Intrada Soundtrack Forum

INTRADA Announces:



DOUBLE INDEMNITY: FILM NOIR AT PARAMOUNT
Music by MIKLóS RóZSA, HUGO FRIEDHOFER, FRANZ WAXMAN, GAIL KUBIK, LEITH STEVENS, HEINZ ROEMHELD, and VICTOR YOUNG
INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 335

Following the releases of the vintage Paramount scores The Lost Weekend and Desert Fury, Intrada's next entry is a 2-CD set featuring seven different composers writing for film noir classics. The headliner is Miklós Rózsa's Oscar-winning score to Double Indemnity, in near complete form. Rózsa composed three principal motifs for the film. A restless “conspiracy” theme dominates his score, but it is the powerful murder theme that opens the film and the composer returns to this theme repeatedly with an almost tragic quality. The third principal theme is a love theme.

But that's not all! This album also contains the surviving elements of several other Noir scores:

Hugo Friedhofer's Ace in the Hole
Franz Waxman's Sorry, Wrong Number
Gail Kubik's The Desperate Hours
Leith Stevens' The Scarlet Hours
Heinz Roemheld's Union Station
Victor Young's I Walk Alone


Friedhofer’s Ace in the Hole deftly matches the unusual mixture of tones Billy Wilder achieved in his unusually bleak dissection of modern journalism. For Sorry, Wrong Number, Waxman set the film’s anxious tone with a dramatic main title cue which incorporated phone sound effects. In The Desperate Hours, Gail Kubik took an unusual and daring approach, writing and recording a score he described as “pointillistic … a series of sounds which were completely unpredictable: you didn’t know when the next sound was coming or where it was coming from.”

For The Scarlet Hour, Leith Stevens supplied suitably dramatic and agitated original cues for key scenes, but the main musical focus of the film is the original song “Never Let Me Go,” written by the team of Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Although the main titles of Union Station don’t list a composer, Heinz Roemheld scored the picture, yet little of his music ended up in the final film. Finally, the nearly 30 minutes of Victor Young's I Walk Alone features a vivid and varied score including bluesy music and exciting chase music.

Most of the music in this album was sourced from 35mm magnetic film stored in the Paramount vaults. Desperate Hours is three-track stereo. The Scarlet Hour is in “quasi stereo” because there were “directional angles” for certain cues, while all the other film tracks are mono.

INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 335
Retail Price: $24.99
SHIPPING NOW
For track listing and sound samples, please visit:
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.9968/.f

Not a single reply? This must be a damn awful release...

Many thanks for this outstanding treasure chest from Paramount's vault! It's really hard to believe that this release is possible - given the limited amount of material that has survived in the Paramount vaults.

Jaws and Back to the Future on one end, releases like this on the other. Intrada, you're just terrific. The stereo samples on The Desperate Hours sound amazing. Thank you.

Is there any chance you guys could post album art for the other films in this collection?

I agree, on sets like these as well as the four-score sci-fi collection from a couple years back, it would be amazing if Intrada could provide digital cover art for us for each individual film online. However, I think they might have rights issues to deal with in that case, and it might cost them some money. But if that's not a factor and Joe S. doesn't mind doing the extra art, I'd love to have 'em!

This is simply an amazing collection. I mean, think about it. Intrada could easily given us almost 40 minutes of Double Indemnity on its own for $20 and it would have been well worth it. Instead for $10 more we got six more scores!

Yavar

I might as well do something with this graphic design BFA.

Whoa, thanks Scott!

This is a wonderful 2 CD set containing scores I thought I would never have.

Many thanks to Doug, Roger and the entire Intrada gang!

The mouth waters…

Because I am only 38 minutes away from Intrada's office, I have already had the good fortune of purchasing and listening to this marvelous 2-CD set. One of the best purchases I have made this year. Miklos Rozsa's DOUBLE INDEMNITY is a classic that is well known. I was wondering how Victor Young would handle film noir. I WALK ALONE is a wonderful film noir score handled in a very romantic style typical of Victor Young. In short, nothing on this set disappoints. Way to go Intrada !

This is great.

The Desperate Hours is a favorite film of mine that I haven't seen in years. I remember the music at the beginning as the escapees cruise through the neighborhood looking fore a suitable house to hole up in. I've read the novel and the play. On Broadway the Humphrey Bogart character is played by a young Paul Newman who was originally to be in the film.

Ace In The Hole, another personal favorite. Horray for Leo!

_________________
"I used to worry about losing my mind. Now that I've lost it I don't worry about it anymore." -Wavy Gravy

Amazing release! This is worth it just for "Double Indemnity." I dunno how you'll top this one for Golden Age noir (unless you have some Paul Sawtell up your sleeves).