Green Mansions (Limited Edition CD Soundtrack)

 

Sound: B     Music: B

 

 

Mel Ferrer’s 1959 drama Green Mansions has often been credited as a CinemaScope production.  It turns out the Audrey Hepburn/Anthony Perkins drama was the first film ever to use widescreen anamorphic Panavision lenses, which would quickly make the CinemaScope process obsolete.  In case it worked, MGM wanted the film to be as top rate as possible, so Heitor Villa-Lobos was initially hired to do a score that would give the film a naturalistic edge.  If Panavision was going to add a new lifelikeness, why not the score?

 

However, things were not working out as hoped and eventually Bronislau Kaper joined Villa-Lobos in the scoring.  Though some of the tales are less complementary than others, the score was finally finished and it stands as an impressive work that is particularly unique.  The initially all-out lush arrangements and orchestrations have been tailored for a narrative, which has them paradoxically flowing and ebbing in their reach.  This is a rare collaborative score from a Hollywood production, but writing it off as a happy accident would be wrong.

 

The book was from 1904, and the story of all the versions that did not happen has at least as much difficulty as the making of this score.  What does happen here is that two very fine music composers came up with ideas and sounds that had not been heard much to fit a story that took place where few had been, the Amazonian rainforests in this case.  This is not to say this is an avant-garde work, but to say that visual images inspired by the lush strings alone spell exotic, watered and away in a potential paradise.  Because of their talents, a fine score was pulled together that is at least the equal of the film, if not better.  We’ll cover the film when a DVD is issued.

 

Though the film was a monophonic release, the PCM 2.0 sound here is stereophonic from the three-track 35mm magnetic sound master.  The remixed, remastered result is impressive for its time, cleaner, clearer and better engineered than many scores we have heard form the 1960s.  FSM once again has done a great job of presenting the music as well as it will ever be heard in the CD format.  Add the fine illustrated booklet with its exceptional, informative text, and this is a disc soundtrack fans will really want to get.  With only 3,000 copies produced, they and anyone else interested should go to www.filmscoremonthly.com as soon as possible for sound clips, additional information, ordering information and lists of more terrific CDs from the FSM label.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo