What were they thinking?
Edgar Soberon Torchia | Republic of Panama | 02/08/2003
(4 out of 5 stars)
"At last legendary jazzist John Dankworth's score for Joseph Losey's 1966 British film "Modesty Blaise" has been re-issued by Harkit Records. What's even better is that previously unreleased cues have been included. So for the music, this merits five stars, but the package is uninviting. What was Tim Creasey thinking when he "redesigned" Bob Peak's original artwork? For comic strips' fans, Modesty Blaise may have anybody's face, but for cinephiles there's no other face than Monica Vitti's associated with this character. Creasey has changed not only the original op-art graphics but Monica's face! Apparently there were two different releases in 1966 (by Fontana and by 20th Century-Fox Records), but I can't tell if they were different. I still have the vinyl Fox LP (falsely identified as "stereo"), and it surely is different from this re-release. First, the main theme sung by David & Jonathan has an additional verse heard in the film but not included in the Fox album; cues have different titles; lyric credits for "Ice Is Nice" and "The Sheik To the Rescue!" [titled "The End (We Should Have)" in the US release] are omitted (they are respectively by scriptwriter Evan Jones, and by Jones and Benny Green) and Terence Stamp and Monica Vitti are not identified as performers in a couple of tracks. You have Dankworth's fine music, but it's a shame that it has been done like this because his score was long overdue and now that it's finally available on CD, it does not have complete credits nor does it include information on the motion picture, the time it was produced, director Losey's career at the time (after the succesful "The Servant") and Danksworth's music."
Track Listings (18) - Disc #1
