Fedora/Crisis: (Miklós Rózsa) There
are parallels to be drawn between the convoluted plot of
Fedora
and the actual, real-life circumstances surrounding the depressing,
nostalgic end of director Billy Wilder and composer Miklós
Rózsa's collaboration in 1978. The film was Wilder's attempt to
recapture the success of the concept behind his classic
Sunset
Boulevard several decades earlier. Once again, an aging actress is
an elusive recluse, living on an island under a false identity. So
obsessed with her beauty from Hollywood's Golden Age, the actress passes
off her daughter as herself, even forcing her daughter to accept an
honorary Oscar while she pretends to be the mother. A washed up director
played by a frail-looking William Holden (once again recalling
Sunset
Boulevard) attempts to rekindle a working collaboration with the
actress and falls into the mystery that tragically ends with daughter
committing suicide and the real actress dying peacefully as a fictitious
countess of the island. It was too overly melodramatic, really,
especially when late 1970's audiences expected to see starships in
realistic battle. The film was a monumental failure, shelved for a year
while the studio pondered what to do with it and ultimately identified
by critics as a sadly desperate attempt by Wilder, who was in failing
health by the time, to resurrect his reputation with another 1940's
classic thirty years later. He even went so far as to employ the
services of one his last remaining living collaborating composers,
Rózsa, with whom he had experienced a personal disagreement for
decades since their original projects of the 1940's earned both great
recognition. Rózsa was also in the final years of his career,
though while physical ailments would keep him from film score
production, he continued to write concert music through the 1980's. Less
than half a dozen scores followed
Fedora for Rózsa,
including the remarkable
Time After Time, though the quality of
his work never significantly declined in his final efforts. One of the
most interesting aspects of Rózsa's career is that he never
altered the style of composition that he established in the 1940's, even
in the post-
Star Wars era of bravado and synthesizers. His score
for
Fedora, to the delight of his longtime collectors, retains
the same styles of thematic structures that most of his scores had
maintained for a lifetime.
In most regards,
Fedora is a score from the
Golden Age recorded with better technical precision in the late 1970's,
making Rózsa's sound more accessible to Digital Age listeners.
And there's plenty of it to hear in
Fedora, with Rózsa
expertly devising themes for each character and manipulating them as the
mystery unfolds. The merging of themes for the aging actress and her
daughter is masterfully realized in such cues as "Metamorphosis" and
"Oscar." Both cues represent the more cheery side of the relationship,
especially the latter, which is a triumphant highlight cue late in
Rózsa's career. A brooding, forceful theme for Holden's character
is perhaps more creative in its ability to crouch and stew, though even
this theme makes use of the same lush instrumentation as the rest of the
score. Even in its darker moments (the brutal "Butcher!"),
Rózsa's touch is undeniably melodramatic in his trademark layered
strings and woodwinds solos. The art of the Golden Age fanfare is not
neglected either, with both the "Prelude" and "Finale" presenting
outstanding brass announcements of high drama. Unfortunately for
Rózsa, when Wilder realized that the film was too steeped in
yesteryear, much of Rózsa's score was either removed or inserted
in the wrong places in the picture. This would greatly anger and
disappoint Rózsa, and understandably so, since the music was
obviously an appropriate throwback in the context of the film's story.
Listeners did get to hear the full score on LP in 1979 and CD ten years
later from Varèse Sarabande. The latter product was the second in
the label's original Club series, limited to only 1,200 copies and
retaining top value for Rózsa collectors not influenced by
subsequent bootlegs and wanting an original copy. Also in the
presentation was a suite of cues from Rózsa's 1950 score for
Crisis, a film starring Cary Grant as an American brain surgeon
kidnapped and forced to botch an operation on a Latin American dictator
(but who refuses and creates a nasty dilemma). It was noted as the only
major studio film score performed by solo acoustic guitar, and while
Rózsa's attempt at creativity is noble, the score is hardly an
enjoyable listening experience, especially compared to the romantic and
lush
Fedora. The same presentation was reprised by Varèse
in 2014 in a 1,000-copy Club pressing that also sold out quickly, and
revisiting the score once again only reaffirms the throwback nostalgia
and impressive sound quality of the
Fedora recording. This
presentation, regardless of
Crisis at the end, is a solid, if not
necessary inclusion for any Rózsa collector.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Fedora: ****
- Crisis: *
- Music as Heard on Combined Albums: ***
The inserts of both albums include detailed information about the score and film.
All copies of the 1989 pressing were hand-numbered.
