Search - Eddie Sauter :: Music From The Sound Track Of 'Mickey One' Played By Stan Getz Composed By Eddie Sauter

Jazz in Via Negativa

Jeffrey R Galipeaux | 12/26/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The soundtrack to Arthur Penn's Paranoid, neurotic "Mickey One" is a big, splendid failure, a score more concerned with defending a musical position than with being a cohesive soundtrack.First, "Mickey One" tries to prove that Getz and Sauter's incomparable "Focus" was not a beautiful cul-de-sac but a valid and accessible musical tangent that could have been explored long into the future. "Mickey One" is highly listenable, masterful in places, but the shape of the film dictates that the tone of the music lunge around much too quickly to really be a kind of jazz 'tone poem' on the level of "Focus". Had Getz and Sauter worked on a slower, more meditative film, the discoveries of "Focus" might have found easier real world applications. Second, the modish attempts to tweak the score to the film are not always successful. When Getz tries to infuse his playing with Mickey's paranoia, it just sounds like bad saxophone playing. But for the most part, the sharpened, knifelike quality to the recording does work. In places it sounds like Stan had been keeping his reeds in the freezer; but even so, he comes out sounding very good -- very "startlingly cinematic". "Mickey One" is not a great score, but Getz is in fine form, there is some strong and lovely music here ... as well as some frantically overambitious scoring. This is a great disc to have on when you are trying to do nineteen things at once, because it's music that understands your dilemma. Not a classic but a must for any Getz fan."