The first hint that this music-cum-dialogue recording is more than just a
gimmicky concept CD comes with the voluminous liner notes - cleverly written
by Ian Whitcomb and decked out with photos and posters from many of the great
film noir gangster-detective flicks of the 1940s and early '50s, plus candid
shots of Max Steiner and Miklos Rozsa conducting their biting, atmospheric
music for many of those same films. An interview with David Raksin that's
as clever as it is insightful seals the case: This one is a winner. In all,
Murder Is My Beat offers music and dialogue in roughly equal measure
from some 18 movies. Most of those are represented by both music and dialogue,
though several -- Raksin's Laura and Andre Previn's 'Scene of the
Crime' for example -- include only the film's main title music. I'm not familiar
with the latter film at all, though Previn's music is a singular treat in
itself. And hey -- where else are you going to hear not one but two main
title cues written together by Roy Webb and Paul Sawtelle ('The Racket' -
1949, and 'Born to Kill' - 1947.) Film noir spawned a genre of music that
was as distinct as the films themselves -- tortured trumpet cries, wailing
woodwinds and sinewy, sensuous saxophones, juxtaposed against jagged, cutting
strings. (Not just foreboding, as Whitcomb quotes Raksin, "but even
five-boding.") From Steiner's The Letter to Rozsa's 'Asphalt Jungle,' dissonant
harmonies become major characters in each film. Apart from the Previn, my
own favorite among Murder Is My Beat's music selections would include Raksin's
end title from Force of Evil and Franz Waxman's 'Dark Passage' main
title. Source music gets its due here, also, as in Waxman's use of 'Too Marvelous
for Words' in his end title to the same film. There's quite a bit of Steiner
in here -- including The Big Sleep (although it feels a bit truncated
-- Gerhardt did it much better) and I was disappointed that its dialogue
excerpt, while entertaining, doesn't include the famous "jockey" discussion
between Bogart and Bacall. Still, it's hard to resist a tender colloquy like
the following:
Bacall: "So, you're a private detective. I didn't
know they existed except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping
around hotel corridors. Say, you're a mess, aren't you?"
Bogart: "I'm not very tall, either. Next time I'll come on stilts,
wearing a white tie and carrying a tennis racket."
Bacall: "I doubt if even that would help."
Dialogue like this -- at once hard-edged yet also cheeky and fun -- doesn't
wear thin after just one or two visits. Like good music, it rewards repeated
listening -- just as fine writing bears re-reading. For those of us who love
movies as well as movie music, Murder Is My Beat is a must-have.
Reviewer
John Heuther
Ian Lace adds:-
This is a cracking collection: excellent presentation and absorbing content.
As John mentions above, Ian Whitcomb's articulate, informative and often
witty notes are a real pleasure to read. I was particularly attracted to
this sentence, describing music for the film noire genre, "Minatory music,
bearing down on us in our cinema darkness with a rueful motherliness from
the string section, judgmental wrath from the bras, while soldierly kettledrums
sound out that inevitable death knell. All the Germanic armoury of threat
and menace."
I was delighted to note that Max Steiner's towering scores for Key Largo,
Mildred Pierce, The Big Sleep, The Letter, and White Heat dominated the album.
It was good to find the inclusion of music by Adolph Deutsch and Roy Web
too. The dialogue excerpts have been judiciously chosen although one is left
wishing for more; for instance, I would have liked more of the exchanges
between Sidney Greenstreet (wonderful actor, and what a charismatic voice)
and Humphrey Bogart from The Maltese Falcon. The impression one gets from
these excerpts is the high quality of the writing - especially from the RKO
films.
This is an album to treasure
Reviewer
Ian Lace
OSTs Various
Composers 
