Additional Coverage:
- 1968 Soft Rock Song, Written by Michel Legrand, Ranked Among the Greatest Songs in Movie History (parade.com)
Some songs do more than just accompany a memorable movie scene-they invite us into the inner workings of a character’s mind. “The Windmills of Your Mind” is one such rare piece that achieves both with remarkable subtlety and depth.
Composed by French musician Michel Legrand with evocative English lyrics by the songwriting duo Alan and Marilyn Bergman, the song was created for the 1968 romantic heist film The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. English actor and singer Noel Harrison delivered the understated vocal that would become inseparable from the film’s identity.
Initially, director Norman Jewison used the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” as a placeholder during a key sequence where McQueen’s character, Thomas Crown, pilots a glider. But the film needed an original composition-something that would do more than merely fill the soundtrack. Legrand and the Bergmans crafted a piece that ultimately shaped the film’s very rhythm and mood.
Legrand recalled that when he first saw the film’s rough cut, it ran nearly five hours. The director and editor Hal Ashby were uncertain how to begin editing.
Legrand suggested, “If you don’t know how to edit the film, why don’t we let the music decide?” Taking six weeks, he composed an hour and a half of music inspired by the film’s impressions, creating musical lengths that could serve as the story’s backbone rather than simply fitting scene-by-scene action.
With this musical foundation, Jewison, Legrand, and Ashby restructured parts of the movie around the score. The Bergmans, at Jewison’s request, wrote lyrics that would convey Crown’s anxious state during the glider sequence-an anxiety reflected in circular imagery both visually and lyrically.
As Alan Bergman explained, “Because anxiety is circular, the flying of the glider in that sequence is circular-all circular images-which resulted in a circular kind of song.”
The result is a mesmerizing song that loops and spirals, mirroring the restless mind of Thomas Crown as he soars through the sky. Legrand’s melody continually turns inward on itself, while the Bergmans’ rapid-fire stream of images creates a dizzying, hypnotic effect.
Noel Harrison’s delicate vocal delivery enhances this atmosphere. Rather than dominating the scene, his voice floats alongside the visuals, allowing the music and lyrics to evoke Crown’s thoughts in a way that feels more like experiencing thought itself than simply hearing it described.
Lines such as:
*“Like a carousel that’s turning, running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind”*
capture the cyclical, elusive nature of thought and memory.
“The Windmills of Your Mind” became the standout achievement of the film’s soundtrack, winning the 1969 Academy Award for Best Original Song. Harrison’s version found commercial success in the UK, reaching No. 8 on the charts and remaining there for 14 weeks.
Its influence didn’t end there. Dusty Springfield recorded a much-loved rendition for her iconic 1969 album Dusty in Memphis, and many artists-including Petula Clark, Johnny Mathis, José Feliciano, and Barbra Streisand-have since offered their interpretations. In a nod to the original, Sting recorded the song for the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Pierce Brosnan.
The song’s legacy in cinema endures as well. In 2004, the American Film Institute ranked “The Windmills of Your Mind” 57th on its list of the 100 greatest songs in American movies, recognizing it as a timeless fusion of music and film storytelling.
More than five decades after its debut, “The Windmills of Your Mind” continues to resonate-not just as a song about flight or a heist, but as a haunting reflection of the human mind’s ceaseless, circular motion through memories, questions, fears, and desires.
Those windmills are still turning.