MP3: S.O.S. Titanic (1979)
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Rating: Very Good
Label: Silva Screen / Released: March 18, 2013
Tracks & Album Length: 29 tracks / (56:58)
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Special Notes: n/a
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Composer: Howard Blake
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Review:
Most of Howard Blake’s s film scores – The Duelists (1977), Amityville 3-D (1983) – are complete works, but S.O.S. Titanic is comprised of main theme and mostly dramatic bridge material, largely because the film was originally a TV production designed with ad breaks, and featured a huge amount of source cues.
Silva Screen’s CD contains the complete score, and the CD begins with the grim title theme (literally based on the three-pulse Morse Code signal for help), after which the programme switches to a series of period marches, waltzes, fiddle jigs, and rag tunes before Blake slowly introduces his score. The upside for Titanic fans is the CD features a vivid musical recreation of the music likely played on board, performed by a small orchestra, and meticulously orchestrated to reflect the style of the teens, but it’s also a lengthy chunk of source material before Blake’s original theme finally takes over the soundtrack, and when it does assume control, extreme variations are fairly minimal.
Part of a disaster film’s formula is to let characters experience the arc from innocence and glee to fear, paranoia, and sudden tragedy, and Blake’s original cues certainly establish the direness of the Titanic’s sinking with eddying triplets, dissonant strings, and leadened beats with blaring brass (as in the chillingly monochromatic “The Hit”). His innovative use of the s.o.s. pulse may be the score’s propellant, but it’s the density of instruments which give the music its power, especially the cold colours which repeatedly drown any melodic fragments. Perhaps taking a tip from Holt’s The Planets, Blake’s s.o.s. motor never lets up, and the rare melodic segments never stray from tragic imagery, especially “Beesley’s Jump,” which is based on the Dies Irae.
The score’s mood and thematic repetition is wholly dire, but the music is beautifully performed, and Silva’s bonus cue – “Bethena” – gives listeners some closure, as the solo lounge piano evokes memories better times, if not the famously brief, flickering images of Titanic’s maiden voyage when her future seemed so assured.
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© 2013 Mark R. Hasan
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External References:
IMDB — Soundtrack Album — Composer Filmography
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