Between Heaven & Hell/Soldier Of Fortune (Limited Edition CD)
Sound:
B- Music: B
Hugo
Friedhofer was a major force in early Hollywood filmmaking when as early as 1929,
he was scoring the new phenomenon of “Soundies” and it was often he even went
uncredited for one reason or another.
His unbelievably long history at Fox went back to when they were just
called Fox Films, doing uncredited work on their Science Fiction Musical Just Imagine (1930) and an early
installment of the Charlie Chan series before the merger with 20th
Century Pictures. The rest of his career
consisted of either serious works or interesting genre pieces (the 1949 Columbia Batman & Robin serial, or spots of TV like I Spy or Barnaby Jones). A recent double score CD form Film Score Monthly’s
FSM label offers two of his later and more serious big screen efforts: Between
Heaven & Hell (1956) and Soldier
Of Fortune (1955).
The first
score is more complete than the second, but both are fine representations of
what he could do outside of genre work, yet were also showcases for Fox’s
CinemaScope format. Between Heaven & Hell was directed by the always interesting
Richard Fleischer, offering a psychological WWII portrait of a man (Robert
Wagner) dealing with disorder and chaos he never expected. This works well, especially in the way
Friedhofer toys throughout with the stereotypical musical idea of staccato
drums and rhythms as identification of war and conflict, which obviously
extends outside of War genre films. It
is very coy and clever, allowing him to pull the audience into the widescreen
CinemaScope world of the film, then letting the final moments have their
greatest impact.
The thing
that struck me about Soldier Of Fortune
is how it reminded me of music in John Barry’s better James Bond scores, the
quite, quietly musical, pensive moments in another world. This is seven years before Dr. No and a decade before the Bond’s
went scope with Thunderball, but the
score offers more gentle and exotic music that could only add to the world as
presented by post-blacklist Edward Dmytryk.
The result is that it is not thought of as the peak work of himself or
stars Clark Gable, Susan Hayward, Michael Rennie or Gene Barry, yet it is a
golden moment for Friedhofer and interesting project all around. I can’t wait to see it again.
The PCM
CD sound is stereo on both scores and it is good, but in odd ways. Between
Heaven & Hell has some compression throughout, but no major wow or
warping otherwise. Soldier Of Fortune has wow and warping, especially in the parts the
CD listing describes as damaged, but it actually has more clarity and fidelity
than the former. The trade-off is less
compression and wear. That sounds odd, but
that is how it is, which makes for an interesting study and comparison of how
music unpreserved does and does not hold up.
In both cases, the music was meant for the stereophonic sound early
CinemaScope productions were known for, so this will make for an interesting
comparison if either ever surfaces on DVD.
As the
terrific, informative booklet this and all FSM CDs contains notes, Friedhofer’s
music is widely available on CD, especially since too many score shave been
lost for good. Like other FSM CDs, this
is limited to only 3,000 pressings, so read more about it at www.filmscoremonthly.com and see
all the great soundtracks they have available while you can get them.
- Nicholas Sheffo
