Francis Lai
Oscar-winning composer who wrote memorable themes for Un homme et un femme and Love Story
FRANCIS LAI, who has died aged 86, was a French composer best known for his themes for Claude Lelouch’s Un homme et une femme (1966, “A Man and a Woman”), and Arthur Hiller’s sobfest Love Story (1970), starring Ali Macgraw and Ryan O’neal, for which he won the only Oscar of the seven for which the film was nominated – for best film score.
Love Story became one of the most successful romantic films of all time and Lai’s treacly but heart-wrenching piano melody theme provided the emotional cue for cinemagoers all over the world to reach for the tissues. It reached No 2 on the Billboard album chart, and when lyrics were added by Carl Sigman, as Where Do I Begin? it would become a Top 10 hit for Andy Williams. It was also recorded by Shirley Bassey, Tony Bennett and others.
But it was Lai’s score for Un homme et une femme, Claude Lelouch’s bittersweet French romance which became the surprise hit of 1966, that became his most enduring success, not least because the extended breathy vocal of the title theme – “bada, bada-bah, bada bada-bah (pause), bada, bada-bah” (known to the film’s detractors as “Laaa Laaa La Dabba Dabba Da”) – became standard elevator music.
The sequence conveyed the monotonous ups and downs of monogamy, and as the relationship between the two protagonists, played by Anouk Aimée and Jean-louis Trintignant, begins to fall apart, Lai evoked the darkening atmosphere in the instrumental Today It’s You (Aujourd’hui C’est Toi), full of timpani, violins and bursts of trumpet – which was later used as the title music for the BBC current affairs programme, Panorama.
Francis Lai was born on April 26 1932 in Nice, France; his parents were market gardeners. He taught himself piano as a child and took up the accordion after acquiring a taste for the instrument from a cousin who played it.
After a short stint playing with a local band he moved to Marseille, where he discovered jazz, then to Paris, where he settled in Montmartre, becoming part of the area’s music scene.
There, at the Taverne d’attilio, Lai met Bernard Dimey, with whom he collaborated on more than 100 songs, which were sung by Juliette Greco, Yves Montand and others.
After a brief period in Michel Magne’s orchestra, he became an accompanist for Edith Piaf, for whom he also composed several songs, including The dirty little canal, Take me with you and The right to love. As a film scorer, among Lai’s first projects was Roger Vadim’s 1964 film La Ronde (“Circle of Love”) starring Jane Fonda, and Jean Luc Godard’s 1965 film Masculin Féminin. But it was his score for A Man and a Woman which brought him international fame.
Lai and Lelouch remained collaborators for more than 50 years, working together on nearly 40 projects, including Live for Life (1967), Happy New Year (1973), A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (1986) and, most recently, Everyone’s Life (2017).
Lai composed more than 600 songs, while among more than 100 film scores, his score for Lelouch’s Smic Smac Smoc won him the French Cinema Trophée in 1971, and he achieved cult success with his score to the erotic coming-of-age film Bilitis (1977) by the soft-core sex photographer, David Hamilton, winning the Europe 1 Trophée for best film soundtrack in 1978.
Other films for which he wrote the music included Michael Winner’s I’ll Never Forget What’s ’Isname (1967), Terence Young’s Mayerling (1968), Peter Hall’s Three into Two Won’t Go (1969), René Clément’s Rider on the Rain (1970), Dino Risi’s Anima Persa (1977), Bryan Forbes’s International Velvet (1978), Claude Zidi’s My New Partner (1984), Nikita Mikhalkov’s Dark Eyes (1987) and Philippe de Broca’s Les Clés du Paradis (1991).
Lai’s score for Love Story, which also won a Golden Globe, nearly did not happen since he had initially turned the job down. He was persuaded to reconsider by Alain Delon, who had seen a cut of the film and arranged a screening. “I came out incredibly moved,” Lai recalled. “I went straight home, sat at my keyboard and wrote that theme that very night.”
Lai’s music is featured on several orchestral albums, testifying to his standing as one of the great composers of classically influenced romantic melodies.
In 1968 Lai married Dagmar Puetz, who survives him with their two sons and a daughter.
Francis Lai, born April 6 1932, died November 7 2018