: (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 chasing after
leads with the help of a mysterious woman, only to end up in a climactic
confrontation at Niagara Falls. The lead performance by actor Roy
Scheider as the protagonist whose sanity is in constant doubt was widely
considered the highlight of the film. It also represented one of the
final scoring assignments for legendary Golden Age composer
Miklós Rózsa before his choice to retire from the
industry. 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 all together, he resumed regular freelance scoring
duties in the late 1960's and 1970's. 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
and Billy Wilder, ruined his
professional relationships. While
are generally considered to be truly the last of his great
scores, Rózsa's remaining few works weren't as reflective of the
composer's decline in health as some might suggest. Rózsa went on
to live for another entire decade after finishing his film scoring
career, with the recording process simply taking too much energy for him
to muster by the 1980's. His scores for two thrillers,
in 1981 ultimately
exhibited many similarities, including the sharing of what was, for a
long time, the final album of importance representing the composer's
works.
These movies late in his career represent instances in
which Rózsa continued to maintain his lush 1940's romanticism and
instrumental styles into an era well beyond his time, serving in both
cases to eclipse their films in quality with their faithful resurrection
of a genuine film noir sound. Both movies also involve the worlds of
espionage and love affairs, allowing Rózsa to mingle his classic
romance mannerisms with more modern militaristic tones. 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 warning 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 is remarkable, too, performed by seemingly every
instrument in the orchestra at some point in the score. A driving snare
rhythm serves as another secondary motif, mirroring, interestingly, some
of John Barry's James Bond action motifs of the era. A cymbal-crashing
brass finale suits Rózsa's closing fanfare sensibilities exactly
as expected. In fact, the composer's collectors will not be able to hear
much difference stylistically between this score and the composer's most
vintage works, especially when considering the restricted, mono
soundscape that in effect enhances the noir element. The original
recording was long neglected on album, though re-recordings of both
Last Embrace and
Eye of the Needle made in the early
1980's were released on LP and that presentation was pressed onto CD in
the latter half of Varèse Sarabande's original CD Club series.
While neither score is as strong as
Fedora had been earlier in
that Club series, their equal presentation on this dual album is perhaps
more satisfying. Only 1,000 copies of the title were produced, with the
significant number of Rózsa collectors hoarding them and
maintaining abnormally high prices on the secondary market during the
1990's.
The majority of tracks on that Varèse product
are devoted to
Eye of the Needle, however. Rózsa's last
significant original score existed for this film, in which a World War
II German spy is stranded on a island off the coast of Scotland and ends
up in an unlikely romance with a lonely local woman exiled from the
mainland. The Ken Follett novel adaptation received positive reviews, as
had
Last Embrace, though neither picture grossed significant
returns. Rózsa's score for
Eye of the Needle is an
alternating battle between the thematic ideas for the German spy and the
British woman in exile. While their love affair may be genuine,
Rózsa doesn't let the viewer forget the foundations of their
characters. If the score has a weakness, it exists in the comparison
between the wartime material and the lush love theme that once again
reminds of the Rózsa glory days. The two are alternated in the
"Prelude," exposing the militaristic snare theme as a bit trite in
execution and not stated as cold and forcefully as it could have been.
The seamless transition to the love theme glorifies the latter theme,
and it's fitting that the tender theme for the exiled woman gains more
power as the film progresses; as she is forced to kill the spy at the
end of the film, the militaristic theme literally dies with a whimper
while the woman's theme resolutely takes charge. By the
"Finale/Epilogue" cue, Rózsa is in full victory form once again,
with the same crashing cymbal, rolling timpani, and tolling bell method
of finale that collectors of the composer have always loved. Of the two
scores,
Eye of the Needle is the slight favorite, in part because
it's technically the last full score by Rózsa and partly because
of its even more unashamed throwback sensibilities. In 2008, Intrada
Records finally released the full, original recording for
Last
Embrace on its own album, minus a choral overlay that was added to
one cue in post-production. 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
prior recording as possible. In general, collectors of the digital era
of scores should 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
sound quality far better than the archival sound we often associate with
those older recordings.
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- Music as Written for Last Embrace: ***
- Music as Written for Eye of the Needle: ***
- Music as Heard on the 1991 Varèse Album: ****
- Music as Heard on the 2008 Intrada Album: ***
- Overall: ***
