The Cobweb/Edge Of The City (Limited Edition FSM CD Soundtrack)

Sound: B/B- Extras: C Music: B

Two of the more dramatic scores of the mid-1950s have been paired in the FSM label CD featuring The Cobweb (a 1955 melodrama) and Edge Of The City (a 1957 drama of a more gritty nature). Both were from MGM and both offered two different but very astute composer/conductors.

Leonard Rosenman is a personal favorite, always surfacing where least expected and always delivering. Besides his incredible score for the underrated Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, which we already reviewed from FSM, he is responsible for memorable music on TV's original The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents and feature films like East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, Fantastic Voyage (also an FSM CD), A Man Called Horse, the telefilm Banyon with Darren McGavin, Battle For The Planet Of The Apes (also an FSM CD), Race With The Devil, Bound For Glory, The Car, the animated 1978 Lord Of The Rings, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the underrated Robocop 2 and Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, just issued in 4K from Criterion. The Cobweb and Edge Of The City are among his earliest works.

On The Cobweb, he was joined by Johnny Green, the conductor of the material.

Johnny Green's cinematic output ran from 1930 to 1974, and he got some really interesting music in at that time. Besides a key song for George Cukor's 1954 remake of A Star Is Born (Easy Come, Easy Go) and musical director on more upbeat Musicals like Easter Parade, Summer Stock, Royal Wedding, An American In Paris, Singin' In The Rain (uncredited), Brigadoon, West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie (also conducting on the latter two), and Oliver! (choral arranger only) and non-musical High Society, he was still able to do darker work for darker material. As his enhancements for Sidney Pollack's dark, incredible They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) shows, he was quite good at furthering a narrative. The Cobweb (1955) was a Vincente Minnelli melodrama, but Rosenman's score was all the darker, joining the ace Musical filmmaker down a more serious path.

Edge Of The City is actually featured first, despite not getting the cover. And was the feature film debut of the great Martin Ritt. The music is nearly 15 minutes long, which shows that even at about 90 minutes, the film was short and had its share of what would become Ritt's trademark silences in the likes of later films like Hud. The Cobweb offers music above the usual trappings of melodrama formula and is more expansive at nearly 40 minutes. There are also subtle signatures and alternate takes offered. Both offer dramatic music that makes sense without being manipulative and furthering the narratives of the films they accompanied.

The PCM 2.0 16/44.1 CD sound is not bad, with Edge Of The City coming off of a 17.5mm monophonic magnetic sound master, while The Cobweb comes from three-track stereo magnetic master intended to enhance the CinemaScope presentation of the film. The Cobweb is the better of the two as a result, though Edge Of The City's monophonic sound is respectable. 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/3558/THE-COBWEB-EDGE-OF-THE-CITY/

Warner Archive finally issued this on Blu-ray and you can read more about it at this link:

https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16664/The+Cobweb+(1955*)/Knights+Of+The+Round+Table

- Nicholas Sheffo