CD Reviews: Max Steiner RKO Years and The Thin Blue Line
Max Steiner: The RKO Years, 1929-1936
****
MAX STEINER
FMA-MS110
Disc One: 26 tracks -77:22 Disc Two: 23 tracks -
63:06 Disc Three: 23 tracks - 73:09
Film music owes Max Steiner an enormous debt of gratitude. Steiner
began his pioneering work at RKO with the advent of sound pictures
mostly as a conductor of musicals, which were so much in vogue at the
time. The Best Picture winning western
Cimarron (1931) boasted the first original film score for a
"talkie," consisting only of music for the opening and closing credits.
It was initially felt that music would not only interfere with the
sound in non-musical "talkies," but would also confuse audiences ("Hey,
where's that music coming from?"). Producer David O. Selznick (then at
RKO) requested a significant amount of dramatic underscoring for Symphony of Six Million, another
first for Steiner. Audiences and critics were not confused, and instead
felt the music enhanced the drama -- and the rest is history.
During his tenure at RKO, Steiner would sometimes score more than a
dozen pictures a year, including the ground-breaking King Kong, not included in this
collection. (Check out the Stromberg/Morgan re-recording of Kong for the best CD presentation
of Steiner's complete masterpiece.) Instead this new set contains all
of the surviving tracks from the aforementioned Cimarron and Symphony, as well as nine other
features. The music is culled primarily from acetate reference discs
saved by Steiner and others, which are now a part of the Steiner
collection at Brigham Young. While these are not the optimum storage
method, the scores in question mostly predate the use of magnetic film
storage. Plus, they were never intended to be heard outside of the
films anyway, so it's a miracle we have what we do.
This collection contains a handful of little known gems from the
Steiner canon, including Symphony,
Bird of Paradise and Sweepings.
Disc two includes lengthy suites from the classics Little Women and The Little Minister, two early
Katherine Hepburn films. The best is saved for last, with disc three
containing long suites from The Lost
Patrol and the Oscar-winning The
Informer. The Lost Patrol
is a great early adventure score, and Steiner's music evokes both the
plight of the soldiers and the Middle Eastern locale. The Informer features a jaunty main
theme that often turns dark and moody in this Irish Judas tale. The Informer easily stands beside
Steiner's later noir work at Warner Bros.
Steiner would eventually leave RKO for Warner Bros., where he spent the
majority of the remainder of his years (occasionally being loaned out
for little projects like Gone With
the Wind). And while this later work, such as his many scores
for the films of Bette Davis, are more famous, it was at RKO where
Steiner developed most of the techniques which continue to be a
mainstay of film scoring today. And remember, all of the proceeds from
these BYU releases go to the acquisition and preservation of film music
elements, so continued support for this series may just lead to your
own favorite score getting to see the light of day.
-- Darren MacDonald
Music From The Thin Blue Line
(1988/2003) *** 1/2
PHILIP GLASS
Orange Mountain Music OMM0007
19 tracks - 55:41
Errol Morris' avant-garde documentary
The Thin Blue Line focuses on the sad fate of Randall Adams, a
prisoner in the Texas penitentiary system, wrongfully accused of
murder. Making use of jailhouse interviews, symbolic imagery and
expressive cutting, the film actively challenges the inmate's
conviction, discrediting the state's evidence as well as identifying
the real killer. As a matter of fact, the filmmaker's case proved to be
so convincing, Adams regained his freedom shortly after the picture's
1988 release.
For the score, Morris hired Philip Glass, the well known minimalist
from Baltimore. As bleak as a visit to death row, this newly reissued
opus demonstrates that reductive, postmodern works can arouse and
augment emotions and ideas just as well as other forms.
Opening with "Adams' Theme," for instance, the album establishes a
melancholy mood quickly as waves of lower-register notes roll back and
forth relentlessly; and though a trumpet materializes, introducing a
bright, contrasting melody, it eventually dissolves, overwhelmed by the
ominous rush of strings and horns. A similar gloom permeates "Looking,"
an elegy for strings, in which a double bass, a viola and a pair of
violins ascend and descend over and over, mimicking human moans and
sighs.
Now and then, though, Glass shies away from strings, if not despair,
and draws heavily upon the keyboard, as he does on tracks like "Boston
Blackie" and "Harris' Story." And in a piece like "Adams' Nightmare,"
he juxtaposes metallic drums and synthesizers to generate an
outer-spacey noise that betrays the influence of Glass' occasional
collaborator, Brian Eno. "Miller's Theme," in contrast, borrows heavily
from the rhythms and sounds of Texas Swing, electronically simulating
the harmonica, the maracas and the mariachi trumpet as a steel guitar
slides along like a snake.
Remixed from the original masters and freed for the first time from
voice-overs and dialogue, Glass' score now displays the same sort of
yearning sadness that characterizes quieter pieces by Chopin, Prokofiev
-- even Leonard Cohen. And while too much of this sort of music might
trigger a depressive attack, small doses of it -- of the blues, that is
-- probably never killed anyone. -- Stephen
Armstrong
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
|
