Search - Johnny Mandel :: I Want To Live: Original MGM Motion Picture Soundtrack [Enhanced CD]

A work of unrelenting intensity, 1958's I Want to Live stands as a benchmark of American film. Taking on a grab bag of then-taboo topics--prostitution, gambling, drug addiction--and presenting them in a morally ambiguous, unorthodoxly grim context, I Want to Live predated the "new Hollywood" revolution wrought by such films as Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider by nearly a decade. With its unprecedented all-jazz score, Live's music is no less trailblazing. A meta soundtrack of sorts, this collection actually functions as two LPs in one, documenting the performances of Gerry Mulligan's seven-piece band, who appears in the film, and the larger jazz ensemble underscore that sets the pace and tone for some of Live's most memorable scenes. While Mulligan's combo swings with characteristic cool, it's the ensemble pieces that really stun. Composer Johnny Mandel intentionally chose an odd array of lead instruments and linked all his compositions with an arsenal of percussion to add to the film's edge of your seat/edge of sanity allure. The achieved effect is by turns moody and impressionistic, deliberate and plodding. Whatever the mood, Live's clench on the listener is positively physical. --Matt Hanks