Buy it... on Varèse Sarabande's obscure release only if you are an avid collector of Cliff Eidelman's works, for the adequately attractive but ultimately average score is slightly overrated.

Avoid it... on the album mentioned above if you seek Mark Adler's ethnically rich replacement score that was actually used in the film.

Eidelman

Picture Bride: (Cliff Eidelman/Mark Adler) Writer/director Kayo Hatta labored for five years researching the period in Hawaiian history during which immigrant workers from East Asian countries called upon women from their homelands to join them on the islands. The historically accurate depictions of Picture Bride tell of the hardships that women faced when they traveled to the island to marry men of whom they had only seen a picture. Many became understandably disillusioned, and only through their friendships with each other could they emotionally survive. From 1907 and 1924, more than 20,000 picture brides made that fateful trip, producing a significant portion of the population of the islands today. The film, despite some problems with the fictional narrative used to convey the larger story (which likely would have been just as well served in the form of a documentary), was critically praised and led to awards consideration, but the project was one of dissatisfaction for fans of composer Cliff Eidelman. One of the biggest disappointments in the career of Eidelman was the rejection of his recorded music for Picture Bride, replaced in the final version of the edit by a similar score by Mark Adler (who remains best known in the film score genre with 1988's The Unbearable Lightness of Being). The Adler score for the film was commercially released on album at the same time as Eidelman's unused effort, and perhaps the most interesting aspect of the two works is that both of them would have worked just as well in the context of the story.

While some sources of information indicate that the post-production scheduling conflicts of Picture Bride caused Eidelman to be unable to finish the score, other accounts of the collapse are less kind to Eidelman's composition. In any case, the film's location required a flavor of the Far East while also catering to the ears of Western audiences. Both scores accomplished this task, but Eidelman and Adler went about doing so from different directions. The final Adler score is a much more ethnically precise work in its percussive and woodwind instrumentation, resulting in an arguably superior score in terms of authenticity within its surroundings. Adler's themes, however, are not as compelling as those by Eidelman, who incorporates a moderate amount of the same instrumentation while swaying more heavily towards the thematic development that would appeal to Western audiences. As much as most film score collectors will side with Eidelman on this debate, the Mark Adler score for Picture Bride is also a strong and listenable score, and the ethnic elements resulting from Adler's interpretation of the story are commendable. Eidelman's composition was handled by an adequate, although spiritually lacking performing group in Seattle, with one soloist responsible for most of the ethnic performances on two instruments. The pan pipe and bamboo flute offer some of the best moments in Eidelman's Picture Bride score, with the suite at the beginning of the album containing the lengthiest of those performances.

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It is interesting, however, to acknowledge that Eidelman's best use of unusual percussion and woodwinds at the time was still in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which raises questions about why he did not approach Picture Bride with the same ethnic power and emotion. Where Eidelman's score may be lacking in a sufficient dose of ethnicity, this fault is well compensated for by the lush and often intense themes that the composer incorporates into nearly every cue. A similar motif to the opening of John Williams' theme for Born on the Fourth of July appears, especially in "Tragic Loss," but the themes are otherwise a refreshing burst of power compared to the often subdued nature of Eidelman's other scores of the middle to late 1990's. Once again, it's both a short score and a short album pressed by Varèse Sarabande, most likely due to the fact that Eidelman never finished the work. The Adler album, which is badly out of print, is much longer. Without the suite of themes presented at the start and Eidelman's typical piano solo at the end, the rejected score runs barely over twenty minutes. That piano plays a key role in the Picture Bride score, which is no surprise given the fact that Eidelman works it into nearly every dramatic score he did in that era, but it sounded slightly out of character for this particular situation. Overall, with the exception of the vibrant "Running for the Ocean" cue (which lights up the entire score), even Eidelman collectors may find little excitement in Picture Bride, an adequately attractive but ultimately average work. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Cliff Eidelman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29 (in 17 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.2 (in 7,740 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.