Dave Grusin Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Dave Grusin (born June 26, 1934, Littleton, Colorado) composed the score for Three Days of the Condor (1975). It was his first collaboration with Sydney Pollack, who would go on to use Grusin on five more films.
The Condor score is jazz fusion in service of paranoia
Grusin's main title introduces two themes that recur throughout the film. The first is a six-note saxophone phrase performed by Tom Scott — sinuous, urban, slightly melancholy. The second is a simple synthesizer-and-cimbalom figure that doubles as the film's suspense motif. Both themes use jazz harmonic language rather than traditional thriller scoring; the cues feel closer to a Manhattan loft after midnight than to a Bernard Herrmann chase.
"Sydney didn't want me to score the menace. He wanted me to score the city. The menace was already on the screen." — Dave Grusin, Film Score Monthly (interview archive) (book, not available online)
The score's restraint is part of its effect. Long stretches of the film play without music — the Section 17 massacre, the alley ambush, much of Turner's confrontation with Joubert. When the music returns it tends to be intimate rather than escalatory: a piano figure under a phone trace, the saxophone returning at the end as Turner walks away from Higgins.
"Grusin's jazz score is the film's other voice — Turner's interior life, the New York he loves, the city that may or may not be on his side." — Cinephilia & Beyond, essay
The Pollack-Grusin partnership produced six films
After Condor the two collaborated on Bobby Deerfield (1977), The Electric Horseman (1979), Absence of Malice (1981), Tootsie (1982), The Firm (1993), and Random Hearts (1999). Grusin's jazz idiom became part of Pollack's house sound — recognizable across thrillers, romances, and legal dramas alike.
Grusin's broader career bridged film and jazz performance
Grusin's parallel career as a jazz pianist and bandleader (the GRP record label, which he co-founded with Larry Rosen, was named for him) shaped his film work. He scored over fifty films, won an Academy Award for The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), and received Oscar nominations for Heaven Can Wait, On Golden Pond, Tootsie, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Firm, and Havana. He won ten Grammys across his recording career.
| Year | Film | Director | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1968 | The Graduate | Mike Nichols | Source music arranger |
| 1975 | Three Days of the Condor | Sydney Pollack | First Pollack collaboration |
| 1978 | Heaven Can Wait | Warren Beatty | Oscar nomination |
| 1981 | On Golden Pond | Mark Rydell | Oscar nomination |
| 1982 | Tootsie | Sydney Pollack | Oscar nomination |
| 1988 | The Milagro Beanfield War | Robert Redford | Best Score Oscar |
| 1989 | The Fabulous Baker Boys | Steve Kloves | Oscar nomination |
| 1990 | Havana | Sydney Pollack | Oscar nomination |
| 1993 | The Firm | Sydney Pollack | Oscar nomination |