Codine
Original Movie Soundtrack

Disques Cinémusique presents a digital album of the orignal soundtrack to the Henri Colpi's movie Codine (1964) composed by Theodor Grigoriu.

A renowned editor, Henri Colpi was well acquainted with film music since he published in 1963 the very first book in French devoted to this art: Défense et illustration de la musique dans le film.

Colpi has directed numerous documentaries and television series, notably Thibaut des Croisades, but only four feature films, including Une aussi longue absence, Mona une étoiles sans non and Heureux qui comme Ulysse. For these three ones, he called on composer Georges Delerue, whose talent he praised in his book. For the fourth one in 1963, Codine, a dark drama taking place in the underprivileged areas of Romanian society, co-production constraints may have forced Colpi to call on Theodor Grigoriu (1926-2014).

It was, however, a happy choice because Grigoriu, author of classical works, also possessed an strong talent for film music. Codine benefits greatly from his interventions marked at the same time by harshness and poetry.

The 45 rpm EP of the soundtrack that was released at the time contains very little original music. Happily a DVD exists. For our digital album, we have extracted the most significant passages of the original score of Grigoriu, conducted by Constantin Bugeanu, including the two songs dubbed by Jacques Douai in the French version and whose lyrics are by Henri Colpi.

More info at: Disques Cinémusique