The Commitments
When young men from Dublin's Northside sang the 1960s songs of Memphis and Detroit again in their own voices, those songs became their own story.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Behind the film ⏳🌊
- DirectorAlan Parker
The British director of “Fame” and “Pink Floyd – The Wall,” who personally chose the songs and the live on-set recording method, and also received a soundtrack production credit.
- ProductionPaul Bushnell
A session bassist who became the band's music director and produced soundtrack volumes 1·2 with Kevin Killeen.
- ScreenplayRoddy Doyle
Wrote the original novel and, writing a screenplay for the first time, shared the BAFTA for best adapted screenplay with Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.
- Lead roleAndrew Strong
Auditioned at sixteen and won the role of lead singer Deco, singing most of the songs on the soundtrack.
- Lead roleRobert Arkins
Played manager Jimmy Rabbitte and sang “Treat Her Right” over the opening credits.
- StarringGlen Hansard
Leader of the band The Frames, he played the guitarist Outspan, and later won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for his music in the film “Once.”
I. A music film without a composer
(Origins) “The Commitments” is Alan Parker's screen adaptation of a short novel Roddy Doyle published in 1987. Parker, who had already made several music films, among them “Fame” and “Pink Floyd – The Wall,” read the novel in 1989 and took on the project. Doyle, writing a screenplay for the first time, spent nearly a year refining his draft before Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais joined to finish it. (Structure) The film has no specially written background music (score). In place of an original composer, 1960s American soul music fills that role. Parker listened to some 300 old records from the Stax and Atlantic labels, then pared them down to 75. He deliberately left out songs that other films had already used heavily. In the finished film, 52 different songs are heard 68 times, and the actors themselves sang and played 24 of them. (Music director) At the heart of the playing was the session bassist Paul Bushnell. Rehearsing the songs with a Dublin session band, he became the band's music director. The soundtrack was produced by Kevin Killen, known for his work with U2, together with Bushnell and Parker. (Casting) Parker looked for musicians rather than actors. To show convincingly how a clumsy band gradually gets better, the cast had to be genuinely good players. Of the twelve band members, ten were musicians. Like “Brassed Off,” covered earlier in this series, it is a film about a band from a working-class neighborhood, but the songs played here are other people's songs, borrowed from across the Atlantic.
II. Auditions in north Dublin
(The neighborhood) The hero, Jimmy Rabbitte, is a young man living in a working-class neighborhood of north Dublin. A music lover with a gift for talk, he decides to build a band of his own. The film shows the market alleys and council housing estates as rough as they are, without dressing them up. Parker avoided postcard views of Ireland and shot on 44 real Dublin streets. (Auditions) Jimmy holds auditions on the doorstep of his parents' house. The hopefuls lined up at the door each bring some outlandish kind of music. The scene passes as a montage (an edit stringing short shots together) of brief performances, and the very shambles makes plain what Jimmy is looking for. What he wants is not whatever is fashionable, but soul. (The manifesto) Jimmy wins the members over by arguing, more or less, that the Irish are the blacks of Europe, and that northside Dubliners are the lowest of the low among them. Jimmy finds in class the reason young Dubliners should sing the Black music of the American South. The musical logic of the whole film lies in this passage. (Discoveries) One by one, people gather. At a wedding reception Jimmy hears the voice of Deco, a bus conductor who has drunkenly grabbed the microphone, and brings him in. Steven, a medical student who plays the organ at church, joins too, and Joey Fagan, a middle-aged trumpeter who claims to have played with legendary soul singers, turns up on a motorbike. It was Joey who gave the band its name, the Commitments.
Sung by Robert Arkins, who plays Jimmy, this song runs over the opening titles and carries the audience into the streets of north Dublin. Even before the story begins, it sets the film's rhythm and the air of the neighborhood.
- The original was a 1965 hit for Roy Head of Texas. As the exuberant rhythm and blues of the American South plays over images of a Dublin market alley, the film announces from the start that it will borrow its sound from across the Atlantic.
- The singer, Arkins, plays Jimmy, the manager who never sings in the story. It is intriguing that the film opens with the voice of a character who never takes the stage.
- A short, tight figure repeated on guitar·bass (a riff) drives the whole song. The repetition sounds like footsteps walking down the street.
It is the song Andrew Strong, as Deco, sang at his audition, the first song the band tries together in its rehearsal room above a pool hall, and the song that returns at the final concert. It serves as the yardstick of the band's growth.
