Miklos Rozsa - Fedora: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1978) Limited Edition 2014

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Miklos Rozsa - Fedora: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1978) Limited Edition 2014

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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.

Editorial Review FilmTracks.com

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Miklos Rozsa - Fedora: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1978) Limited Edition 2014

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Miklos Rozsa - Fedora: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1978) Limited Edition 2014

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Miklos Rozsa - Fedora: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1978) Limited Edition 2014

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