Philippe de Broca loved Africa – he campaigned to protect its environment – and he'd wanted to make a film there for years. In 1982 his dream came true when he filmed L'Africain (Brain of Evil), a life-sized comic-strip of a movie with a naïve charm (not to mention pygmies, chase-scenes and aerial acrobatics) which starred the tandem of Catherine Deneuve & Philippe Noiret. To give his adventure the sound of a distant land de Broca teamed up again with his lucky-mascot composer Georges Delerue, who was immigrating to Los Angeles at the time. Delerue had the idea of a wide-open-spaces score, and he wrote a vast, symphonic, "call of the wild" piece – the musical equivalent of CinemaScope – and recorded it at Abbey Road. "What I asked Georges to do was quite simple," said de Broca. "I wanted an overture that flowed like a great African river: vast and muddy, and irresistible." But the heart of his Africain was its love-theme, one of the most heart-rending pieces which Delerue ever wrote for the filmmaker. Declined in several variations, the theme also had a song-version, Face to face, brought to life by the graceful voice of Vivian Reed. The multi-track master-tapes for the film L'Africain – a miraculous recent discovery – have made this release possible, and it comes as a timely event to mark the 20th anniversary of the composer's disappearance. This is the first stereo edition of the complete score by Georges Delerue, a key work by the composer, with a broad, generous sound which does justice to the firepower in Delerue's writing.
1. Face to Face (03:41)
2. L'Africain (ouverture) (03:30)
3. Nostalgie de Victor (02:23)
4. Soirée chez Patterson (01:22)
5. Poulakis et sa bande (03:02)
6. Valse Boston (01:35)
7. Charlotte abandonnée (02:16)
8. Sur la piste des éléphants (03:07)
9. Victor et Charlotte (03:13)
10. Marche militaire (01:11)
11. L'espoir (02:09)
12. Victor sauve les éléphants (03:08)
13. Le bar de l'hôtel (02:01)
14. Voltige aérienne (02:27)
15. A bientôt, Charlotte (02:03)
16. L'adieu à l'Afrique (02:27)
17. Face to Face (version instrumentale) (03:41)
18. Suite symphonique de Broca (17:00) |
