While Miklos Rozsa's career was winding down in the 1970s and early 80s, most of the films he scored were rather silly, but a notable exception was Fedora from 1978, Billy Wilder's penultimate film, a "sort of" follow-up to Sunset Boulevard, touching many of the same Hollywood satire notes.  Having worked with Rozsa several times before (most notably on the famous, brilliant Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend), Wilder turned once more to his old friend, though their relationship would sour after the director, panicking that the film just wasn't working late in the day, dialed down Rozsa's score to the extent that little of it remains in the movie and that that does, can barely be heard.

Of all film composers through the century or so the art form has existed, Rozsa has the most individual and most instantly-identifiable sound.  Many people translate this into thinking that all of his scores sound alike - which is simply not true.  His musical personality is so strong that all of his scores do indeed share characteristics, but on the other hand his dramatic sense is such that each of his scores is entirely individual for the film in question.  Fedora is no exception.  His uber-intelligent, psychological portrait of a woman in despair is virtually on a par with the great film noir scores he wrote in the 1940s (including those for director Wilder).  It is a compelling study.

As with all of his later scores, Rozsa made no attempt to compromise and make any allowance for the way the movie industry had changed in the forty-odd years since he wrote his first score - and thank God for that.  In truth, there are but subtle differences between Rozsa's 1940s scores and his very final ones, and I'm sure that if you were to play this music to the uninitiated, they would never guess it had been composed later than 1950.  But that's part of its beauty, part of its magic - it's as if some small corner of the Golden Age of Hollywood was alive and well, safe in the harbour of the manuscript paper of a Hungarian immigrant.

The CD - which was released in 1989, as part of the first series of the legendary Varese Sarabande CD Club - not only features almost 50 minutes of Fedora, it also features a suite from Rozsa's score for the obscure 1950 movie Crisis, starring the peerless Cary Grant.  It's a complete change of pace, and something unique not only in Rozsa's career, but all of film music - a dramatic underscore composed exclusively for solo guitar.  This recording was specially-done for this album, performed by Darryl Denning.  It's highly entertaining, but at the same times does suffer from the same inevitable constraints as any score composed for a solo instrument.

Tracks

Crisis: suite for guitar

19. Introduction (1:12)
20. March of the Revolution (1:01)
21. Village Square (3:42)
22. Fandango (1:20)
23. La Carta de Rehen (1:18)
24. Finale (1:06)