Sunday, February 3, 2013

The Uninvited (1944)


Subtitled The Classic Film Music of Victor Young, The Uninvited is an interesting mix of unexpected music from a stalwart, if not great, Hollywood composer. The main cues, of course, are from the 1944 classic The Uninvited and are alternately atmospheric and humorous, in keeping with the split personality of the film itself. In fact, one of the great cues is the Squirrel Chase, which sounds as if it’s been used in a hundred films. Although the popular song from the film, "Stella by Starlight," is not included there is a heavy piano presence in the score as the main character, played by Ray Milland, is a pianist and composer.

The remaining cues are rather unexpected for a man who composed over two hundred films during his lengthy career. Leading off the disc is the Sousa-esque march from The Greatest Show on Earth. This was Cecil B. Demille’s penultimate picture and though it won the Academy Award in 1952, time has not been kind to it and it is seen today as somewhat overblown. The usual suspects for this Marco Polo release are here, music reconstructionist John Morgan and conductor William T. Stromberg and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, all of whom did a magnificent job.

The real gems here are the cues from Gulliver’s Travels. Max Fleischer’s attempt to compete with Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the same year, it pales in comparison in almost every way. The direction, the songs, the animation, are all a big step down from Disney’s genius. The films score, however, is amazing. Just listening to it you wouldn’t guess it was from an animated film. The opening credits are a wonderful, magical overture, complete with choir. Once, however, we get into the storm, we could be watching any great action/adventure film. Though I wasn’t expecting much, it turned out to be a real delight.

The final cues on the disc are from the Gary Cooper / Lauren Bacall historical drama Bright Leaf. Suitably dramatic music by Young underscores the pseudo-Western aspect of this film of tobacco plantation melodrama. It’s actually a nice bit of scoring. The entire disc was a real surprise for me, as Victor Young never really scored any pictures of enduring greatness and, as such, is considered somewhat lower tiered that the greats like Steiner, Korngold, Rózsa, Waxman, and Herrmann. Nevertheless, The Uninvited is a great disc for lovers of classic film scores.