The Diary of Anne Frank

Alfred Newman's music for George Stevens' movie The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) has been issued on a good sounding and well-produced CD from Tsunami, containing eight minutes of music that was not previously available -- that material consists principally of the main title, intermission, and exit music, which does isolate some themes associated with specific characters and the Frank family. Given the subject matter, that this is a serious film score is no surprise -- as of 1958, when the movie went into production, some 14 years after the end of World War II, Hollywood had not done too many movies (forget major films) that even referred to the destruction of European Jewry by Nazi Germany, much less dealt with this event as their main subject, and everyone involved with the movie on a creative level, whatever their background, treated it as a rare and special opportunity to say something important through their work. That said, Newman's "Overture," which opens the album, has always seemed appropriately profound, but the rest is far more subtle, introspective, and lyrical, almost counter-intuitive to the moods, settings, and images that one associates with the Holocaust. That's because Newman based his score on the interior emotional life of its characters, rather than the exterior events around them. The result is one of the more beautiful bodies of movie music ever written for a Holocaust-related movie, and one of Newman's better psychologically oriented scores, surprisingly not far removed from his work on How Green Was My Valley. It also contains some of the most beautiful string writing of Newman's career. The CD production gives the decades-old recordings a full, rich sound, and the annotation is extremely thorough. ~ Bruce Eder

可憐な美しさがあふれるオーケストラ・スコアの名編。

『アンネの日記』(1959)
サウンドトラック

音楽　アルフレッド・ニューマン
監督　ジョージ・スティーヴンス
出演　ミリー・パーキンス、ジョゼフ・シルドクラウト、シェリー・ウインタース、リチャード・ベイマー

少女アンネとその家族がゲシュタポに見つかるまでの、屋根裏部屋でのささやかな日々、そしてアンネの恋と青春、家族たちの愛情。監督は『ジャイアンツ』の名匠、ジョージ・スティーヴンス。音楽は、『イヴの総て』や『慕情』など、美しい女性の物語を引き立てるスコアも逸品の巨匠、アルフレッド・ニューマン。なによりも、可憐な少女の物語であるため、メインテーマは、まずあまりにも密やかに美しくドラマティックなメロディ。マントヴァーニやフランク・チャックスフィールドあたりのムード音楽に共通する甘い雰囲気のサウンドで、物語の悲劇性はここでは感じさせない。悲しさを表現するナンバーも優しく、それはジョルジュ・ドルリューあたりの清らかな印象にも似ている。戦争の影を直接的に表現するスコアもあるが、多くは占めず、清らかでドラマティックな物語としてのムードをひたすらにかたちづける。 (C)馬場敏裕