Sunday, February 28, 2010

Invasion of the Bottles

Legendary film composer Miklos Rosza's score for Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1946) utilizes the eerie tones of a theremin to accentuate the downward spiral of Ray Milland's hellish addiction to alcohol.

Of course, it's a sound normally associated with science-fiction films of the 50's and 60's (most people think Bernard Herrmann started the craze in 1951 with The Day the Earth Stood Still), but alas, Rosza is considered the pioneer of the theremin in regards to its implementation in film. He also used it in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), but it wasn't as prominent or as seamless as it is in The Lost Weekend.

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