Plymouth
Adventure (Limited Edition CD
Soundtrack)
Sound: B- Music: B-
Plymouth
Rock may not have landed on me, but the limited edition of M-G-M epic Plymouth Adventure (1952) did arrive
for us to review and I can say it is one of Miklos Rozsa’s more interesting
scores, rising above the usual stuffy historical film music fare. Spencer Tracy heads the famed title ship in
its voyage to “the new world” of what would become the United States.
This may now actually be controversial, but the film exists and here is
the music for it.
As was
the case with the Rozsa Film Score Monthly Magazine’s FSM CD label release of Moonfleet (reviewed elsewhere on this
site), the entire score is presented as it is in the film (save the fact that
this is monophonic, while the music was originally recorded in stereo), then
bonus tracks are added to show the difference of what might have been. I did not find this set anywhere as
intriguing, but it is still not bad.
The choir
singing in Prelude dates the work the
most. The rest of the work seems
somewhat restrained in its range for a Rozsa score, while he does still show
his skill, but maybe the melodrama that resulted from most of the film taking
place on the ship did not help. We will
reserve reviewing the film and addressing how much adventure it actually had
until Warner Bros. has the DVD out, but it was an ambitious production for its
time, one of the last such productions before widescreen filmmaking kicked in
the following year.
Perhaps
the idea of trying to address the religious aspects of the voyagers is not as
successful as it could have been, but Rozsa at least researched the idea. A big studio production, however ambitious,
was not interested in such a deeply searched project on religion of
course. What is here is the kind of
music that probably works better when you watch the film, so we will look into
that down the line.
The PCM
CD sound is sadly (as just noted) monophonic, though the film was originally
recorded in three-channel stereo, but M-G-M’s very unwise practice of replacing
stereo masters (despite having a record company) with mono back-ups and
trashing the originals strikes again. This
is only available in 3,000 pressings, so if you are interested or intrigued, go
to www.filmscoremonthly.com and
learn more on the content and how to order.
- Nicholas Sheffo
