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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Shadow of the Vampire: (Dan Jones) For this BBC film produced by Nicholas Cage, it might surprise a few people who see the movie posters for this film in the theatres that the name of the composer (or any composer credit at all) is not listed on those posters. The score for Shadow of the Vampire has seemingly become an afterthought, overshadowed by the sheer popular weight of the acting performances by Malkovich and Dafoe. The film's unique perspective, offering the viewers the opportunity to watch the making of the classic and silent 1922 film of Nosferatu in the making, and the dark avenues down which the director goes to make it authentic, require a score that does two things; first, the music must reflect the tinny, melodramatic, string-dominated scores for those films themselves, and second, the music should encapsulate that gothic feeling that any good vampire film would provide nowadays. What composer Daniel T. Jones produces is a sort of whimsical combination of the two, staying a step out of the way of the light, not much unlike the vampire, and not much unlike the lack of the composer's name on the movie poster. The score for Shadow of the Vampire meanders reflectively in murky depths for its entire length. While the performance by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales is certainly adequate in its accuracy and power, the players' lack of enthusiasm in their performance is an element that may have been intended by the composer. But it is this absence of genuine fright, awe, and even the moments of dark delight, that causes the score for Shadow of the Vampire to wander off into an uninteresting cloud of ambiguity. Jones' re-creation of the violin performanes that accompanied such old horror films is well interpolated into many cues, but at the same time, he has lost the gothic and brooding element of the vampire's demeanor itself. The lack of harmony in almost every cue is to be expected; it was a trademark of that period of music, and the film's dark story requires a certain amount of it. But without the gothic drive and power, the remaining music hovers in the treble without seemingly clear direction. The lack of a title theme for either of the two characters leads to several underdeveloped motifs that often wash away into near silence. In fact, there are over ten minutes on this album that are so inaudible that the stereo has to be turned way up in volume just to hear the strings and woodwinds waver, not to mention the sound effects and dialogue from the film. Those sound effects and dialogue present another problem with this album. The film has plenty of classic lines of dialogue to be included on the album (such as the classic "...I'll eat her later."), and yet none of them can be heard here. Instead, the sound effects and dialogue mixed extensively throughout the album are presented at such low and washed out volumes that they become a form of percussive accompaniment for the orchestra. For the lengthy moments of very low underscore, these mixings are fine in concept, but their low volume makes them into distracting whispers. At other points, laughing, applause, or footsteps will suddenly interrupt the music, clipping the end of a cue without warning. The opening of the album, though, is an exception; the combination of a bell tolling, screaming of a woman, footsteps, and frantic voices was a good way to start things off, even though they were mixed too softly as well. Overall, this album has many peculiarities. From the dissonant and minimalistic meanderings of the score, to the constant intervention of dialogue and sound effects, the album also suffers from slightly incorrect track attribution in the notes, and from the sound of certain tracks, I wonder if they aren't mislabeled in certain places. Tracks two and twenty-four are exactly identical (however that is labeled). The two or three cues of significance in the score --including the haunting "Light of the Sun" track-- aren't enough to pull this poorly-mixed album from the dreary depths of dismal melancholy. ****
Insert includes no extra information about the score or film. The soloist credits in the packaging are off by one track a piece. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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