Kidder during her romantic flight with Superman in the skies of Metropolis.
To produce a signature song for the movie, the crew brought in English lyricist Leslie Bricusse. Bricusse was known for appending blockbuster movies with hit songs, from "The Candy Man" (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) to "You Only Live Twice" from the film of the same name.
Bricusse set words to the SUPERMAN love theme composed by John Williams. A version for soft rock ensemble was devised for the scene when Superman and Lois fly over Metropolis, but Williams's 90-piece orchestra rendition would ultimately end up in the movie instead.
Richard Donner, on "Can You Read My Mind":
"We tried to get Margot [Kidder] to sing it. We recorded it in a recording studio in New York. It didn't sound right--she's not a good singer. But it worked better reading the lines, as if she were reading her own mind."
The version that Donner speaks of, the one in the finished movie, is Kidder reciting the words in voiceover along to the music, like a poetry reading. The scene--a tremendously romantic moment in which they slow dance in the night sky over Metropolis--has no actual dialogue.
Before this vocal sequence begins, there's a moment when Superman and Lois, holding each other by just the fingertips at 20,000 feet, lose their grip on each other's hand. Lois plummets, Superman swoops down through the clouds to save her, and they fall into each other's embrace.
I'm not sure what the intention is here--whether it's supposed to be charming or funny or something else--but it doesn't work. It just makes them look needlessly reckless, and it's impossible to believe that they would go right back to romance immediately after she almost died.
Richard Donner's credo while making this movie was "verisimilitude." In other words, portraying something that's off-the-wall and full of magic technology with a thread of down-to-earth reality. This is a tricky tightrope, and, for the most part, SUPERMAN treads carefully.
It doesn't slip until Lois Lane's near-death fall, and, thankfully, doesn't slip again after this scene is over, and Kidder and Reeve infuse the moment with such a sincere romantic charge that the movie recovers almost instantly. But, during this sequence, the thread breaks.
Up until this point, the flying sequence has been without dialogue. The scene is sustained by Reeve and Kidder, the flying effects, the score, and New York City. There's just something about the sudden introduction of Kidder's voiceover that breaks the reality of the moment.
SUPERMAN is a sincere movie almost to a fault--almost. It depends on carefully weaving a spell and sustaining it, and it's never better than the first part of the flying sequence, when Superman literally sweeps Lois off her feet and shows her the world the way he sees it.
Why they ever felt the need to insert a song at all at this point is beyond my understanding. When Kidder's sung vocals turned out to be a dud, they had an opportunity to reconsider their decision. Instead, they doubled down, and the song remains in the movie as spoken word.
There is plenty of narrative in the silent gestures, held gazes, and little dancing moves between Superman and Lois, plenty of variety in the score (here, playing at a gentle mezzo piano), to keep the flying sequence fresh without any additional business to break things up.
"Can You Read My Mind" isn't a total disaster. A pop song version, recorded by singer Maureen McGovern, was prepared for commercial release. It was moderately successful, and had the added bonus of resuscitating McGovern's career just as she was on the verge of abandoning it.
(McGovern's fortunes had fallen when her contract with 20th Century Records lapsed in 1976. Her manager had exploited her for monetary gain, leaving her finances in poor condition. She had changed her name and taken a conventional job when the SUPERMAN opportunity came along.)
As alluded to earlier, this is the hardest scene to show someone when you're evangelizing for this movie. (As well you should!) The hardest to convince them that it did something right where other superhero movies go wrong, that it represents a grander take on the genre.
It's the easiest scene to cite when writing off this movie as a bit of camp silliness, as the product of filmmakers who maybe didn't have as good a grip on the material as modern day auteurs like Zack Snyder or the Russo brothers.
Please understand, that last part was a joke.
Nevertheless, it is in the movie, a moment immortalized for as long as movies still exist. It's one of SUPERMAN's many strange quirks, the things that make it unique among its siblings in the superhero and action/adventure genres. Perhaps that's justification enough.
The SUPERMAN special edition (DVD or Blu Ray) includes a music-only track that omits Margot Kidder's voiceover. That same edition also includes the soft rock arrangement as a separate feature. As for McGovern's, it's available on the streaming music outlet of your choice.
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Published 3/9/2024
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