Last week in this space, we discussed the highly effecting soundtrack to The Man with the Golden Arm -- a moody post-bop jazz score that came from a highly unlikely source in the person of Elmer Bernstein. This week's original soundtrack focus, the 1959 courtroom classic Anatomy of a Murder, was penned by someone who hardly needed to prove his jazz credentials. Duke Ellington was a jazz elder statesman by the time the movie started production, but jazz had long been considered off-limits in most movies thanks to its connotation as "race music" through most of the '30s and '40s. It took the work of men like Bernstein and Henry Mancini to normalize it for film use to the degree that Otto Preminger could call upon a living legend like Ellington to score his crime drama a few years later. The picture wrapped in record time, and Preminger rushed to get it into theaters, partly in fear that its highly controversial nature (it was built around a revenge killing for the rape of the accused's wife, and used language that was extremely explicit for its day) would cause it to receive flak from the censors, so Ellington was pressured to work fast. Luckily, years of working with a talented group of improvisors -- some of whom, including Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, and Cat Anderson, can be seen and heard in the film -- had prepared him well.
Ellington had done film work before, but by and large, it was for shorts, concert films, and the like. Anatomy of a Murder would be his first full-length feature film, and the pressure was on in more ways than one, since for all the controversy surrounding it, it was meant to be an A picture. It featured a prestige director, a highly coveted source for its script, and some of Hollywood's brightest actors in the lead roles: Jimmy Stewart, George C. Scott and Lee Remick among them. (Ellington even has a minor role himself, playing the owner of a local roadhouse.) He was also something of a grandee of jazz, one of the old men of the medium's golden age, and not exactly known for being able to hit the clanging, atonal, and often dark aspects of the post-bop era. But he acquitted himself better than anyone could possibly have expected: his score to Anatomy of a Murder reels convincingly from swinging to subtle to romantic to comic to clever to violent when the scene calls for it. While it's not quite a great enough accomplishment from one of the finest jazzmen in history to stand unquestioned alongside his greatest sides, it's a remarkably effecting film score that strikes -- if a bit late -- a mightily convincing blow in favor of using jazz as a material for film scores just as suitable, if not more so, than the second-rate symphonic music that was the norm at the time.
What makes the score even more accomplished -- and credit here is due to Preminger and his editors as well as to Ellington and his sidemen -- is that it was designed and executed as a diagetical piece, where the music does not exist extraneous to the filmed action, but is meant to be heard in the context that characters in the film might hear it. The fact that it succeeds so well in this regard and stands up so strongly as an album, independent of the film, testifies to both Ellington's strengths as a composer and Preminger's as a director. Anyone seeking out an album version of this critically important moment in the history of jazz on film is highly advised to find the 1995 Columbia CD reissue; it features restored cover art based on the original ad campaign (which drew heavily on the Blue Note Records design style of the day), a lengthy and engaging interview with Duke Ellington, numerous outtakes, studio sessions, and rehearsal pieces, and best of all, an expert digital remastering that dumps the unnecessary and distracting level of echo that mars some of the original releases. The result is a much clearer, more immediate sound for what should be remembered for decades as one of the best blends of film and music of the 1950s.
BEST TRACKS: Most people who have only seen the film remember only for its opening theme, and that's perfectly understandable: "Main Theme/Anatomy of a Murder" is a dynamite piece of music, jazzy and powerful but with a good pop music composer's understanding of what makes a memorable movie theme. But there's plenty more than that to enjoy on an album that could easily be stuck in alongside Ellington's better work of the 1950s: the moody, steamy "Midnight Indigo", the bouncing, witty "Flirtibird", and, especially, the majestic and melodic "Sunswept Saturday", with its terrific, hooky clarinet work by Jimmy Hamilton.
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