: (Miklós Rózsa) An early
and relatively unheralded film by director Jonathan Demme for United
Artists,
tensely follows the states of paranoia that
a CIA agent experiences after seeing his spouse executed while on a
mission and figuring that he is the next target of either his employer
or another interest. He spends the majority of the film trying to
determine who, if anyone, is attempting to kill him. Chasing after leads
with the help of a mysterious woman who somehow ends up living in his
apartment, he ultimately finds himself in a climactic confrontation at
Niagara Falls in a scenario that clearly sought to raise memories of
Alfred Hitchcock classics. Do not expect a happy ending. The lead
performance by actor Roy Scheider as the protagonist whose sanity is in
constant doubt was widely considered the highlight of the film, though
few audiences found the depressing project attractive, and it suffered a
significant financial loss. The movie also represented one of the final
scoring assignments for legendary Golden Age composer Miklós
Rózsa before a debilitating stroke forced him to retire from the
industry in the early 1980's. After the end of the studio contract
system that bound composers as recently as the early 1960's, one of the
most displaced artists was Rózsa. The maestro was as far removed
from the biblical epics the 1950's and 1960's that had served as the
climax of his career, and after taking several years in the latter
decade removed from film music completely, he resumed limited freelance
scoring duties in the late 1960's and 1970's for projects that suited
his dedicated style of nostalgic writing. Unfortunately, few of his
scores from the last dozen years of his career accompanied particularly
memorable films. His collaborations often produced unimpressive results
or, in the case of
While
Fedora and
Time After Time are
generally considered to be truly the last of his great works,
Rózsa's remaining few scores after them weren't as reflective of
the composer's decline in health as some might suggest, with
Eye of
the Needle and
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid each charming with
their own merits. Nestled amongst these late entries, his scores for the
two more disturbing psychological thrillers,
Last Embrace in 1978
and
Eye of the Needle three years later ultimately exhibited many
stylistic similarities, including the sharing of what was, for a long
time, an important and collectible album representing the composer's
final years of writing. These movies represent instances in which
Rózsa continued to maintain his sweeping 1940's romanticism and
instrumental styles into an era well beyond his time, serving to eclipse
their films in quality with their faithful resurrection of a genuine
film noir sound. These projects inevitably involved the worlds of
espionage and love affairs, allowing Rózsa to mingle his classic
romance mannerisms with more modern militaristic tones that tended to
bleed together in their progressions and execution. The most dominant
aspect of Rózsa's score for
Last Embrace is an easily
accessible string theme for the troubled affair between the agent and a
new love interest, evoking many of the high class, melodramatically
layered strings in Rózsa's classic scores over worrisome timpani
rumblings. This material grows out of a five-note motif that rolls with
ominous warnings of oppression starting immediately in "Main Titles."
That motif is very keenly transformed into a bridge with the love theme,
sometimes reduced to the same instrumentation and serving as an
interlude to the secondary idea. The composer's loyalty to the five-note
motif common to his career is remarkable, too, performed by seemingly
every instrument in the orchestra at some point in the score. Its most
poignant accompaniment for the frantic chasing aspect of the story can
be heard in "Pursuit," "Murder in the Bathtub," and "Niagara
Falls."
The composer's choice to adapt the same main theme of
suspense in
Last Embrace into his primary love theme as well is
likely due to the fact that the murderer and the main character's love
interest are the same person, a keen choice to reflect the man's
inner-conflict. Rózsa never had much issue switching abruptly
between a main theme of heightened suspense and a swirling love theme,
but in this case he could simply retain the same melody for both. The
two "Goodnight Ellie" cues are intensely swooning, retro renditions of
the unashamed Rózsa romance sound of the 1940's for the main
theme, and they play up the larger-than-life implications of the agent's
lust and peril, perhaps a bit too well. The composer extends the
narrative to a second, unrelated love theme of similar construct but far
lesser bravado as a representation of the character's lost wife and his
despair over her assassination. Dabbling in source-like tones in "The
Cantina," this identity is further developed in truly melancholy tones
during "Homecoming," "Nocturne," and "Dreamland," the last of which
pitting its string prowess against agitated woodwinds typical to the
composer's preferred mannerisms. Don't expect this identity to compete
with the main theme on any level. Meanwhile, a driving snare rhythm for
the scenes of movement and fright serves as another secondary motif,
mirroring, interestingly, some of John Barry's James Bond action motifs
of the era but actually owing to Rózsa's own
The Killers.
Narratively, and to nobody's surprise, the score culminates in a rousing
rendition of the main theme's lush side with flighty flute lines and
endlessly overlapping brass counterpoint for the main string
performances. A cymbal-crashing brass announcement of the end in
"Finale" suits Rózsa's closing fanfare sensibilities exactly as
expected. For those who were flummoxed by the composer's overly bright
conclusion to
Eye of the Needle given the similar death of a
murderous lover in the final scene, the stance here isn't quite as
shamelessly romantic and instead extends some more tumult to the
moment.
Generally,
Last Embrace may not represent
Rózsa at the very top of his game in this genre, because there is
a fair amount of rather generic suspense material in between the major
moments of exposition that slows the experience. Still, there are no
serious detractions of dissonant repulsion in the work, even during the
murder scenes. The composer's collectors will not be able to hear much
difference stylistically between this score and his most vintage
alternatives, especially when considering the very restricted, mono
soundscape that in effect enhances the noir element. The original
recording of the music for the film was long neglected on album, though
the standard album re-recordings of both
Last Embrace and
Eye
of the Needle made in the early 1980's were released on LP records,
and those presentations were pressed onto CD in the latter half of
Varèse Sarabande's original CD Club series. While neither score
is as memorable as
Fedora had been earlier in that Club series,
the presentation on this early dual CD album was perhaps more
satisfying. Only a woeful 1,000 copies of the 1991 product were pressed,
with the significant number of Rózsa collectors hoarding them and
maintaining abnormally high prices for the CD on the secondary market
during the 1990's. In 2008, Intrada Records finally released the full,
original recording for
Last Embrace on its own album of 2,000
copies, minus a choral overlay that was added to one cue in
post-production and could not be found for this album. Extremely narrow,
dry sound quality causes this presentation to lack the crossover appeal
that Varèse's dual album had offered, though it remains as
faithful a treatment of the film recording as possible. The second album
remained available for several years after its release. In the end,
collectors of the digital era of scores should especially take note of
both original Varèse Club titles of Rózsa's late works, as
well as
Time After Time, because they offer an opportunity to
hear the composer's Golden Age styles in a quality far better than the
archival sound often associated with the composer's older recordings.
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