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Saimel Records presents on this double CD the world premiere release of two symphonic scores by Renzo Rossellini which had been written for two 1950s melodramas that remained rather unknown outside of Italy and dealt with such themes as tabloid journalism, corruption and unfair jurisdiction.
CD 1 offers the complete score for IL MAGISTRATO which was an Italian-French-Spanish co-production directed by Luigi Zampa in 1959 starring Spanish screen idol José Suarez in the title role as judge besides a fine cast of French and Italian actors such as Francois Périer, Jacqueline Sassard, Massimo Serato, Maurizio Arena and even the very young Claudia Cardinale in one of her first screen performances. The film is structured around various flashbacks which are narrated by the young judge who upon his arrival in the seaport town of Genova gets involved in two tragic stories which together offer a highly pessimistic vision of life.
The basis for Rossellini‘s orchestral score is a romantic love theme, graceful and nostalgic, which is framed in the Main Title by a sombre progression of upward and downward moving broken triads which already foreshadow the inevitable tragic fate many of the characters in the film will have to endure. As always, Rossellini‘s musical language is a highly emotional one, he puts a lot of passion and feeling into all the tracks of the score: The beauty of the melodic line, of the instrumentation and of the timbre are decisive for him, but he also knows how to arouse the dramatic forces of the orchestra with tragic intensity.
On CD 2 the complete score for the 1956 Italian-French co-production DIFENDO IL MIO AMORE can be heard which had a notable cast of both French and Italian actors in the leading roles including Martine Carol, Vittorio Gassman, Gabriele Ferzetti and Charles Vanel. DIFENDO IL MIO AMORE mixes up motifs of the American film noir with narrative elements of the maternal melodrama still very popular in Italy at that time and Martine Carol is an innocent and loving mother who gets wrongfully accused by a callous journalist of having been the mistress of a murderer.
Rossellini´s score is highly romantic and melodramatic in the best sense of the word and gives further proof of his tasteful elegance and his melodic lyricism. The human being, in this case the character of Elisa played by Martine Carol, lies at the center of his interest so that the music empathizes with her feelings, her remembrances and her sufferings. There is also a playful scherzo, a solemn pastoral adagio, an obsessive descending musical motif for the suspense scenes as well as a few long tracks like the the final reconciliation scene which is almost scored like an opera aria full of touching lyrical warmth.
This double CD release of the two excellent orchestral scores for DIFENDO IL MIO AMORE and IL MAGISTRATO offers another rare opportunity to rediscover the splendid music of a fascinating and unfortunately nowadays almost totally neglected composer of Italian cinema‘s Golden Age.
Disc 2 of this double CD closes with two tracks from the two previous Renzo Rossellini CDs released on Saimel: MONTECARLO and LE LEGIONI DI CLOPATRA.
The double CD can now be pre-ordered at Rosebud Banda Sonotra in Spain and will be available there on March 21st:
http://www.rosebudbandasonora.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=23869
In about a week it can also be ordered at SAE.
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I really like "Le Legioni di Cleopatra" but didnt care for the lighter soundtracks (Segno Di Venere; Montecarlo) because I prefer something more dramatic. How are these two? Any video clips where we could sample the music?
Both films are not on Youtube, they are quite rare.
These are not comedies, but melodramas. So the music is of course much more dramatic and passionate than the one for MONTECARLO or IL SEGNO DI VENERE and will therefore probably be more to your liking. There are a few lighter moments in DIFENDO IL MIO AMORE like the playful scherzo I have talked about, but the musical mood is mainly melodramatic. The darker tension-filled dramatic pieces of which there are several in both scores will remind you a bit of Rózsa´s noir scores. But Rossellini of course has his own quite operatic Italian style.
And if you know the famous Roberto Rossellini movie STROMBOLI, you will discover that the romantic love theme in IL MAGISTRATO is a close cousin to the one Rossellini had written for Ingrid Bergman in that movie. They are quite similar.
