Customer Reviews

The Green Berets [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]

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Aside from the opening and closing tracks (which are choral tracks of Barry Sadler's famous tune - The Ballad Of The Green Beret) - if you close your eyes - you almost feel you are in an asian flavored version of Ben Hur when listening to this sound track. No surprise given the composer - Miklós Rózsa.
All politics aside, I cannot help but be moved by the opening chorus of The Ballad Of The Green Beret - it is immensely stirring. The movie itself is like a John Wayne WW2 movie taking place in Vietnam.

Miklos Rozsa's score to "The Green Berets" from 1968 was recently reissued by several private vendors in a 1,000-CD issue this year. I was fortuante to find this gem, which is hardly the harbinger of great film score writing but is a timepiece refecting the era of this American film, which was shot in Alabama and Mississippi.

Aside from Barry Sandler's stirring hymn that opens and closes the film, no individual moment from the 31-part score really stands out individually. Everything congeals to describe the action and emotion going on screen, helping you stay involved with the storyline.

I haven't seen the film in a while and I never recall the song "La Java de Saigon", a French tune sung by a breathy soprano and accompanied by piano, accordian, guitar, percussion and bass about half-way through the proceedings. I can't recall that being part of the film.

What I recall most about the film is its politics -- about as far right on the political scale as anyone can suggest. This was one of the earliest Vietnam films, produced from a Gung ho America must defeat Communism perspective. It was released before the 1968 Tet offensive pretty much changed attitudes and helped TV newsman Walter Cronkite -- who was considered America's most trusted person in 1968 -- to declar the war unwinnable. Once these events occurred, it was the beginning of the end for American support for the war.

You don't get any of that in the film score. It's pretty much a walk through 31 scenes of the film that Rozsa accompanied with music. While entertaining throughout, it's hardly Rozsa's best work -- that would probably be the score to "El Cid" -- but it is representative of old-style movie scoring very late in the century when this type of romantic audio engagement with cinema was dying, being replaced by the coming avant garde movement. When you compare the score to 1971's "Planet of the Apes" to this one, you'll see what a throwback Rozsa was at this point in time.

Today, we appreciate this far more than we did 40 years ago, when we thought the avant garde scoring of the 1970s had much to contribute. That movement was about dead by 1980 and guys like John Williams were bringing romance back to film scoring in "Star Wars" and elsewhere. So appreciate the score for "The Green Berets" -- if you can find it somewhere -- for something that never really left us and, thankfully, is back in full force today.

I have ALWAYS loved The Ballad of the Green Berets. But I believe Miklós Rózsa's rendition is the BEST! This soundtrack sounds very Oriental and exotic, with its instruments, score, etc. It's almost like being in Viet Nam. I watched the movie, then searched for MONTHS to find the original soundtrack. Listening to the CD, I can see scenes from the movie, the beautiful exotic locations, the action scenes etc. The next best thing to actually being there. Overall, a very good soundtrack!

Coming late in life, this is not the Miklos Rozsa of Ben-Hur - A Tale Of The Christ: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1959 Version) or El Cid, complete score limited-edition CD set. What it is, though, is music that captures the mood of the movie. The humor between soldiers, the sadness of an orphan's loss, the intensity of battle, the French colonial cultural leftovers -- all are captured perfectly.

Rozsa used unusual instrument combinations to create the feel of Vietnam, as he did with ancient Rome in "Ben Hur." One feels as though one has been swept into Vietnam of 1968. Even if you never see the movie, this CD is worth listening to from that perspective.

I quite enjoy it. I think you will, too.