Search - Miklos Rozsa :: The World, the Flesh and the Devil [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]

Wonderful soundtrack transcends stylish end of the world epi

Kevin R. Pyrtle | NC | 07/04/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The World, The Flesh, and The Devil is far from a bad film. The cast does a fine job and the script is competent enough. The only real problem is that the story is belittled by two elements, one of which is the chilling cinematography. The other is the soundtrack.



You can tell Miklos Rosza is used to scoring epic films, and his score for this film is no different. The themes are beautiful and bombastic and larger than life, all at once, and do wonders to accent the glorious black and white cinematography. Fresh off of films like Quo Vadis (1951) and A Spellbound (1945), he was at his prime when scoring The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. He would go on to provide equally impressive score work for Ben Hur (also 1959), King of Kings (1961) and a number of other enormous films.



The only real problem with the score is that it nearly overpowers the film it was written for. But I see this as more of a product of a time when film scores, much like films themselves, tried to so hard to be larger than life (this trend has come back in vogue since the 90's). In any event, this is a glorious soundtrack and a wonderful listening experience. I highly recommend it for those who are already fans of Rozsa's work or anyone looking for just plain good music."