FSM: Michael Smalls Marathon Man/The Parallax View

[Gast Stefan Jania]

MARATHON MAN / THE PARALLAX VIEW -- SCREEN ARCHIVES ENTERTAINMENT

FSM presents two superb Michael Small thriller scores long requested on CD: Marathon Man (1976) and The Parallax View (1974), both from the Paramount Pictures vaultstwo classic works of pain and paranoia from the 1970s.

Marathon Man gave cinema one of its most iconic and frightening scenes: Laurence Olivier, as a fugitive Nazi dentist, torturing Dustin Hoffman with dental equipment while repeating the perplexing question, Is it safe? The film was directed by John Schlesinger from a screenplay by William Goldman (based on his book) and also starred Roy Scheider, Marthe Keller and William Devane. The film is equal parts international intrigue, historical speculation, character development and pitch-perfect suspensea masterpiece of the genre.

The Parallax View, directed by Alan Pakula (see FSMs CD of Klute/All the Presidents Men), was a political thriller starring Warren Beatty as a quirky reporter who stumbles upon an all-powerful organization, The Parallax Corporation, recruiting assassins for nefarious ends. With its breathtaking filmmaking, paranoid conspiracy theories and downbeat implications, no film made the doom and gloom of the Watergate era so fascinating or pleasurable.

A huge part of the success of both films is their music by Michael Small, a master of the suspense and subtlety required of these pictures. Marathon Man features a melancholy main theme for Hoffmans troubled graduate student and a foreboding anthem for Oliviers Nazi, as well as fascinating textural ideas such as pitch-bending strings, ominous piano and piercing synthesizer. The Parallax View centers on a skewered patriotic march for the Parallax Corporation, and features a five-minute pop-rock source cue, The Parallax Test, for a pivotal recruitment film. Both scores feature arresting action cues that emerge perfectly from the atmospheric dissonance.

Marathon Man, although produced second, comes first on this CD as it is newly mixed from the original 16-track 2 multitrack tapes for modern stereo sound. No scoring session masters survived for The Parallax View, so its score is presented in mono (given a light stereo reverb for listenability) from the films edited music stem.

The booklet features incisive essays on the films by Scott Bettencourt and Jeff Bond, respectively. Expanded essays on both films, and full track-by-track commentary, can be found, for free, online at our website.

[Scorechaser]

YEEES! My holiest of holy grails!!! Wie geil ist das denn!!!

[Gast rocroc12]

Das ist wohl eine der besten Veröffentlichungen der letzten Jahre....Michael Small war ein grossartiger,

leider schon verstorbener Komponist...Jetzt sind die Paramount Archive wohl endgültig geöffnet, da kann ja wohl noch alles mögliche kommen...

[peter-anselm]

Was für eine Cover-Art. Suuuuper! Excellenter Film, hervorragender Score.

[Sebastian Schwittay]

Aha, tatsächlich MARATHON MAN erstmalig auf CD! Nun denn, wird auf jeden Fall vorgemerkt. Ziemlich außergewöhnliche, wenn auch extrem sperrige Musik - jedenfalls eine riesige Bereicherung für die Small-Diskographie.

[MarSco]

Sehr erfreulich.

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Die Online-Liner Notes sind (teilweise) schon da:

FSM: Marathon Man (Michael Small)

[d-udo]

YEEES! My holiest of holy grails!!! Wie geil ist das denn!!!

Das kannste aber mal glauben ! Mir ging grad auch fast einer ab. Sehr sehr geil. DAs Ding muss her !!