I hope that Saimel will put up some sound clips during the next days so that you can have a listen for yourself.
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Posted: |
Feb 27, 2017 - 3:19 AM
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By: |
slint
(Member)
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I've recently tried to acquire classics Italian DVD movies from the 50s. From this decade, there is large number of major movies that have a DVD release but no soundtrack CD. That's probably not too surprising if the master tapes are missing. But also, I've noticed the vast majority of films from the Golden Age of Italian cinema are either Drama or Comedies, with a few adventure movies in-between, but a few of those seem to be lower budget. Peplum only arrives around 1959 with Ben Hur in the US. That might explain as well why the labels are not taking too much risks with the 50s.
This will be interesting to know a bit more about those composers, which were all very active in the 50s but hardly represented on CD:
3 major ones:
Alessandro Cicognini (bunch of high profile comedies and drama)
Nino Rota (many comedies in the 50s in addition to famous drama)
Renzo Rossellini (many high profile movies through the 40s and 50s, both drama and comedies)
Mario Nascimbene (quite a few drama and comedies)
Carlo Rustichelli (also very active in the 50s, high-profile movies are mostly comedies)
Roman Vlad (mostly dramatic it seems, quite a few well known movies)
Pippo Barzziza (almost all high-profile comedies including his daughter)
Cesare Andrea Bixio (mostly comedies and mostly from the 30s!)
Giovanni Fusco (better known from his 60s period, most 50s highlight are Antonioni movies)
Carlo Innocenzi (very prolific but the movies appear to be of lower profile apart for a few Sordi comedies)
Angelo Francesco Lavagnino (quite well represetend on CD given its importance in the 50s: documentaries, comedies)
Armando Trovajoli (quite a few comedies in late 50s)
Roberto Nicolosi (not much before 58-59 however)
Enzio Masetti (mostly active in the 40s, with a few higher-profile movies in the 50s)
Lelio Luttazzi (famous for Toto movies and jazz, almost only comico movies in the late 50s)
I've also noticed a few DVDs of less active composers (in the 50s): Gioacchino Angelo, Valentino Bucchi, Giorgio Fabor, Carlo Franci, Franco Mannino, Goffredo Petrassi, Carlo Savina
Any important composer that I'm missing because they don't have any soundtrack release?
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Peplum only arrives around 1959 with Ben Hur in the US. That might explain as well why the labels are not taking too much risks with the 50s.
Carlo Rustichelli (also very active in the 50s, high-profile movies are mostly comedies)
Mario Nascimbene (quite a few drama and comedies, some high profile ones but not like Cicognini or Nino Rota)
Some really strange statements here which are far from the truth.
1) The peplum genre already had a great popularity in Italy during the early 50s. Alessandro Blasetti´s monumental epic FABIOLA was such a huge commercial success in 1949 that quite a lot of other peplums were therefore made during the following years in CInecittà. Just some titles: IL LEONE DI AMALFI (1950), MESSALINA (1951), SPARTACO (1952), TEODORA (1953) etc.
2) The high-profile movies Carlo Rustichelli scored during the 50s were not comedies, but rather films from other genres and mostly the ones directed by Pietro Germi which gained a lot of critical and commercial success at that time. The Germi movies IL CAMMINO DELLA SPERANZA (1950), IL FERROVIERE (1956), L´UOMO DI PAGLIA (1957) or UN MALEDETTO IMBROGLIO (1959) are surely not comedies at all, but dramas. And in fact these were the pictures which established Rustichelli´s reputation during the 50s. Also the mid-50s melodramas scored by Rustichelli and mostly with Amedeo Nazzari as leading actor were highly successful and very popular in Italy at that time, for example TI HO SEMPRE AMATO (1953), PERDONAMI! (1953) or PIETÀ PER CHI CADE (1955).
