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The Rose Tattoo: (Alex North) During the production
of great literary adaptations in the 1950's by Paramount and other
studios, Alex North was the up and coming composer of choice. North's
scores for
Death of a Salesman and
A Streetcar Named
Desire in 1951 qualified him for what critics lauded as one of the
better literary adaptations of the period, 1954's
The Rose
Tattoo. Tennessee Williams' original story is a lesson in symbolism,
with a tattoo of a rose serving as the primary representation of love
and perfection. The plotline centers around a feisty widow in the
process of self-punishment for the loss of her perfect husband, and the
complications of the heart that result when new men walk into her life.
With the concepts of the story restrained to a stylized theatrical
level, the setting of Alabama and the conservative art direction are
overshadowed by individual performances, including Italian actress Anna
Magnani, whose difficult transition to an English language film was
awarded with an Oscar. Burt Lancaster's attempts to handle the
melodramatic Mediterranean-style dialogue as the male lead are often
criticized, however. The emotional roller coaster of a story (somewhat
in the soap opera realm) led to a diverse score by North, who even went
so far as to address the Italian heritage of the lead character. North
was already --in the early 1950's-- a wildcard composer who could shift
tones at ease within the same score, and
The Rose Tattoo is one
of those efforts that maintains many of the established norms of light
orchestral love scores of the Golden Age while challenging listeners
with ethnic and genre-bending flavors. One reason, perhaps, for this
move by North was a conscious effort by the composer to compensate for
the film's primary reported weakness, which is the compact and
claustrophobic existence of the story in a stage setting. The shuttered
home of the widow and its low ceilings, along with a rather stale mono
soundtrack, necessitated some flair to go along with the Italian
actress' obvious passions, and North delivers to some extent.
The difficulty with North's score is inherent in much
of his writing, so the criticism that follows won't surprise or bother
you if you're familiar with North's tendency to cross melodic and
dissonant boundaries at will. North does not waste any time producing an
adequate and lyrical Italian sound in the score, establishing it with
mournful female vocals in the opening cue and referencing the theme and
percussively diverse instrumentation several times later in the work.
The following "Floozie" cue is perhaps the anomaly in the score,
reverting to North's experimentation with jazz in films. Coming a decade
before the Silver Age masters transferred the sound of these ideas into
an accessible listening experience for forthcoming ages, North's use of
the genre here is strikingly archival and misplaced with the Golden Age
ideas throughout the rest of this particular score. The contemplative
underscore that more closely resembled the scores of 1940's drama opens
in "Lament" and continues though several following cues, often defined
by solo woodwinds and a restrained string section in simple performances
of North's secondary theme for the film. Injecting some life is "Com e
Strano" and "Caprice" two cues for the comedic portions of the play that
resemble the flair of the more active Italian lifestyle. For fans of
North's compelling uses of dissonant layers, "Thorn of the Rose"
features the Golden Age strings in disparate layers of activity that may
be more difficult for non-North fans to place with the rest of the
score. The final "Gioconda" cue caps a reprise of the opening song with
summaries of all the ideas heard throughout the score condensed into
three minutes; the full ensemble performs a fanfare at the climax of
this cue that is carnivalesque and once again out of place in the score,
especially with its remarkably pronounced brass. On album,
The Rose
Tattoo was the fifth entry in Varèse Sarabande's original run
of Club titles in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Only 1,000 copies of
the album were produced, though its value did not escalate as quickly as
others in the series. Its severe archival sound is an inherent weakness
of the score's age, and restricts some of the score's flavor.
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The insert includes detailed information about the score and film. All copies were numbered.
The cover art is identical to that which appeared on the original LP release.
