Search - Alex North :: The Misfits (Score)

Renowned as the final screen vehicle of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, director John Huston's unsentimental portrait of a group of outcasts teamed in a metaphorical hunt for wild Mustangs in the American Southwest can also be seen as a bittersweet elegy to Hollywood's Golden Age. But composer Alex North (whose work here marks the beginning of a quarter century long association with Huston) eschews virtually every shred of traditional Western musical cliché; ironically, he'd beat out his old teacher -- and one of the chief architects of said American musical iconography -- for the job: Aaron Copland. North underpins the film's characters and their deep-seated conflicts with an evocative orchestral score that often turns on the composer's trademark emotional introspection, yet one whose sweep seamlessly encompasses romantic traditions, 20th century classicism, the jazz inflections of some of his 50's work and even some early rock-tinged atmospherics. It's a masterful fusion of melancholy and melodrama, rendered with North's impeccable dramatic instincts and attention to detail. --Jerry McCulley