3) Mario Nascimbene scored some of the most high profile pictures during the 50s and therefore was one of the first Italian composers who received international attention and could therefore score several high profile Hollywood movies. Don´t forget about BAREFOOT CONTESSA, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, FAREWELL TO ARMS, THE VIKINGS etc. which are all from the 50s. Cicognini for example didn´t have so much international success as Nascimbene even though he could score a few US comedies with Sophia Loren around 1960.
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I think I overlooked Nascimbene's US movies, and did not fully remember when he became famous (mid-50s or late 50s)? The vast majority of peplum DVDs (and CDs) definitely are from the 1959-1964 period, but maybe the actual popularity of the genre what quite different back then compared to what is now represented.
Nascimbene really became famous through THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA in 1954. However, in Italy he had already received the "Nastro d´Argento" in 1952 for his groundbreaking music for Giuseppe De Santis´ ROMA ORE UNDICI where he used the sound of a typewriter in the main title.
Of course, the vast majority of peplum movies in Italy was made between 1959-1964. But still the reason for this was not BEN HUR as you have written above, but the huge success of the first HERCULES movie at first in Italy in 1958 and then afterwards in the USA when - distributed by Joseph E. Levine - it became a surprising box-office hit there.
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Thanks  In any case my non-expert interpretation was meant to ask the question, any 30/40/50s composer I've missed? When I see a movie with I composer I've never heard of I tend to skip it!
One of the most interesting, but obscure composers active in Italy during the late 50s (but he had also scored films even during the 30s and 40s) is Alessandro Derevitzky, who composed some great music for epics and costume adventure movies between 1958 and 1962. A lot of music from these scores has indeed been preserved on LP albums during the 60s and the 70s, but it is more or less hidden because it has been released on top-rare library LPs which give you no indication from which films the Derevitzky tracks on them do come from. But if you are able to do some detective work, you can identify them. So this is quite certainly music which will never appear on official CDs.
Also quite a few classical composers wrote film music in Italy during the 30s, 40s and 50s. I would name for example Ildebrando Pizzetti, Goffredo Petrassi, Mario Zafred or Riccardo Zandonai.
Then there are some others missing in your list which were quite active: Ezio Carabella, Franco Casavola, Felice Lattuada, Gino Marinuzzi jr., Giuseppe Rosati or Antonio Veretti.
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Stefan,
As Rustichelli was mentioned above - just a quick question(may have been answered before). I watched Nefertite Queen of the Nile, again, last night and liked his music.What are the chances?
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The original tapes of NEFERTITE do no longer exist as this was not a CAM title, but one by Nazionalmusic. And you certainly know what happened with most of those old Nazionalmusic titles from that period. So don´t expect anything by the Italian soundtrack labels from this score in the near future.
As to Rustichelli, however, we will also release on Saimel very soon (probably still in March) a really beautiful romantic and dramatic score by him from the late 50s for which I am just writing the liner notes.
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The original tapes of NEFERTITE do no longer exist as this was not a CAM title, but one by Nazionalmusic. And you certainly know what happened with most of those old Nazionalmusic titles from that period. So don´t expect anything by the Italian soundtrack labels from this score in the near future.
As to Rustichelli, however, we will also release on Saimel very soon (probably still in March) a really beautiful romantic and dramatic score by him from the late 50s for which I am just writing the liner notes.
Ah well- bad news and good news.Thanks
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Any more peplum scores to be released this year?
I collect all of them.
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Any more peplum scores to be released this year?
I collect all of them.
I don´t know about Digitmovies, but I am sure that they will release one or two peplums from the CAM catalogue this year as there are still quite a lot of titles available there.
Our next two Lavagnino projects on Alhambra for the first half of this year will not be peplums, but there is still some hope for either ERCOLE SFIDA SANSONE (HERCULES, SAMSON & ODYSSEUS) or DAMON AND PYTHIAS later on this year (maybe Autumn). For both titles tapes do exist in the estate.
Maybe it is also possible to release a peplum title from the CAM catalogue on Saimel. We will see.
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