The film adaptation of The Boys from Brazil may or may not have pinged my pop culture radar when it was released in October of 1978. I kind of sort of remember being intrigued by a newspaper advertisement for the film, but that's all.
Until 1980, that is. September 28, 1980, to be exact. That is when The Boys from Brazil made its network television debut. I remember watching that version of the film.
I did not know that there were different versions of the film. Nor that the abrupt ending of the network television version would become the most notorious of them. I just thought the movie ended with Mengele (Gregory Peck) getting ripped apart by dogs.
In 1983 or 84, while my family was living in Hong Kong, I bought the original soundtrack for the film, because the music was by Jerry Goldsmith and therefore it must be good. It was, but I had forgotten how Goldsmith, via a request made by the film's director, Franklin A. Schaffner, had drawn musical inspiration from Wagner and Strauss. But it worked.
When Intrada released this expanded edition of The Boys from Brazil soundtrack in 2008, I was more than happy to make an upgrade and had no regrets when I gave it a listen.
Goldsmith, who received his 11th Academy Award nomination for this score, wrote 55-minutes of music, although only a mere 39-minutes of dramatic score (minus source cues) wound up being used in the film.
Jon Burlingame's liner notes for this release details what was and was not used in the film, information that will be of interest to film music nerds like me.
No comments:
Post a Comment