There is an impressive tradition of soundtrack music for the world beneath the sea. While Bernard Herrmann’s Beneath The 12 Mile Reef (1953) may be unsurpassable, Hugo Friedhofer’s score for Boy On A Dolphin (1957) employs orchestral timbre in an (almost) equally sensuous and impressionistic manner. These scores are the children of Debussy’s La Mer.
Several sections of Friedhofer’s score, particularly the source cues, draw on traditional Greek music. A lively dance in 7/4 accompanies the opening panoramic CinemaScope images of islands in the Aegean: Hydra, Delos, Poros, Mykonos, Rhodes.
Sophia Loren, Alan Ladd and Clifton Webb star in what is basically a Greek travelogue designed to take advantage of the wide CinemaScope frame. The story, from a 1955 novel by David Divine, involves the discovery of an ancient statue off the coast of Hydra, and the fight for ownership.
Unfortunately the film has as yet eluded an official DVD release. A 42 minute mono soundtrack LP and CD has existed for years as an import, but a couple of months ago the Intrada label went into the vault to create a complete CD in stereo (The Intrada webpage has sound clips in Real Audio).
Unfortunately the edition, limited to just 1500 copies, sold out almost immediately. I hope Intrada do a second edition.
See reviews of the Intrada CD by Mark R. Hasan at KQEK, Clark Douglas at Movie Music UK, Thomas L. Kiefner at Golden Scores, sdtom at Film Music: The Neglected Art plus the message thread at the Intrada Soundtrack Forum.
Here’s a clip from the underwater scene after the main title song, unfortunately presented in a very low quality pan-and-scan edition. But the cues are gorgeous.
