Customer Reviews

The Great Escape (Score)

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This is a magnificent score. But, you should be aware that master tapes of the complete orignal score were found in the MGM library earlier this year. These were thought to no longer exist. These are to be released (and may have been already in Europe) on a two-CD set with at least 42 cues.

Many thanks go to Rykodisc for reissuing this soundtrack on CD back in 1998. Now, minus the dialogue tracks, it is back on compact disc again thanks to Varese Records. It now has a new cover featuring Steve McQueen instead of the original poster art. That aside, THE GREAT ESCAPE left us with indelible images, characters, dialogue and music. This film contains one of Elmer Bernstein's most recognizable themes in cinema history: the main title or "The Great Escape March" as it is often referred to. To say that THE GREAT ESCAPE has such a distinction is an understatement. His main title theme is as much a tribute to the Allied prisoners in the film as it is to all men who must overcome the odds through their own perseverance and unwillingness to bend to defeat to whatever noble end they strive for. Bernstein's complex score complements the theme by giving us passages and statements on the diversity of the individuals as well as their singular overall objective. Once the Allied escapees are on the road, the music reaches exhilarating proportions unlike that of traditional action Hollywood scoring. Bernstein wants to put the audience through the same suspense and anticipation that the escapees feel and then unleashes our pent up emotions in a crescendo of rousing orchestrations that has us cheering them on. That was the same brilliant technique he employed in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. I don't think many people give Elmer Berstein the credit for being the musical innovator that he was back in this period of his prestigious career. Composer Bernstein was able to control our emotions giving us moments of reflective tranquility, then despair and in the next moment lifting our spirits again knowing that actions were not taken in vain and good will eventually prevail. This is an excellent recording.

The Great Escape is among the best and most memorable soundtracks. This CD is the original soundtrack, re-mastered and issued in 2004. The booklet cover is taken from the video game version of the Great Escape (not a bad likeness of Steve McQueen) but inside contains many stills from the movie and cast photographs. The booklet includes the story behind the making of the film, including the obstacles (such as Steve McQueen coming close to quitting) that almost doomed it to failure. There is a nice discussion of Elmer Bernstein's involvement and the writing of the score.

The music Elmer Bernstein wrote fit the film beautifully and is a joy to listen to by itself. The individual tracks are not described in the booklet but have descriptive titles that place the action so that nobody who has seen the film will be lost. The only problem is that the CD is short (32 minutes) on music and some of the cues were not included. Until someone comes up with the entire score (like Turner/Rhino did for North By Northwest) this is the best we have. Anyone who has enjoyed this movie will still want to have this soundtrack.

Another great Elmer Bernstein score. Brings to memory the different parts of the motion picture. The composer brings life to the narrative of the story. I would endorse the purchase of this soundtrack as I would many of Bernstein's signature movie scores over the years.

For years (four to be exact) I looked for this score on Amazon, E-BAY, Tower Records, Varese Sarabande, and every other imaginable film music site or store. Finally, I got puffed when I saw "The Magnificent 7" score on Varese. "If Magnificent 7, why not The Great Escape", I asked myself. So I sent Varese an email and asked if their were plans for a rerelease. They replied that there was. I was jumping for joy. And on June 15th, the score shipped and 5 days later I ripped it open and popped it int my computer. "The Chase", "Premature Plans", "Blythe", "More Action", and "Roads End" were all amazing and in great sound quality. But where were the other cues? Like the one where Danny is in the tunnel, and the part where Ashely-Pitt is killed at the railroad (love the chello when he falls on the tracks. Still, I thank Varese Sarabande very much for this score. I'll be listining for years to come!

Elmer Bernstein produced some of the greatest film scores in the history of this art form including "The Ten Commandments," "To Kill a Mocking Bird," The Magnificent Seven," and "The Great Escape." Indeed, his music for "The Great Escape" may be the definitive score for a war film. That said we thank Varese for the new release of a "remastered" recording of the original soundtrack. The technical production is wonderful, and the new packaging is solid. It is a five star effort. But, we are still waiting for what another label claimed as the "definitive" recording. The only problem here is that this recording is less than thirty-five minutes long. Sadly, there were a number of other cues that could have been "restored" to a true definitive recording. Still, this is a great edition of a truly great score.

Composer Elmer Bernstein and John Lennon both had something wildly in common. Neither were friends with the political dream-team pairing of Richard M. Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. During the heightened red scare of the Eisenhower years, Bernstein was gray-listed for abstract leftwing sympathies, though never completely banned. Some Hollywood insiders chose to keep a recording studios distance from Bernstein, and as a result, the great composer was stripped of many major A List projects.

Bernstein explains it like this, "In the early days of the so-called black list, it was promoted by corrupt politicians like Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. They made their living doing this kind of thing. At the very beginning, just the idea that you might be somebody left or center was enough to get you blacklisted. By the time I was grey-listed they made a distinction. If they thought that you had leftwing sympathies but were not a card-carrying member of the communist party, they grey-listed you. If they thought you were a card-carrying member, you were blacklisted."

When the hammer and sickle hit the fan Bernstein was busy scoring The Ten Commandments. "At the time I was fingered, I was working for Cecil B DeMille. He was famously anticommunist. He was president of an organization called the Motion Picture Alliance which was devoted to keeping communist propaganda out of the movies. DeMille called me down to his office and said, `I am going to ask you a question. I know it's not my constitutional right to do so but I am going to ask you anyway. Are you a member of the communist party?' I said, `No, I'm not.' He looked at me for a full 10 seconds. He made a decision in his head to believe what I'd said but then delivered a lecture to me. He said, `Be careful of these people. They only want to use you.' But he kept me on the set. That was a very important step in saving me."

Elmer Bernstein would survive the red scare with a slap on the wrist (and perhaps an American flag branded by McCarthy on his fatty hinds) to write my favorite of his movie scores, the 1963 film The Great Escape, based on the true story of the Stalag Luft III prisoner-of-war escape from Nazi occupied Germany in March of 1944. Of the 76 air force prisoners who escaped through an underground tunnel, only 3 made it safely across the lines. The rest were swiftly captured and fifty of those shot at Hitler's personal orders.

The film rated so poorly upon release, with box office numbers to match, that Bernstein's swirling score was totally overlooked in the 1964 Academy Awards. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther had this to say about it: "The Great Escape grinds out its tormenting story without a peek beneath the surface of any man, without a real sense of human involvement. It's a strictly mechanical adventure with make-believe men." It wasn't until years after its release that Escape began to pick up the momentum it deserves, enduring, as most great art-pieces will, through the decades.

Now, I've been a fan of The Great Escape for some time. Its been one of those movies that I've returned to habitually since my childhood, and when I think of the movie score as an entity, this is one of those projects that springs to mind. Bernstein's work isn't overlaid with compound thematic visions, and it isn't complex. While remaining wholly classical in nature, Escape is like many great rock or pop albums devoted to sound structures and catchy hooks that you've found yourself regularly revisiting. What themes Bernstein does develop, he develops well. They're each able-bodied. They compliment their sibling tracks. But best of all, he hits it home with every cue.

Because the attempt of this journal is to uncover one hundred new movie scores that I've never heard before, I wouldn't be entering The Great Escape into the catalogue except for the singular fact that the entire master tape collection was recently rediscovered in the MGM library. Thought to be lost forever, the 42 cues that originally matched the reels of the cinema projector can now finally be heard almost fifty years after its conception. While the two-disc album isn't yet available in America, I was able to get my hands on a European copy. This is a listening opportunity that I couldn't pass up, - the perfect way to start my Labor Day weekend.

Funny though, after laying back on the sofa and listening to it cue-by-cue, I find the original 1963 made-for-vinyl album to be its superior. The longer two disc release has some new notable cues that remain absent from the 12 inch version, and would certainly paint an overcoat improvement, but the 63 vinyl really packs a punch as a short, concise, concert piece. It`s continually in motion without ever repeating itself. Some of the tracks it misses out on is the very stimulating At the Station (which pictures the long nervous wait for a steam engine by escaped prisoners in German civilian attire and its very welcomed approach), the right-y- tight-y, left-y -loose-y sounds of Booze, the claustrophobic digging through an ever-collapsing underground escape tunnel on Cave In, and the sullen realizations of 20 Feet Short. Setting some cue additions aside, most of Escape repeats itself tirelessly, and so for the sake of taking up web space with my track-by-track banter, I'll be highlighting the shorter 40 minute version.

Since I like to think of Elmer Bernstein as the Bon Jovi or Journey of score composers, the opening track, Main Title, is a testament to Bernstein's ability to rock stadium styled ballads with swift catchy hooks and never-too serious comedic undertones. Beginning much like his theme to The Magnificent Seven, this one steers away only in its light-hearted cadence. I actually love this song with a passion. While it never quite succeeds the power anthem of his opening theme to The Magnificent Seven, this one comes nearly as close. If his two themes to Escape and Magnificent went head-to-head in a game of chicken, Magnificent would win by a hair, and only because it pulled away a fraction of a second later.

The second track, Premature Plans, repeats a much slower, more buried version of the main theme, and interestingly enough, by removing some of the light-heartedness, comes across as far more heroic, just not as fun.

Cooler and Mole refers to two separate cues from the 42 track movie score that are spliced together, as many of the tracks on the condensed album are. Cooler, outlining the detention center that prisoners with extra needed disciplinary action were confined to, continues in its humorous feel-good emotions, which the war had very little of, unless its mere attempt is to build on our red, white, and blue patriotic pride. Mole quickly delves into a stark, sullen contrast, which I imagine strikes closer to the core of the wars hellish experience. Whole-heartedly sad, Mole digs into the troubled mind of a prisoner in solitary confinement who has lost almost all hope of survival.

Blythe is a beautiful track from start to finish. Beginning as a sad recollection, the song presses into some jubilant undertones thus delivering the message that joy can often be found in the unlikeliest places. Both Discovery and Various Troubles, much like their titles, are hectic in pace, moving from one theme to the next in uneasy increments.

On the Road, while arriving rather late in the game, delivers my second favorite theme on the entire album in its full realized measure, what I like to refer to as mystery theme because of its dark hinges. It's the Tao of The Great Escape. If Main Title keeps this score marching to a happy patriotic beat within the hours of daylight saving times, then On the Road plunges it into darkness and the ever looming threat of defeat. After listening to the 42 cue track scoring sessions, I was pleasantly intrigued to find that the mystery music from On the Road appeared more than any other theme, and much earlier on the album, though sparingly here.

Betrayal is the perfect title for this song. If the movie score as an art attempts to communicate a story through emotional cues, then the act of betrayal is well understood. In its opening blaring military march (or retreat, take it as you will), the instruments cry of desperation then delve into another quick helping of On the Road's darkness. With an abrupt, urgent sounding, pitch-rising conclusion, could the ending of this song be any more suspenseful?

Road's End is my second favorite track on the album. It's filled with anxiety and panic, veering unpredictably up one street and down another alley, though never strays too far from its own path. If its instrumental chaos remains on the compass, its because Bernstein regularly dials in the beating of our own hearts with pulse throbbing waves of the baton. I love the way you can hear piano keys salivating like a rabid dog towards the finale of the track.

The Chase tag teams between soft tides of satisfying solitude from oppression and pulse-beating waves of adventurous musical excitement by those very pursuers.

Finale presents us with a proper eye-tearing send off that celebrates the three men who escaped Nazi imprisonment, two by boat, the other over the Swiss Alps, then concludes in a rumpus celebration for all the men who served in the allied armed forces with another helping of the patriotic title track.

Despite its happy careless theme, which combat veterans of that war probably could not relate to in any way, the closing scene in the movie that compliments this cue stands out to me more than any other. In it, Steve McQueen is returned to the cooler after an iconic hair-razing motorcycle chase from an entire Nazi army through German villages, across open countryside, and finally over barbed wire, in a rebellious action that screams of American teenage angst. Of course, his stay in the cooler wouldn't be complete without his very own baseball and glove, which he smacks against the wall tirelessly during the entire reign of his confinement; nor would a World War Two comedy be complete without passing notes in class about the stupidity of enlisted Nazi soldiers of the Fuehrer himself. This Nazi in particular, the guard who escorted him in and locked the door, turns around to watch him smack his ball against the wall, almost with an itching yearning, envious at America's great pastime.

The Nazi's, with all their book burnings and voluntary executions of human culture had charred their own souls beyond repair in the scourging. It's this Nazi in particular who realizes that he's missing out on something. It's not just baseball. It's something more than that, though its probably safe to presume he'll never piece it together. As we're left with blonde-haired McQueen smacking his baseball against the prison wall and back into his leather glove we're reminded that, despite the accumulated losses in this horrid tragedy of a war, in the end, we would come out triumphant. It was that hidden human spirit that prevailed in McQueen's glove, and its this score that lends praise to that very conquering spirit of liberty Here's to you, boys.

This soundtrack is very nostalgic - I was recalling the movie as I listened. The music is usually upbeat. As with some soundtracks, the theme is repeated through much of the CD.

This music is great! You may or may not like the film, and it may be a pity that only about one third of the whole soundtrack of the film is on this CD, but you won't regret having this CD!