Prisoner
Of Zenda
(1952/Limited Edition FSM CD Soundtrack)
Sound:
B- Extras: C Music:
B+
Alfred
Newman is always thought of as the big conductor at 20th Century-Fox,
but he worked at other studios and that led to an interesting
situation with his music for The Prisoner Of Zenda for MGM.
In 1937, Newman did the score for the David O. Selznick version, the
master recordings of which are gone, then M-G-M did a remake in 1952
and used Newman's score again. This was when Newman went to Fox.
Not
giving up that easily, the studio hired Conrad Salinger and others to
update and re-record the music and this limited edition CD soundtrack
is the result of that work. The always informative booklet Film
Score Monthly Magazine's FSM label always supplies to their CD
releases is especially valuable here, intricately listing each track,
cue, and person involved. To make things even more complicated,
since the music was as remade as the film and the older recording no
longer exists outside of its use in film copies, FSM has added the
names of actors from the previous film to further show where the
music went in the original film. The music itself is layered out in
interesting ways that now make me want to see both film versions,
which you can read more about below.
The
choir-like music is the low point and a narratively necessary pause
from what Newman achieves here. The influence of the music is
without doubt, even to cartoon shorts (Warner Bros. in particular)
that mocked these kinds of films. The only issue is that the PCM 2.0
16/44.1 sound is monophonic because this is one of a series of M-G-M
films that was the victim of an idiotic policy that replaced
first-generation stereophonic masters with inferior mono ones, so we
only have the music left that way. That is always frustrating, but
FSM has done a nice transfer job here and the sound is less distorted
than those inferior mono copies tend to be.
This
CD will only have 3,000 pressings made and is available with other
Film Score Monthly exclusive
FSM label CDs mentioned in this review at while supplies last at and
is still in print years after we first posted this review
at:
https://www1.screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm/ID/3805/THE-PRISONER-OF-ZENDA-MGM-1952
Warner
Archive finally issued this on Blu-ray and you can read more about it
at this link:
https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16665/Prisoner+Of+Zenda+(1952/*all+MGM/Warner+Archive
-
Nicholas Sheffo
