Five Graves to Cairo / So Proudly We Hail!

Two early Hollywood soundtracks by Miklos Rozsa make it to CD at last! Having been in the movie capital for some three years, Rozsa managed to land his first major studio project with this important 1943 Paramount WWII drama, directed by Billy Wilder, starring Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff and legendary Erich Von Stroheim as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Egypt locale, tank battle backdrop inspired Rozsa to create vivid main title, dramatic underscore replete with exciting major-key flourishes, edged motifs, tense suspense sequences. Even at this early stage, Rozsa was already offering brass fanfare-style ideas that became hallmarks of his entire career. Intensity also plays key role with aggressive lines, dissonant harmonies, rhythmic drive. While warm melodic shape makes appearances, dramatic power holds center stage. Nearly complete score survives as part of Paramount restoration project of converting early optical masters to 35mm magnetic film and more recently to CD, following several earlier Intrada/Rozsa premieres. Also making first appearance is So Proudly We Hail (1943) with Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, George Reeves, directed by Mark Sandrich. WWII is again the setting, this time dramatic events with nurses following Pearl Harbor, including Bataan, Corregidor campaigns. In addition to his original dramatic music, Rozsa also made rare use of quotes from existing tunes ('Star Spangled Banner', 'California, Here I Come'). Surviving cues from The Hour Before The Dawn also appear. Here Franchot Tone, Veronica Lake brought life to drama involving pacifism during WWII. Rozsa offers very dramatic music, particularly with 'The Signal Fire' sequence. Three surviving cues from The Man In Half Moon Street appear, including one sequence not on Intrada 2014 re-recording. Score represents unusual foray for Rozsa into horror/mad scientist genre. Only one cue survives from Rozsa's western-ish score The Woman Of The Town, with Albert Dekker as legendary Bat Masterson, Claire trevor as saloon singer. Rozsa's 'Finale' offers brief glimpse of both love theme and main theme. Chris Malone restores original vintage recordings, Lukas Kendall supervises entire project, Frank DeWald contributes authoritative notes on each film and score, Joe Sikoryak creates beautiful full color package with flipper-style booklet cover plus full color reproductions of original film key art. Soundtracks recorded at Paramount Pictures Scoring Stage, Eugene Zador orchestrates, Irvin Talbot conducts. Intrada Special Collection CD available while quantities and interest remain!