From The Terrace (Limited Edition CD Soundtrack)
Sound:
B- Music: B
Elmer
Bernstein continues to be one of film music’s greatest artists and survivors
and the interesting thing about listening to his score for the 1960 Mark Robson
film of John O’Hara’s From The Terrace
is its influence. The film is a drama
with a twist, that instead of being a melodrama and formula woman’s film, it
focuses on a male character and how flaws in his masculinity help in his
undoing while great success and reward await him.
In this
case, it is Alfred Eaton (Paul Newman) who is not emotionally or
psychologically resolved, so the women around him offer distraction and
temptation. He could have the American
Dream, but New York is THE city and he is not quite
ready for what he should be prepared for.
We will review the DVD when Fox gets around to releasing it, but there
is this score.
Despite
seeming so have a simplicity of sound, Bernstein (as he just did yet again in
Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven in
2002) works a more complex set of meanings and leitmotifs in the 23 tracks
released here for the very first time ever separate from the film. We hear signatures that turn out to be
warnings and signs of doom ignored by the characters, who are not always using
the best wisdom or do not care. There
are also the parts that celebrate possibility, success and the city, but that
only adds to the collage that furthers the narrative.
While
reading the terrific booklet included, like we have come to expect from Film
Score Monthly’s FSM label, the notes site music in Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film The Age Of Innocence as a film that
also uses the waltz to deal effectively with the interaction of the
characters. That was likely informed by
this film knowing Scorsese, but at least as strongly was Scorsese’s film
influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 masterwork Barry Lyndon, and all feel like they culminate into the film that
this Bernstein score reminded me of the most: Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
In all
cases, when the characters enter their “waltz” with each other, it is a moment
of rare and authentic contact and interaction.
The results are not what we would hope them to be, the romantic ideal
fails in some way, especially in Kubrick’s cases. With that said, note that Bernstein’s score
is four decades before Eyes Wide Shut
and we are certain to see this idea explored by another great
composer/filmmaker combination. That is
why having a key soundtrack like From
The Terrace is so worth owning.
The PCM
CD 2.0 Stereo is not bad, coming from the six-track magnetic stereo master from
the Fox vault. That master is in decent
shape, though the source shows its age. How
it will compare to the DVD sound will be interesting, but since this CD is
being issued in only 3,000 pressings, you might want to get yours now before
it’s too late at www.filmscoremonthly.com
for this and other great scores on CD.
- Nicholas Sheffo
