Post by erik on Oct 30, 2021 17:17:36 GMT -5
The Classical Works Spotlight segment for Halloween weekend 2021 focuses on a very sinister film score, by the much-underrated Jerry Fielding, for director Sam Peckinpah's 1971 film STRAW DOGS.
Jerry Fielding: STRAW DOGS
After having come off the Hollywood blacklist, which short-circuited any chances of a career in Tinstletown during the 1950’s, Jerry Fielding, one of the most underrated and most maverick of film composers, came roaring back in 1962 with his score for the Otto Preminger-directed political drama Advise And Consent. Perhaps his most rewarding Hollywood association was with another Hollywood maverick, Sam Peckinpah. He did the Americana score for Peckinpah’s 1966 made-for-TV adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter’s classic novella Noon Wine, and then got an Oscar nomination for the brilliant, Mexicana-influenced score for Peckinpah’s masterful (and extremely violent) 1969 action /western epic The Wild Bunch. Although he missed out on the director’s far less violent 1970 western The Ballad Of Cable Hogue, he hooked up again with Peckinpah for the director’s 1971 film Straw Dogs. A complex and disturbing psychological horror film set in England, the film starred Dustin Hoffman as an American mathematician wanting to continue his studies by moving to England, away from the campus violence back home, only to encounter a different form of it overseas, Straw Dogs was instantly controversial upon its release at the end of 1971 due to a horrific rape scene involving Hoffman’s wife (Susan George), and a nightmarishly violent siege between Hoffman and some vicious locals that climaxes the film. Fielding’s score, however, which was recorded at Cine Tele Sound (CTS) Studios in London, however, was very much acclaimed, with its intricate iron-clad brass chorales, Stravinsky-influenced string themes, and a very avant-garde sounding cue for the rape scene (“The Infamous Appassionata”) that involved recording trombones at half-speed. Although Fielding was shut out of an Academy Award for Straw Dogs (though he was nominated), film music historian Nick Redman managed to get the original master tapes for the score restored for release on the Oakland, California-based Intrada label for the complete soundtrack’s CD release in 2011, in time for the film’s 40th anniversary.
CTS Studio Orchestra/JERRY FIELDING (Intrada)
Jerry Fielding: STRAW DOGS
After having come off the Hollywood blacklist, which short-circuited any chances of a career in Tinstletown during the 1950’s, Jerry Fielding, one of the most underrated and most maverick of film composers, came roaring back in 1962 with his score for the Otto Preminger-directed political drama Advise And Consent. Perhaps his most rewarding Hollywood association was with another Hollywood maverick, Sam Peckinpah. He did the Americana score for Peckinpah’s 1966 made-for-TV adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter’s classic novella Noon Wine, and then got an Oscar nomination for the brilliant, Mexicana-influenced score for Peckinpah’s masterful (and extremely violent) 1969 action /western epic The Wild Bunch. Although he missed out on the director’s far less violent 1970 western The Ballad Of Cable Hogue, he hooked up again with Peckinpah for the director’s 1971 film Straw Dogs. A complex and disturbing psychological horror film set in England, the film starred Dustin Hoffman as an American mathematician wanting to continue his studies by moving to England, away from the campus violence back home, only to encounter a different form of it overseas, Straw Dogs was instantly controversial upon its release at the end of 1971 due to a horrific rape scene involving Hoffman’s wife (Susan George), and a nightmarishly violent siege between Hoffman and some vicious locals that climaxes the film. Fielding’s score, however, which was recorded at Cine Tele Sound (CTS) Studios in London, however, was very much acclaimed, with its intricate iron-clad brass chorales, Stravinsky-influenced string themes, and a very avant-garde sounding cue for the rape scene (“The Infamous Appassionata”) that involved recording trombones at half-speed. Although Fielding was shut out of an Academy Award for Straw Dogs (though he was nominated), film music historian Nick Redman managed to get the original master tapes for the score restored for release on the Oakland, California-based Intrada label for the complete soundtrack’s CD release in 2011, in time for the film’s 40th anniversary.
CTS Studio Orchestra/JERRY FIELDING (Intrada)