Knights
Of The Round Table
(1953/Limited Edition FSM CD Soundtrack)
Sound:
B Extras: C Music: B
The
original M-G-M helped 20th
Century-Fox break in CinemaScope by immediately supporting the
format. Along with Westerns and Biblical film cycles were the films
we can generalize as Costume Epics, but more specifically should be
considered films of the Swashbuckler/Knight cycle. Knights
Of The Round Table
(1953) was a big-budget version of the often-filmed tale of King
Arthur,
so often that yet another big-budget version from Training
Day
director Antoine
Fuqua
simply called King
Arthur.
That is supposed to have a Hans Zimmer score, a composer for film
who has his clickity electronic formula scores, then the great stuff
that exceeds his usual like Rain
Man
and The
Thin Red Line.
Whatever
he does, the specter of Miklos Rozsa's work in the genre as featured
on this limited edition CD will haunt it. Like Zimmer at his best,
Rozsa is one of cinema's greatest composers, working from a very
music-rich position. His knowledge of music is exceptional, but the
grasp he has is so great, he can come up with some of the fullest
scores you will ever hear. In both cases, the music was recorded for
the widescreen stereophonic presentations that CinemaScope offered,
and having such a sound option was incredible for its time. Beside
the usual traveling dialogue and sound effects that the system
offered, there were the orchestral-sized sound possibilities and the
studios knew that was also vital. They were lucky exceptional
artists like Rozsa were around, as they helped make the widescreen
revolution as possible as any actor, cinematographer, writer and
director.
The
King's Thief
(1955) was M-G-M pulling on their British-born resources like they
did occurrently, resulting in an interesting combination of actors:
David Niven, George Sanders, Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom, Roger Moore
and Niven's real-life cousin Patrick Macnee. Of course, Moore and
Macnee would land the most important roles of their life by the
beginning of the 1960s on British TV as Simon Templar (The
Saint)
and John Steed (The
Avengers),
as the Spy genre would supersede the historical adventure films for
good on TV and on the big screen.
Knights
Of The Round Table
meets the high watermarks of lavishness old Hollywood was still
capable of pulling off, while the latter was a B-movie length of 78
minutes and not as lavish as it could have been. With that cast, it
seems like many opportunities were missed, but Rozsa again delivered
an impressive score. In the era before Star
Wars
put far too much emphasis on visual effects that are usually not that
good anyhow, the scores were one of their greatest assets and this
set is a prime example.
For
both films combined an entire CD for each one, as Rozsa wrote so much
music for both. That also means many alternate, expanded and unused
pieces of music hear here for the very first time. Knights'
bonus tracks are on the space left over on CD 2 for the set that has
all of King's
Thief fit on. The PCM 2.0 16/44.1 CD Stereo shows off the better
kind of stereophonic sound that was being recorded at the time, and
the master tapes have somehow survived, likely in part due to how Ted
Turner handled preserving the M-G-M archive when it was his. Now, in
Warner's hands, we can all reap the benefits of that work, though we
should not kid ourselves. All the studios have tons of work to do,
but when you can enjoy great scores like these a half-century later,
it is their obligation.
This
CD set 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/3372/KNIGHTS-OF-THE-ROUND-TABLE-THE
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
