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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Whether you get into the mood for this score will depend on your attitudes towards the glamorous genre of energetic musicals that were so popular in mainstream movie houses of the 1930s and 1940s. Branagh and Doyle have collaborated many times before with Shakespearean works, but never in a musical format of this kind. When I first heard about their endeavor to reconstruct some of the most popular musical songs of the time into a Shakespearean mold, I was skeptical. And yet, the beauty of Doyle's end result in Love's Labour's Lost is its fantastic melding of the different famous genre songs into the Shakespearean story --without too many awkward turns. As a musical production, the orchestral underscore breaks into full-fledged song and dance for about ten neatly choreographed performances with smaller ensembles. Only a few times does a sharp edge exist in the transitions between score and song, most notably before "I Won't Dance" on track four. It's likely that these are faults of the album rather than of the music as presented in the film. The Golden Age classics of Gershwin, Porter, Kern and Berlin work remarkably well together on the album. The classically educated ear will pick up on several adaptations of fragments of these composers' (cited) works throughout the underscore. Doyle's greatest achievement in his Love's Labour's Lost accomplishment is the necessary enthusiasm that he injects into the music. The musicals of the thirties and fourties are always jubilent, smiling, and overwhelming with energy. Doyle's previous scores for Branagh's films proved that he could well enough capture that Shakespearean spirit, but this time, he also succeeds in creating the necessary mood to keep the music and film floating on air. The title overture is a remarkable fanfare, introducing the lush and lavish lifestyles of the era. The "Cinetone News" sequence near the end has a very genuine newsreel feel to it as well. The album, while a success, still has a few minor problems. First, the album's major score sequence, "Twelve Months and a Day," breaks the mood of the album considerably, with a far more somber and serious tone than the rest of the album. And at nine minutes in length, that score track puts a significant dent in the bright fluffiness of the rest of the music. Through the first thirteen tracks, however, there is no problem with conflicting underscore. The second flaw of the music is the fact that Branagh employs actors to play the parts in the musical rather than accomplished singers. In traditional musicals, the voices were always as fine-tuned as their dancing. But in Love's Labour's Lost, the actors don't always hit the right notes (and perhaps not as long as they should). If you have a more casual interest in the score, then this shouldn't be much of a problem for you. The album is still a unique and entertaining experience, especially if you're into those old MGM musical productions. ****
(Track times not listed on the packaging)
"Perhaps it was the challenge of walking into a meeting with film financiers to persuade them to bankroll an obscure Shakespearean comedy musical. Or perhaps it was a love affair with this neglected play. Or perhaps it was my awed admiration for the great Hollywood extravaganzas of the '30s, '40s, and '50s. Whatever the reason, Patrick and I were pretty sure that we would be setting ourselves an irresistibly exciting and demanding creative challenge by fusing Shakespeare and the musical. And so it proved. A plot that many critics have described as silly; a style that moves from high romance to farce to social satire; characters who can veer from narcissism to the grotesque - all are inside a play which, alone among Shakespeare's works, went unperformed for some two hundred years after his death. Add to that the very genre of film musical, rarely revived, replaced, we were told, by the rock video. The soundtrack is the essential element with which we attempted to overcome these difficulties. We chose classic songs from composers whose economy, lightness of touch, and linguistic and melodic brilliance could stand beside the equally delicate poetry of the playwright. And we strived to create new arrangements that took their style from the drama (and the comedy); orchestrations that would viscerally give audiences the vicarious thrill of on-screen emotions; and finally, a narrative score that required Patrick to tackle the awesome challenge of complementing both Shakespeare and some of the major popular songwriters of the twentieth century."
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