The Motion Picture Academy devoted last weekend to a centennial salute for the great classical and cinematic composer Miklos Rozsa, who was born April 18, 1907, in Budapest and died in Los Angeles on July 27, 1995.
Held at theaters in Hollywood and Beverly Hills, the tribute revived four movies scored by Mr. Rozsa in their entirety — the 1940 remake of “The Thief of Bagdad,” “The Killers,” “Ivanhoe” and “El Cid”— and showcased excerpts from other famous credits.
The Rozsa filmography includes more than 100 titles and it left a distinctive melodic-atmospheric stamp on at least three genres: adventure fantasy and spectacle; psychological and crime thrillers, particularly those of the middle and late 1940s; and biblical epics, an area of specialization that culminated in perhaps the longest movie score on record, for William Wyler’s 1959 remake of “Ben-Hur.” A multi-disc DVD edition of the film invites one to watch it without the dialogue or sound effects tracks, blending imagery with the music track alone. I’m not persuaded this is an optimum alternative, but there are times during “Ben-Hur” when it might be tempting to contemplate only pictorial composition and a majestic musical accompaniment.
The American Film Institute Silver Theatre decided to pass on this anniversary theme. Even passivity may be trumped in the Rozsa case, because he scored so many prominent movies that some are almost certain to turn up in any repertory season.
TCM, for example, will be showing “The Killers,” “Lust for Life,” “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” and “The Jungle Book” in September.
I’m not aware that local orchestras have availed themselves of eminently playable Rozsa concert pieces this year, but an entire season remains for recalling highlights from more than 60 years of composition. A modest suggestion: Mr. Rozsa’s 1943 Concerto for Strings, a dynamic tour de force that seems to anticipate and exalt some of the ominous and impassioned elements in his scores for Hollywood thrillers.
Reflecting on the Rozsa credits from “Double Indemnity” through “The Asphalt Jungle,” it would be easy to regard him as the composer laureate of film noir. The main title sequence of “Indemnity” is a brilliant summary: both a silhouetted image and the music appear to be stalking us with portents of doom.
Given the present critical reverence for the whole genre, it would seem churlish not to appreciate Mr. Rozsa’s contribution to the official Golden Age of Film Noir in the 1940s. His longevity opened the door for reprises in the late 1970s, notably in Jonathan Demme’s harebrained erotic thriller “Last Embrace,” which pretty much threw itself on the mercy of Mr. Rozsa’s musical signature in the last, unraveling reel. Mr. Rozsa also got the opportunity to recapitulate his classic thriller phase playfully in a swan song movie score for “Dead Man Don’t Wear Plaid” in 1982.
It’s also easy to believe that Miklos Rozsa was conceived with gypsy violins vibrating in the background. His father was a wealthy Hungarian industrialist with a fondness for folk music. His mother was a classical pianist. Their son, a violin prodigy at a tender age, added proficiency in the viola and piano. He began performing in public (and composing) at 8 and found ready sources of folk inspiration at a country estate in the Matras mountain range north of Budapest.
Formally educated at the Leipzig Conservatory of Music, the young Rozsa published his first classical compositions in 1929. A move to Paris in 1932 led to a friendship with Arthur Honneger and a realization that the movies might be a lucrative sidelight. Mr. Honneger had completed a score for a new version of “Les Miserables.” There were no film composing offers from French producers for Mr. Rozsa, but he was recommended by a French director, Jacques Feyder, who had been hired to make a picture in England, “Knight Without Armor,” for producer Alexander Korda, a transplanted Hungarian.
The first phase of the Rozsa film career was spent with the Korda organization and resulted in such pictures as “The Four Feathers,” “The Thief of Bagdad” and “The Jungle Book.” The London blitz forced Mr. Korda to transfer his operation to Hollywood for three years. Mr. Rozsa went along and became a permanent enhancement to the American film industry — the first European musical prodigy since Erich Wolfgang Korngold to make himself a rousing and indispensable fixture. Mr. Rozsa also helped establish the soundtrack album: a three-record set for “Jungle Book,” blending musical selections with readings by Sabu, who starred as Mowgli, became a surprise best-seller.
A trio of movies for Billy Wilder — “Five Graves to Cairo,” “Double Indemnity” and the Oscar-winning “The Lost Weekend”— were arguably overshadowed by a single one for Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick, the psychiatric-romantic thriller “Spellbound.” It made an eerie electronic instrument, the theremin, synonymous with disordered mental states for a period of time. Always inventive with instrumentation, Mr. Rozsa also had a zest for musicology. His superior musical education influenced such spectacles as “Quo Vadis,” “Ivanhoe” and “Ben-Hur,” where the composer attempted to simulate the sound of “lost” instruments or song forms while also commanding the full lyrical resources of the MGM Orchestra.
In 1945, the year of “Spellbound” and “The Lost Weekend,” Mr. Rozsa became a professor of film music at the University of Southern California. He remained on the faculty for the next 20 years. His basic approach would be difficult to fault, assuming one is blessed with melodic gifts and hopes to make an impression on a large public: “Tonality means line; line means melody; melody means song; and song, especially folk song, is the essence of music because it is the natural, spontaneous and primordial expression of human emotion.”
For extended appreciations in this centennial year I recommend Internet postings at the Miklos Rozsa Society. Updated information about the extensive Rozsa discography can be found at www.miklosrozsa.info /html/mrnews.html.
Miklos Rozsa’s Oscar winning scores:
“Spellbound” (1945), “A Double Life” (1947), “Ben-Hur” (1959).
“The Thief of Bagdad” (1940), “Lydia” and “Sundown” (1941), “The Jungle Book” (1942), “Double Indemnity” and “Woman of the Town” (1944), “The Lost Weekend” and “A Song to Remember” (1945), “The Killers” (1946), “Quo Vadis” (1951), “Ivanhoe” (1952), “Julius Caesar” (1953), “El Cid” (1961, for both score and song).
Other notable credits:
“The Four Feathers” (1940), “That Hamilton Woman” (1941), “Sahara” and “Five Graves to Cairo” (1943), “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” (1946), “The Red House” and “Brute Force” (1947), “The Naked City” (1948), “Adam’s Rib” and “Criss Cross” (1949), “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950), “Knights of the Round Table” (1953), “Lust for Life” and “Bhowani Junction” (1956), “King of Kings” (1961), “The VIPs” (1963), “The Green Berets” (1968), “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” (1970, augmented by a bit appearance as a conductor), “Providence” (1977), “Last Embrace” (1979), “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” (1982).
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