September 5, 2007 - Film Music Magazine

NEW SOUNDTRACKS
Henry Mancini Plays
Blind Woman’s Bluff
Composer: Henry Mancini
Label: Film Score Monthly
Suggested Retail Price: $ 19.95
Grade: B+
ALBUM REVIEW
By: DANIEL SCHWEIGER
Soundtrack Editor
If you thought the musical relationship between
Henry Mancini and Audrey Hepburn was
all champagne kisses and caviar dreams, then
you haven’t heard his utterly creepy score for
Wait Until Dark. That isn’t to say that Mancini
didn’t have experience scaring women before, as
evidenced by his full-blooded suspense for such
diverse genre films as Creature From The Black
Lagoon, Tarantula and Experiment In Terror. But
mostly, Mancini would be known as Mr. Cocktail
Jazz - providing peppy, romantic comedy for such
movies as The Pink Panther and The Great Race.
But if one lady put Mancini on the Hollywood
map, it was Audrey Hepburn. Mancini’s talent
for gossamer melody was a perfect fit for this
starlet’s slim, intoxicating frame. In Breakfast At
Tiffany’s, Mancini beautifully captured the party
girl sadness of her Holly Golightly. Then in the
wonderful Hithcockian romp Charade, Mancini
piled on the compassion for a woman widowed
by a ne’er-do-well husband. Marital strife would
also let Mancini take a melancholy trip with
Hepburn in Two For The Road, his always-affectionate
music cementing her rep as Hollywood’s
sweetheart.
Mancini was no doubt surprised when Hepburn
personally asked him to take the kid gloves
off for 1967’s Wait Until Dark, a film in which
she’d shatter her comely image to play a blind
woman at the mercy of dope-hunting hoods. While
Hepburn went to great lengths to prove her ability
to play a terrified (not to mention sightless)
heroine, Mancini already had the suspense chops
down on scores like Gunn and Arabesque to handle
this assignment. And his approach for Wait
Until Dark would play both horror and sympathy,
in a decidedly striking way.
For Dark’s main theme, Mancini combined
whistling with two pianos - one playing in tune,
and the other decidedly off of it. The eerily responding
piano keys resulted in a naturally
unnerving sound, embodying someone at once
in synch with the world, but at the same time
separated from it by disability. And when shorn
of instrumental accompaniment, this piano motif
would become even more haunting and suspenseful.
Mancini’s macabre experimentalism for Wait
Until Dark would help make it into a classic of
the woman-in-peril genre.
With the Dark’s dope hidden in a doll, the
music also takes on a perverse, child-like quality,
especially with its use of whistling and music
box bells. There’s also an undeniable 60’s quality
to its use of “hip” jazz instruments like the
guitar, Novachord and harpsichord, all of which
are pitch-perfect for the deranged beatnik mastermind
(Alan Arkin) who terrifies Hepburn. Yet
Mancini’s score for Wait Until Dark isn’t all grim,
as source cues for Hepburn’s brownstone apartment
deliver the cocktail stylings that he played
for her in far nicer pictures.
Few composers used lush strings like Mancini,
and what’s delightful about Dark is seeing the
orchestra slowly transform itself from empathy
to outright terror, a calculated approach that musically
becomes the mindgames that are played
on Hepburn, a con that ultimately becomes deadly.
It’s a transformation into melodic darkness
that finally goes for the throat in the memorable
climax, as Hepburn plunges her apartment (and
the movie screen along with her) into complete
darkness - Mancini’s orchestra waiting for the
moment when she’ll succeed in killing the bad
guy, or be killed by him.
While Wait Until Dark managed to be as
grisly as an Audrey Hepburn movie could get
(until the horrid Bloodline came along), it’s inconceivable
that Henry Mancini could write with
anything but intoxicating melody for the picture.
And the result is a score that manages to be both
disturbing, and pleasant at the same time. While
Wait Until Dark confirmed Hepburn’s astonishing
range as an actress, its score would also show
that Mancini could play lethal stylings as well as
lounge music. Audrey did indeed choose wisely in
a composer whose music could outfit her with an
evening gown, and then put a knife into her hand
at the next moment.
Click here for the Wait Until Dark soundtrack.
Courtesy of iFmagazine.com
OPENING THIS WEEK
THEATRICAL
• 3:10 to Yuma (Marco Beltrami)
• The Brothers Solomon (John Swihart)
• Fierce People (Nick Laird-Clowes)
• Hatchet (Andy Garfield)
• The Hunting Party (Rolfe Kent)
• In the Shadow of the Moon (Philip Shep
-pard)
• Shoot Em Up (Paul Haslinger)
DIRECT-TO-DVD
• Curse of the Wolf (Jess Burchill)
• Demons from Her Past (Steve Gurevitch)
• The Murder Game (Carl Johnson)
• Secret of the Cave (John Carta)
• Steel Toes (Benoit Groulx)
ALBUMS COMING SOON!
OUT THIS WEEK
• The Hunting Party (Rolfe Kent) – Lakeshore
• The Brothers Solomon (John Swihart) -
Lakeshore
SEPTEMBER 11
• The Brave One (Dario Marianelli) – Varèse
Sarabande
• Dragon Wars (Steve Jablonsky) – Milan
• Eastern Promises (Howard Shore) - Sony
• Stardust (Ilan Eshkeri) – Decca
NEW Symphonic Electronic: The Film Music
of Erik Desiderio – Film Music Downloads
SEPTEMBER 18
• Across the Universe (Beatles/Elliot Golden
thal) – Interscope
• The Last Winter (Jeff Grace/Anton Sanko) –
MovieScore Media
SEPTEMBER 25
NEW Flood (Debbie Wiseman) – Silva
Screen
• The Kingdom (Danny Elfman) – Varèse
Sarabande
• Lust, Caution (Alexandre Desplat) - Decca
• Michael Clayton (James Newton Howard) –
Varèse Sarabande
• Sea of Dreams (Luis Bacalov) – Varèse
Sarabande
OCTOBER 2
NEW Behind the Gates (Dario Marianelli) –
MovieScore Media
• The Monster Squad (Bruce Broughton) –
Intrada
OCTOBER 9
NEW In the Valley of Elah (Mark Isham) –
Varèse Sarabande
NEW The Jane Austen Book Club (Aaron
Zigman) – Varèse Sarabande
8 ISSUE 29 • SEPT. 5, 2007 FILM MUSICweekly