- Written by Mack Rice and a 1966 hit for Wilson Pickett. It is the first track on the first soundtrack album, and it became the song that stands for the film.
- The same song appears twice, in a rehearsal scene and in the final concert. Compare the stumbling rhythm of the first with the tight ensemble of the second, and you can hear for yourself how far the band has grown.
- In the chorus, the lead vocalist throws out a line and the backing singers answer with the same words, in an exchange known as call and response. Drawn from Black church music, this practice becomes the device that binds the band together.
- Strong was sixteen at the time of his audition, yet his rough, low voice sounds far older than his years. Parker recalled that this voice matched the one the novel gave Deco.
III. The rehearsal room above the pool hall
(Rehearsals) The band rents a rehearsal room above a pool hall. At first the playing is out of time and the sound is ragged. The film doesn't hide this clumsy playing. Actors who play well deliberately pretend to play badly, then, scene by scene, gradually recover their skill. (Recording) Parker refused to have the actors lip-sync to prerecorded songs. The backing tracks were recorded in advance and played loud on set, but the speakers were set out of phase with one another so that almost none of the accompaniment reached the microphones. Thanks to this, the singing was actually recorded on set on a 24-track machine, and dialogue could be slipped in between songs. (The effect) So the songs in the rehearsal scenes mingle with breathing and laughter and squabbling. Someone cuts in before a song ends, Joey counts the beat in again, Jimmy explains that this is what soul is. The audience hears not a finished performance but a song in the making. (First gig) The first gig is an anti-drug event at a local community hall. The members freeze when they first take the stage, but a few songs in, the crowd loosens up. Then a mishap with a microphone cuts the power and the show stops midway. Deco's showing off also begins to surface here. For a band on its first stage, applause and disaster arrive together.
It is one of the songs with which the frozen band first wins over the crowd at its first gig in the community hall. It is also the moment Deco begins to take center stage.
- Written and sung by Mary Wells herself, it was her first single on Motown. Deco, a male vocalist, takes a woman's song and turns it into rough, muscular soul.
- In the first-gig scene, “Mr. Pitiful” and this song follow one another and the mood in the hall shifts. You can hear the members, stiff with stage fright, loosening up as they play.
- Because the singing was actually recorded on set, the noise of the crowd and the echo of the room are captured along with it. That raw texture, unlike a polished studio recording, is the charm of this scene.
IV. Cracks that grow with the songs
(Growth) The band refines its sound gig after gig. At a roller disco it gets paid for the first time. The cinematographer Gale Tattersall shot the film so that images rough and unpolished at first grow sleeker as the band succeeds. Along with the music, the texture of the picture grows too. (Cracks) The better the sound gets, the wider the gaps between people. Deco thinks of himself as a star, and the other members find him hard to bear. The drummer Billy quits after a fight with Deco, and the hot-tempered Mickah takes his place. Joey makes advances to each of the three backing singers in turn, feeding the conflict. Harmony onstage and discord backstage advance side by side. (The singers) The three backing singers, Imelda, Natalie and Bernie, are no mere background. In songs by 1960s Motown girl groups, they step forward. The lead shifts from song to song, and as they hand the stage to one another, it becomes clear that this band is not made of a single voice. (Darkness) Where a slow ballad plays, the film lowers the lights and lets the emotion settle. As the band sings a Southern soul song about the guilt of lovers meeting in secret, the tangled relationships of the characters offstage show through. The story in the song and the state of things inside the band quietly touch.
A song in which the backing singers step forward. It shows in sound that the band is not Deco's stage alone.
- Written by the husband-and-wife team Ashford and Simpson and sung by the Motown girl group the Marvelettes. A song about longing to leave for anywhere at all, it echoes the plight of the young people of north Dublin.
- At the song's heart is the harmony made by three voices sounding together at different pitches. The Dublin band recreates the bright, polished sound peculiar to Motown girl groups.
- The soundtrack credits the Irish singer Niamh Kavanagh on this song and on “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.”
A slow ballad that plays as relationships within the band grow tangled. A song about lovers meeting in secret quietly overlaps with the situations of the characters offstage.
- A Southern soul ballad written by Dan Penn and Chips Moman and sung by James Carr in 1967. It holds the guilt and tenderness of two people who meet out of sight of others.
- Over a slow beat, the organ lays down long, sustained chords. This sound, drawn from church music, lends a strange solemnity to a song of secret love.
- In this song Deco mixes moans and sighs between the lyrics to heighten the emotion. Unlike the lively songs before it, it brings the film's temperature down.
