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Composed, Conducted, and Produced by:
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Maurice Jarre
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Performed by:
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The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
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Availability:
The album is a "Limited Collector's Edition" of 1,000 copies and was available only through the label's site or through online soundtrack specialty outlets. The label and most of the other outlets have sold out of this title after its initial 10 months. Catalog number: VCL 0702 1013
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Sorry, there are no commercial ordering options for this title. However, you can
search for this title at the soundtrack specialty outlets listed on the Filmtracks Links Page. |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you want a superb throwback to classic, melodic Bernstein
and Waxman scores of the golden age of film music.
Avoid it... if you aren't acclimated enough to melodramatic golden age
styles to warrant the search for this rare album.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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The Bride: (Maurice Jarre) There have been dozens upon
dozens of Frankenstein interpretations on the big screen over the past 80
years, but by the mid-1980's, a while had past since the last monster
thriller involving the famed creature. Columbia Pictures decided at the time
that audiences were ready for a modern Frankenstein interpretation, and they
as usual wanted it to cater to young, pop-oriented audiences. Thus, they
brought two enormously popular stars of the early 1980's onto the project:
Sting (Dune) and Jennifer Beals (Flashdance). Unfortunately,
the two stars of The Bride had no screen chemistry from the start,
both out of place in an oddly baroque-turned-modern setting. The film also
failed to do what all Frankenstein films are supposed to do: scare people!
The end result of the film was a pseudo-sequel to the original Mary Shelley
tale, and there wasn't enough serious horror or silly playfullness (a la
Young Frankenstein) to make The Bride work. Thus, the film
slipped away into obscurity, as did the acting careers of its two stars. The
only redeeming aspect of the entire project was Maurice Jarre's score. Jarre
had the musical sensibilities of the era from which Frankenstein films
experienced all their glory. He was still in demand in the mid-1980's,
scoring several high profile projects in 1985 alone, including
Witness and A Passage to India. Jarre's job on The
Bride was made all the more difficult by the film's multiple, concurrent
storylines and jagged settings. To provide a comprehensive score, Jarre
would need to choose a sound that was appropriate enough for all of the aims
of the film to bring all of these elements together under one musical
roof.
Ironically, considering all of the pop icon appeal that the
studio was attempting to inject into the project, Maurice Jarre took the
film into the polar opposite direction. He returned to glory days of black
and white Frankenstein at his scariest. He provided a golden age Hollywood
score with all the thematic rapture as Elmer Bernstein's great, dramatically
sweeping themes. The parallels to Bernstein in The Bride are aplenty,
with the use of ondes martinot instrument at the forefront. Both Jarre and
Bernstein were wearing out the eerie instrument in the mid-1980's, with
Bernstein's use of it in Ghostbusters the best known in modern times.
But Jarre's use is a clear tribute to Franz Waxman's similar treatment in
Bride of Frankenstein several decades earlier. Waxman would be proud
of Jarre's score for The Bride, for it has all the same
string-quivering, brass layering, and slowly paced themes of grandeur. A
solo violin performs a Waxman-like theme of passion in the midsection of the
score as well. As beautiful as Jarre's score is --and it will please
any golden age film music collector-- you can't help but wonder about
its disjointed marriage with the stars of the film. Nevertheless, Jarre's
work functions as an independent tribute score, with deep, dramatic
sensibilities that translate better onto album than perhaps it did onto
screen. The first-time album is short by the standards of the Varèse
Sarabande Club albums of the early 2000's, but The Bride, the 13th of
the new generation of Club titles, was the first of the newer titles to sell
out (in May, 2003). With only 1,000 pressings of the score, The Bride
will likely be a significant catch at online auction houses for several
years, with golden age film score fans gobbling up what few copies remain at
specialty outlet. The album may not be worth the hunt for every film music
fans, but Bernstein and Waxman collectors won't want to let it slip through
their fingers. ****
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. The Bride (5:02)
• 2. In the Woods (1:50)
• 3. Rinaldo (1:38)
• 4. Frankenstein (1:18)
• 5. The Jewels (2:01)
• 6. Bela (1:36)
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• 7. Eva (2:12)
• 8. Escape (1:50)
• 9. Viktor and Eva (4:59)
• 10. Rinaldo's Death (2:28)
• 11. Frankenstein's Punishment (2:27)
• 12. Together (3:20)
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The limited edition Varèse Sarabande album has its usual standard of excellent, in-depth analysis of the score and film.
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