Hemingway himself had a funny quote about the film: "Any movie in which Errol Flynn is the best actor is its own worst enemy."
I don't recall much of Friedhofer's score--it's been years since I've seen the film--but I don't share the majority opinion of the movie itself, though the leads are entirely too ancient for the characters they play.
Best Friedhofer moment is the main title; all the rest is less memorable.
And the best recording of the main title is on the Gehrhardt album. The movie soundtrack has ponderous narration which gets in the way of the buildup at the beginning of the theme.
Best Friedhofer moment is the main title; all the rest is less memorable.
And the best recording of the main title is on the Gehrhardt album.
But it is a magnificent theme!
I too love the Gerhardt recording of the main title. I've never seen the film so I can't comment on it or the rest of the score.
Note a pretty strong similarity between the beginning of this main theme and a moment in Howard Shore's score for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, where Aragorn has recovered from his fall over the cliff and is riding toward the battle at Helm's Deep.
Hemingway himself had a funny quote about the film: "Any movie in which Errol Flynn is the best actor is its own worst enemy."
I don't recall much of Friedhofer's score--it's been years since I've seen the film--but I don't share the majority opinion of the movie itself, though the leads are entirely too ancient for the characters they play.
I love the novel and share your opinion of the film, Jim. Power and Gardner are too old for the parts, but for some reason I always thought the film works amazingly well. Flynn was superb in it.
The opening theme music is rarely heard again throughout the film; what annoyed me was this and the over-used Cole Porter song, "You Do Something to Me". Not at all subtle in conveying the messages of this film, the themes of which are love, virility, masculinity and female promiscuity. The scenes with the bullfighting and Tyrone Power (as Jake) talking about 'horns' on particular bulls and the way they use them in the ring - well, it was none too subtle and rather tasteless since Jake is impotent as a result of a WW1 "injury". The film is pure, unadulterated corn and I agree with the person who said the actors were too old for their parts. Flynn looks dissipated and this film demonstrates - as if demonstration were needed - that he could never act. Take away his pretty face (well, the booze did that) and you're left with, well, nothing...
But the Friedhofer score for the opening credits is just superb. As is often the case, the score is much better than the film. I've often wondered how many composers came to regret their contributions to a film - since most of them are scored before the final cut - when later discovering that the film/s ended up as 'dogs' which died at the box office.
We'll have to agree to disagree about Errol Flynn - I've never found him anything less than eminently watchable, and I think some of his best work was later in his career - his marvelous turn in "The Roots of Heaven" for one.
But I mostly came in to point out that Alexander Courage was brought in by Friedhofer to supervise and write all of the "Spanish Music" in the film. In an interview in Soundtrack Magazine, he recalls: "Anyway, that was a great deal of fun because I got to write pasodobles and little marches."
A shame that the tapes are lost or unusable, as I so greatly admire Friedhofer, and love the small excerpt from this score that Charles Gerhardt recorded for the RCA series.
We'll have to agree to disagree about Errol Flynn - I've never found him anything less than eminently watchable, and I think some of his best work was later in his career - his marvelous turn in "The Roots of Heaven" for one.
But I mostly came in to point out that Alexander Courage was brought in by Friedhofer to supervise and write all of the "Spanish Music" in the film. In an interview in Soundtrack Magazine, he recalls: "Anyway, that was a great deal of fun because I got to write pasodobles and little marches."
A shame that the tapes are lost or unusable, as I so greatly admire Friedhofer, and love the small excerpt from this score that Charles Gerhardt recorded for the RCA series.
Actually, I've heard that Friedhofer DID score the film but never recorded much of it because of the things thrown at him by Zanuck who had some decidedly banal ideas about how the film should sound.
That music (written score) may still exist somewhere.
Zanuck was an odd duck. He thoroughly and completely trusted Alfred Newman's judgment on everything during their years together at Fox. And he truly appreciated the work done by Newman's department. Zanuck was thrilled by Herrmann's "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef", for instance. But...his own tastes in music did interfere in his independent productions.
We'll have to agree to disagree about Errol Flynn - I've never found him anything less than eminently watchable, and I think some of his best work was later in his career - his marvelous turn in "The Roots of Heaven" for one.
And his incredible performance in TOO MUCH TOO SOON!
Quartet released this score (described as its first CD release) in 2018, restored and mastered by Chris Malone and with a bonus track, the main title minus narration (Quartet QR331). The sound is good and the booklet includes original LP liner notes and artwork as well as newly written background information about the film and the score. Highly recommended! Despite its heavy reliance on source music from the Paris cafes and the Pamplona scenes, the few tracks of Friedhofer original score material make this well worth the buy, imo. For Friedhofer completists, if there are any, there actually was a previous CD import release of this music (Kapp LP tracks only), included along with Sir Malcolm Arnold's ROOTS OF HEAVEN (20th Fox LP tracks) in an anthology of songs sung by Juliette Greco from a variety of French films ("The Cinema of Juliette Greco," El Records ACMEM197CD). I'm not sure whether releases from El Records pass the smell test on such things as paid royalties etc., but the sound is decent (not as good as the Quartet perhaps) and the booklet is well written and informative. If you are a fan of the ROOTS OF HEAVEN score (as I am) then this one may be of interest. I haven't seen another CD release of that score, and the sound is considerably better than the tinny old 20th Fox LP release.
Quartet released this score (described as its first CD release) in 2018, restored and mastered by Chris Malone and with a bonus track, the main title minus narration (Quartet QR331). The sound is good and the booklet includes original LP liner notes and artwork as well as newly written background information about the film and the score. Highly recommended! Despite its heavy reliance on source music from the Paris cafes and the Pamplona scenes, the few tracks of Friedhofer original score material make this well worth the buy, imo. For Friedhofer completists, if there are any, there actually was a previous CD import release of this music (Kapp LP tracks only), included along with Sir Malcolm Arnold's ROOTS OF HEAVEN (20th Fox LP tracks) in an anthology of songs sung by Juliette Greco from a variety of French films ("The Cinema of Juliette Greco," El Records ACMEM197CD). I'm not sure whether releases from El Records pass the smell test on such things as paid royalties etc., but the sound is decent (not as good as the Quartet perhaps) and the booklet is well written and informative. If you are a fan of the ROOTS OF HEAVEN score (as I am) then this one may be of interest. I haven't seen another CD release of that score, and the sound is considerably better than the tinny old 20th Fox LP release.
Messrs Morgan and Stromberg re-recorded ROOTS OF HEAVEN along with DAVID COPPERFIELD in 2001 for Marco Polo (8.225167). A must-have IMHO.
