Eye of the Needle/Last Embrace: (Miklós Rózsa)
After the end of the studio contract system for composers in the early
1960's, one of the most displaced artists was Miklós Rózsa. The legend
was as far removed from the biblical epics the 50's and 60's that had
served as the climax of his career, and after taking several years in
the 60's removed from film music all together, he resumed regular
freelance scoring duties in the late 60's and 70's. Unfortunately, few
of his scores from the last dozen years of his career accompanied
memorable films. His collaborations often produced unimpressive results
or, in the case of
Fedora and Billy Wilder, ruined his
professional relationships. While
Fedora and
Time After
Time are truly the last of his great scores, Rózsa's remaining few
scores weren't as evident as the composer's decline in health as some
might suggest. Rózsa would go on to live for another decade after
finishing his film score career, with the recording process simply
taking too much energy for him to muster. His scores for two thrillers,
Last Embrace in 1978 and
Eye of the Needle in 1981 would
share many similarities, including the sharing of the final album of
importance from the composer's works. They both represented times in
which Rózsa continued to maintain his lush 1940's romanticism and
instrumental styles into an era beyond his time, serving in both cases
to eclipse their films in quality. And both would also involve the
worlds of espionage and love affairs, allowing Rózsa to mingle his
classic romance themes with more modern militaristic tones.
Last
Embrace was an early Jonathan Demme film commenting on the states of
paranoia that a CIA agent experiences after seeing his spouse executed
and figuring that he is the next target. The dominating aspect of
Rózsa's score is an easily accessible string theme for the love affair
between the agent and a new love interest, evoking many of the high
class melodramatic layered strings in Rózsa's classic scores over
worrisome timpani rumblings. A driving snare rhythm serves as a
secondary motif, mirroring, interestingly, some of John Barry's James
Bond action motifs of the era. A cymbal-crashing brass finale suits
Rózsa's closing fanfare sensibilities exactly as expected.
Similar themes would be heard in Rózsa's last
significant original score,
Eye of the Needle, a film in which a
World War II German spy is stranded on a island off the coast of
Scotland and ends up in an unlikely romance with a lonely local woman
exiled from the mainland. The Ken Follett novel adaptation received
positive reviews, as had
Last Embrace, though neither picture
would gross significant returns. Rózsa's score for
Eye of the
Needle would be an alternating battle between the thematic ideas for
the German spy and the British woman in exile. While their love affair
may be genuine, Rózsa doesn't let the viewer forget the foundations of
their characters. If the score has a weakness, it exists in the
comparison between the wartime material and the lush love theme that
once again reminds of the Rózsa' glory days. The two are alternated in
the "Prelude," exposing the militaristic snare theme as a bit trite in
execution and not existing as forcefully and cold as could have. The
seamless transition to the love theme glorifies the latter theme, and
it's fitting that the tender theme for the exiled woman gains more power
as the film progresses; as she is forced to kill the spy at the end of
the film, the militaristic theme literally dies with a whimper while the
woman's theme resolutely takes charge. By the "Finale/Epilogue" cue,
Rózsa is in full victory form, with the same crashing cymbal, rolling
timpani, and tolling bell form of finale that collectors of the composer
have always loved. Of the two scores,
Eye of the Needle is the
slight favorite, in part because it's technically the last full score by
Rózsa and partly because of its unashamed throwback styles. On album,
full 1981/1982 re-recordings of the scores made the transition from LP
to CD in the latter half of Varèse Sarabande's original CD Club
series, and while neither score is as strong as
Fedora was
earlier in the series, their equal presentation on album here is perhaps
more satisfying. Only 1,000 copies of this title were produced, with the
significant number of Rózsa collectors hoarding most of them. Collectors
of the digital era of scores should take note of both original
Varèse Club titles of Rózsa's late works, as well as
Time
After Time, because they offer an opportunity to hear the composer's
Golden Age styles in sound quality far better than the archival sound we
often receive on the significantly older recordings.
Last Embrace: ***
Eye of the Needle: ***
Combination Album: ****
The insert includes detailed information about the score and film. All copies were numbered.
