Fantaisie en noir

My second foray into the world of electronic music is decidedly unelectronic, more just a low-tech remix of some examples of my favorite genre, film noir.  I tried to create a sort of collage-fantasy of the themes in these movies, a distillation of the central tropes of 1940’s grisled Hollywood cinema.

The source material comes from 4 films:

  • Suddenly (1954) starring Frank Sinatra (a major boon for a huge Sinatraphile like me, I can use his voice in my piece because this film is in the public domain), in which he plays a deranged assassin out to kill the president.  Download
  • The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) starring Barbara Stanwyck (my favorite Hollywood actress of all time), Lizabeth Scott and Kirk Douglas, is the story of a complicated love triangle (rectangle), power, deceit and secrets.  Download
  • Scarlett Street (1945) directed by Fritz Lang and starring Edward G. Robinson, is a sultry tale about petty con artists taking a sensitive, demure painter for a ride.  Download
  • The Second Woman (1950) a melodramatic story of a man who was responsible for his first wife’s death and how enacts his guilt in increasingly destructive ways.  Interestingly, the entire score consists of arrangements and re-orchestrations of music by Tchaikovsky.  Download