V. The stage on the last night
(The promise) Joey says that the American soul singer Wilson Pickett is coming to Dublin and will drop by to see the band after his own show. Jimmy invites the press, and the band prepares for its biggest stage yet. It is the night on which the Commitments' fate hangs. (The peak) That night the band plays better than ever before. Anyone who remembers the clumsy ensemble of the early scenes can hear for themselves how much tighter the same song has become. “Mustang Sally” is played again, and the backing singers and horns hold up Deco's voice. (The climax) At the center of the show is “Try a Little Tenderness,” made famous by Otis Redding. The song's structure, starting very quietly, swelling little by little and finally bursting out, traces exactly the height the band reaches that night. The conflicts that have piled up vanish for a while, at least onstage. (The wait) Below the stage, time runs differently. Jimmy keeps glancing toward the door, and the crowd waits for the promised guest. The hotter the music gets, the tighter the tension of waiting. How the night ends is best seen for yourself. But it is worth knowing going in that the most important moments in this film happen not only onstage but also backstage and out in the street.
The summit of the final gig. The song's shape, starting quietly and finally bursting open, traces exactly the height the band reached that night.
- It began life in 1932 as a sentimental British ballad. In 1966 Otis Redding turned it into a soul number that starts slowly and keeps gathering speed, and the Commitments follow Redding's reading.
- At first the horns lay down a soft cushion and the voice begins low, almost speaking. Then the drums tighten the beat, the tempo quickens, and the singing turns into a shout. This steady growing louder (crescendo) is the heart of the song.
- Late in the song, where the singer drives forward by repeating the same words again and again, the technique sounds as if it came straight from the preaching of the Black church. It is the moment Deco's voice opens up the widest.
- For as long as this song plays, the conflicts that have piled up are briefly set aside. Because it is the last moment the music holds the characters together, it is often named as the film's emotional peak.
A Wilson Pickett song, played on the last night as the band tries to calm a rowdy crowd. On a night hung on waiting and a promise, it is the expected guest's own song that rings out.
- Pickett wrote it together with Steve Cropper, guitarist for the Stax label. It is counted among the signature works of the Memphis Stax sound.
- Over a rhythm that leans on the second and fourth beats, a brass group (the horn section) cuts in with short, sharp stabs. This is the song that makes clear why the band needed Joey's trumpet.
- The very occasion on which this song is played carries meaning. Listen while thinking about whose song is being sung, and who is being waited for, and you can guess why this scene just before the ending was filled with this song.
VI. After the song ends
(Afterglow) Once the final gig is over, the film turns the sound down. The night air of the alley behind the venue, the footsteps of someone walking alone, applause leaking through a door: sounds like these fill the space the music has left behind. That a film so loud until now falls quiet here becomes a scene in its own right. (Monologue) Throughout the film Jimmy talks to himself, as if telling the band's story to an imaginary interviewer. At the end, too, he uses that same mode to report, one by one, where each member has gone. One moves on to another genre, one busks on the street, one finds a completely different line of work. It is neither a success story nor a tale of failure, only the ordinary next steps of young people from the neighborhood. (Meaning) The band did not last long, yet a sense remains that the time was not wasted. The soul Jimmy spoke of at the start turns out to be closer to the experience of having made something together than to singing skill. If the series' 「Buena Vista Social Club」 revived a forgotten music, this film shows young people borrowing other people's old songs to find voices of their own. (Afterward) The actors' music lived on longer outside the film. The soundtrack won the Brit Award for Best Soundtrack and stayed on the US Billboard album chart for 76 weeks, and Vol. 2 followed the next year. The film won the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) for Best Film·Best Director·Best Adapted Screenplay·Best Editing, and in 2013 it was turned into a stage musical in London's West End.
