Our Mother’s House/The 25^th Hour (1967)

(Limited Edition CD Soundtrack)

 

Sound: B     Our Mother’s House Music: B-     25^th Hour music: B

 

 

Georges Delerue is always mentioned when the French New Wave surfaces in conversation, and is known as perhaps its primary music man.  However, he did make scores for Hollywood and his two scores for M-G-M are featured in a new CD from the FSM label of Film Score Monthly for Our Mother’s House and The 25^th Hour (both 1967).

 

Director Jack Clayton helmed the first film shot in his native Britain, while Henri Verneuli (in Franscope) shot the latter as an international production.  The first film is supposed to be a supernatural drama, but the score there is very subtle and string-laden.  How the music works in the film will be covered when the DVD is reviewed, but it is a nice score.  Too bad it is so repetitious.  This runs 12 tracks, but over half the CD, versus the 13 for 25^th Hour that runs three minutes less.

 

This 25^th Hour is not the original version of the resent Spike Lee film, but a tale about mistaken identity of one man (Anthony Quinn).  Taken to a Nazi camp, though he is not Jewish or on their “preferred list” of those to detain, he gets caught up in a chain of events so inane, it adds up to a kind of dark comedy.  Perhaps the idea of loss of place and identity is what Lee was going after in using the title, as the focus is on Edward Norton as a guy who cannot seem to make his life work, and then gets in trouble with the law.  Either way, this is the more interesting of the two scores, with more diversity and variation.

 

Both soundtracks have been out of print for a long time and sought by collectors for decades, so here they are, finally in print again, but this pressing only runs 3,000 copies.  The PCM CD stereo sound quality is very good for in both cases, considering the age of the material, though 25^th Hour may sound a bit better.  Both were originally issued on the now-defunct M-G-M Records label, when it was at its peak.

 

This CD, among other exclusive soundtracks, can be ordered today at www.filmscoremonthly.com right now.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo