Product Review

Miklos Rozsa was one of the musical giants of Hollywood's golden age. By the time he signed on with M-G-M for what he called his "fourth phase," a successful series of historically themed costume dramas that included Quo Vadis (whose musical tracks are still lost) and Ben-Hur, the Hungarian-born composer had already written music for a disparate collection of films, including The Thief of Bagdad, Spellbound, Double Indemnity, and The Lost Weekend. This collection of original recordings documents both Rozsa's quality-conscious unwillingness to let his film work take a back seat to his other career as a classical composer and the historically authentic musical elements he continually strove to weave into these costume epics. Even his acquiescence to the studio's desire for a pop title song with Green Fire yielded nothing less than epic results. Half a century later, Rozsa's work still informs much of Hollywood's film scoring. --Jerry McCulley