• Composed by Georges Delerue
• Intrada / 2011 / 36:30

A little-known film made by John Guillermin in 1965, Rapture tells the story of a 15-year-old French farm girl whose transition to womanhood is stifled by her father, her way of dealing with it and the consequences that ensue.  Scoring duties fell to the great Georges Delerue, already well-established as the sound of the French new wave, with collaborations with Resnais, Truffaut, Godard etc already well-established.  In typical fashion, Delerue pours his heart and soul into the film, providing a score which veers from the lush and beautiful to the heartbreaking and horrific.  His main theme is vintage Delerue, a poignant and affecting melody sometimes heard for sweeping strings, sometimes for a much smaller, more tender group – I know I say it often, but it always bears repeating – there’s never been another Delerue, someone able to write such lushly beautiful themes so frequently and always have them come across as being genuinely sincere.

The story does have some considerably darker elements and Delerue makes no attempt to shy away from dealing with these head-on.  His use of a distant-sounding wordless female vocalist is a brilliant touch, ensuring that even when his music becomes distinctly awkward and unsettling, it retains that human touch.  And unsettling it truly does become, the composer sometimes contrasting the light and the dark within the same cue; as the album draws towards its conclusion, the effect becomes heartbreaking indeed.  This is a terrific album – Rapture is resolutely not one of those Delerue scores which can quite readily be represented by a single track on a compilation – hearing the story unfold through his music is a rewarding, some might say rapturous, experience.  ****

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