DANGEROUS BEAUTY

GEORGE FENTON

Rating:

Original Review: When Rachel Portman became pregnant, the scoring duties for The Honest Courtesan, as it was then known, fell into the hands of George Fenton. A title change and a few months later, Dangerous Beauty emerged to be yet another astoundingly good work by Fenton's during 1998 - a score of rare passion, intimacy and elegance. Dangerous Beauty, directed by Marshall Herskovitz from the biography by Margaret Rosenthal, charts the life of Veronica Franco, played by Catherine McCormack (Murron in Braveheart). In the liner notes, Franco is described as "a woman who, in 16th century Venice, became famous as a prostitute and as a treasured poet as well. A woman who extolled the virtues of hedonism, yet loved one man from the depths of her soul. A woman who was called a national asset, then put on trial for witchcraft. A woman who lived an epic life in a time when most women weren't even taught how to read." Fenton's unenviable task was to try to bring all these diverse elements together into a single musical entity, while still maintaining a feel for the film's locale and time period, as well as making it all coherent and attractive. He succeeded admirably. Fenton's music is constantly engaging, always lush and sweeping, never difficult or edgy, and achieves a perfect balance between romance, comedy and drama. 'Venice Proud and Pretty' is the film's main title, a warm and inviting acoustic guitar solo which seems to capture the essence and the abundant charm of the place, the period, and its inhabitants, and features quite prominently throughout. The romantic theme for Veronica herself is first presented in 'The First Kiss', an utterly gorgeous full-orchestra love theme which surely stands as one of the most attractive pieces Fenton has ever written. It is the emotional cornerstone of the score and, as such, is heard regularly - no doubt accompanying Veronica's numerous sexual conquests - in tracks such as 'Job Training/The Library', 'Ramberti', 'Marco Will Marry', 'Veronica and Marco', 'Marco Goes To War' and many, many others. The comedy comes by way of the two playful 'Poetry Duels' - superb accelerandos that use the film's main title, re-orchestrated for woodwinds, as their basis, and which break into marvellously robust and jolly marches after a few minutes. In a style reminiscent of his work on Ever After, there are also a couple of whimsical baroque pieces ('Marco's Homecoming', 'Veronica's Ascent') which reverberate to wonderful passages for oboes and trumpets. Unfortunately, Dangerous Beauty the movie has been treated extremely badly by its distributor and at the time of writing - January 1999 - it has still not opened here in the UK. I long to hear Fenton's spellbinding music for this film in the Dolby surround-sound cinema setting, for it truly is one of the most attractive and refreshing scores I have heard this year. Another reason why Fenton is, for me, the undisputed composer of 1998.

Track Listing: Running Time: 67 minutes 12 seconds

Restless Records 01877-72958-2 (1998)

Music composed and conducted by George Fenton. Orchestrations by Geoffrey Alexander. Recorded and mixed by John Richards. Edited by Tommy Locket. Mastered by Joe Gastwirt. Album produced by George Fenton.


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These web pages were designed and maintained by Jonathan Broxton copyright 1999. All opinions and views expressed on these pages are my own and are in no way intended to reflect those of my employer, the Trent Institute for Health Services Research, or those of the University of Sheffield.