Sunday, January 6, 2008

Murder is My Beat-Classic Film Noir Themes and Scenes

Murder is My Beat-Classic Film Noir Themes and Scenes.
Rhino CD

I dusted this off after not listen to it for quite a while. Glad I did, I forgot how much I enjoyed it. I thought it was a good idea by Rhino and Turner Classic Movies to team up and issue this. The music themes are exceptional, especially "Laura" and "The Letter." And what can you say about the scene dialog....classic!

Gen. Sternwood: "How do you like your brandy sir?"
Marlowe: "In a glass"
-The Big Sleep.

One of my favorites are the two scenes from "Crossfire." After hearing it again, I had to play the movie DVD again.
I would of liked to see more of this from TCM and Rhino. Maybe include some of the other classics that were not in this CD-there are so many. It probably had to with marketing-sales and costs. Anyhow, a good substitute if you can't pickup a hardboiled novel or see a film-noir movie. I've been listening to it as I am driving.

If you don't have a copy of the CD, you can listen to it for free.

Would of liked to have seen "Double Indemnity" included, (great dialog and music) guess you can't have them all. But you can always listen to the Lux Theater OTR version.

As for TCM-four good Robert Ryan movies are coming up:
Act Of Violence (1949) Fri. Jan. 11, 5:00 PM EST
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) Mon. Jan. 21, 10:45 AM EST
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) Thurs. Jan. 24, 2:00 PM EST
Crossfire (1947) Mon. Jan 28, 10:30 AM EST

Also, on Weds. Jan 23 @ 11:15 AM EST is Nightfall (1956)-from the David Goodis story.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've always liked this disc and have been consistently shocked at how many people seem to hate it.
It seems a number of soundtrack enthusiasts are enraged by the truncated versions of the scores, which are further diluted by the addition of dialogue.
I collect soundtracks and it doesn't bother me. If I want the full score, I'll put it on. If I want a neat mood-enhancer that gives me a full does of noir, then this fills the bill.

John Hocking

Craig Clarke said...

Thanks for the great review. I've definitely got to find a copy of this CD.

Also thanks for the TCM heads-ups, especially for the note that Goodis was behind Nightfall, which makes it must-viewing.