- Date: 1947
- Composer: Franz Waxman
- Period: Modern (1910-1949)
Review
This is a one-movement piano rhapsody drawn from music for the film The Paradine Case, Alfred Hitchcock's film adapted from a novel by Robert Hitchens by James Bride and Alma Reville (Mrs. Hitchcock). It is in a lush, post-Romantic style, full of chromaticism and shifting, yearning harmonies. Its style of piano-orchestral writing reflects a recent vogue for short piano concertos from films that included the Warsaw Concerto by Addinsell and the Spellbound Concerto by Rózsa (another Hitchcock film). Waxman himself listed this treatment of music from The Paradine Case simply as Rhapsody for piano & orchestra.Franz Waxman (born Wachsman, 1906 - 1967) did the musical arrangements for the classic film The Blue Angel in 1931. Producer Erich Pommer took Waxman to first to Paris then to Hollywood to do music for his next two films, allowing the Jewish Waxman to escape Germany as soon as Hitler took power. Waxman soon had a permanent job, and joined Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, and other refugees whose Central European Expressionist style, popularized a little bit, became the classic "Hollywood Sound."
The Paradine Case is a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Based on a novel by Robert Hichens, the films writers were James Bridie, Alma Reville, and David O. Selznik, with others choosing to remain uncredited. It was the third Hitchcock-Waxman collaboration (the prior ones were Rebecca and Suspicion). The presence of Selznik among the credited writers is a sign of the film's troubles, as is that of Reville, Hitchcock's wife, who probably tried to protect it from Selznik's incessant and crippling rewrites.
The film stars Gregory Peck as an English barrister attempting to defend a cool mysterious beauty, Maddalena Anna Paradine (Alida Valli) on charges of murdering her husband. Peck must deal with a lecherous judge (Charles Laughton) who puts moves on his wife (Ann Todd) while dealing with his own possibly fatal attraction to the widow Paradine. The film is one of Hitchcock's least suspenseful; the characters fail to develop, and their interrelationships lack any credibility. Throughout the film the true nature of Mrs. Paradine is so obvious that the viewer feels Hitchcock, the master, must have some amazing twist to reveal -- but, NO. Peck's character, who is staggered to learn the truth, comes off as clueless for having missed the obvious.
Waxman tried mightily to charge the emotions of this film with the lush, yearning, "little Tristan" style of this score. The yearning, heaving piano writing actually emerges as possessing convincing and powerful musical argument when divorced from the film and made into this 12-and-a-half-minute quasi-concerto. It's a bit of a Johnny One-Note, emotionally, but given its short length it is quite acceptable. Still, one can't entirely escape the impression of music struggling to give life to its original drama.
Incidentally, music from The Paradine Case appeared on the second commercial soundtrack release record ever made: Selznik had introduced the concept as an additional profit center for super-expensive Duel in the Sun (music by Dmitri Tiomkin). ~ Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide
Albums with Complete Performances of the Work
| Title | Date |
| Herrmann/Waxman/North - Piano Concerti | 1995 |
Albums with Excerpt Performances of the Work
| Title | Date |
| Cinema Classics | 1996 |