Lesser-known stories
(Self-publishing) The original novel did not first appear from a major publisher. According to Alan Parker's production notes, Roddy Doyle printed around 3,000 copies of the short novel himself. As the film and the record became worldwide successes, those beginnings came to be mentioned less and less. (On-set recording) The songs the actors sang were recorded not in a studio but on set. The backing track was played loudly, yet the speakers were set out of phase so that almost none of it reached the microphones. Because the record came out so polished, people who knew only the album rarely realized that the sound had been captured on the shooting floor. (Choosing the songs) Parker avoided soul classics that had already been featured prominently in other films. After listening to nearly 300 songs, he narrowed them down by rehearsing 75 with Dublin session musicians, and in the process session bassist Paul Bushnell became the band's musical director. This principle is why the soundtrack mixes famous songs evenly with lesser-known Southern soul. (The Corrs) John Hughes, the film's music coordinator, went on to manage the Corr siblings, who appeared in the film. Andrea Corr, who had just one line, became, as Parker put it, the most successful member of the cast, and later appeared in Parker's 「Evita」 as well. (A gap in time) The final monologue includes a line saying that Joey is touring with the soul singer Joe Tex. Yet Joe Tex had already died in 1982, nearly 10 years before the film came out. It is a line that passes almost unnoticed, but it chimes curiously with the film's own question of how much of Joey's tall tales is true.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Soul
(Literal meaning) The English word soul means the spirit. The name was given to music that comes from the deepest part of the singer's heart. (In film·musical scores) A popular music created in the 1950s and 60s by Black American musicians who combined the fervent vocal style of church music (gospel) with the rhythms of rhythm and blues. Labels such as Stax in Memphis and Motown in Detroit were at its center. Every song in this film is a soul song from that era. Think of singing an upbeat song at a friend's birthday party with the voice you learned in the church choir — soul is precisely the music that brought the voice of the church onto the stage. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech it is used for things that warm the heart, as in soul food, or for the core of something.
Rhythm and blues (R&B)
(Literal meaning) The name joins rhythm (the beat) and blues (mournful songs that grew out of Black work songs). The name itself says it is blues with a rhythm you can dance to. (In film·musical scores) From the late 1940s onward, the term for Black American music, marked by a strong beat, horns and powerful singing. Songs such as 「Treat Her Right」 belong to this line. Just as your feet start jumping on their own when someone claps the beat for you during jump rope in gym class, rhythm and blues centers on a beat that gets the body moving. (Elsewhere) On today's streaming charts, R&B usually refers to the smooth Black pop of the 1990s and after.
Trading lines (call and response)
(Literal meaning) In English, call means calling out and response means an answer. The name says exactly what it is: one side calls and the other answers. (In film·musical scores) A practice in which the lead singer sings a phrase and the chorus or instruments answer with a short reply. It comes from the Black church, where the congregation answered the preacher's cries. In the chorus of 「Mustang Sally」, Deco and the backing singers trade lines in just this way. It is like the cheering section at a game, where the cheerleader shouts a line and the whole crowd shouts it back. (Elsewhere) In education it can also mean a teaching method in which the teacher asks and the students answer in unison.
Brass group (horn section)
(Literal meaning) The English word horn means the horn of an animal. Because trumpets were once made from animal horns and blown, brass instruments came to be called horns. A section means one part of a band or orchestra. (In film·musical scores) A group of wind instruments such as trumpets, saxophones and trombones playing together as a unit. In soul they fire off short, sharp blasts together between the vocal lines to lift the energy. Joey Fagan's trumpet leads this band's horn section. It is the same effect as in a class choir contest, when many people clap at exactly the same instant and the sound comes out far louder and crisper.
Gradually louder (crescendo)
(Literal meaning) The Italian crescendo means growing. The sound grows larger little by little, the way a living thing grows. (In film·musical scores) A way of playing in which the sound is raised bit by bit. 「Try a Little Tenderness」 is built as though the whole song were one vast crescendo, beginning in a whisper and ending in a shout. In film the technique is often used to heighten the tension and emotion of a scene. It is like the way your heart pounds harder and harder as a roller coaster slowly climbs to the top. (Elsewhere) In everyday conversation, too, a situation in which the mood or feeling keeps building is sometimes called a crescendo.
On-set recording (live recording)
(In film·musical scores) A method that records the actors' voices exactly as they sing on set. Many music films record the songs in a studio beforehand and have the actors simply mouth along during filming (lip-syncing). Because 「The Commitments」 prerecorded and played back only the accompaniment while recording the vocals on set, dialogue and song flow naturally into each other. Think of a school concert video — mouthing along to a prerecorded song looks clean, but a song sung live on stage keeps its breaths and tremors.
Cover
(In film·musical scores) Playing or singing anew a song that another artist released first. Every song in this film is a Commitments cover of a song by an American singer of the 1960s. A cover becomes a good one when it carries the performer's own voice and circumstances rather than simply imitating the original. It is like a cover dance, where you copy your favorite idol's choreography with friends while mixing in a few moves that belong to your class alone. (Elsewhere) In everyday use it means a book jacket or a lid, or stepping in to fill someone's empty place.