Note cover front and back clearly states: "ELECTRONICALLY RE-RECORDED TO SIMULATE STEREO".

Modificato 3 anni fa

Heist movies are my favorite genre as a writer. Their plot offers ample opportunity for a unique storytelling quality, a tempting break with their traditional structure. The same could be said about the soundtrack - depending on the director, the music becomes another character, commenting the proceedings on screen. Case in point: Armando Trovajoli's score for "Seven Golden Men" (Marco Vicario, 1965).
Loosely based on the same material ("The Light of Day" by Eric Ambler) from the Hollywood movie "Topkapi" by Jules Dassin the previous year, director and screenwriter Vicario had been working on his own adaptation for his wife at the time, bomb shell Rossana Podestà. Despite some silly sci-fi gags the project turned into an entertaining caper which sustains suspense thanks to solid pacing within a two-act scheme and good acting by Philippe Leroy and Gabriele Tinti while Podestà provides the female interest throughout.
Hiring ever busy comedy specialist Armando Trovajoli was genius because the story needed musical relief while providing the production with some extra comedia all' italiana flavor. An immensely prolific composer, his enormous output stretched from the late 1940's all the way into the early 2000's with over 300 credits to his name; he was as much a work-a-holic as Nino Rota, more in demand than Riz Ortolani, he could dish up jazz styles like the two Pieros, Umiliani and Piccioni, if necessary he was capable of delivering symphonic work like A.F. Lavagnino and he could be as adaptable as Ennio Morricone. For this affair Trovajoli dug deep into his stylistic grab bag and came up with a score featuring jazz influences by Gil Evans as well as the Swingle Singers (here the celebrated "I Cantori Moderni" under Alessandro Alessandroni) as well as whistled, melodic lines in form of an Italian stanza, complete with accordion, pitched clarinet, Zerosette guitar, Farisa organ and percussive twirls. The soundtrack with its intermittent action cues does not have a lot of melodic variety overall with just two main themes but the single-minded struts and molto allegretto swing provide for unifying levity. Some tracks are in mono but most are in stereo - on the original Italian CAM release anyway. The UA pressing from a few years later is missing some tracks and gives off inferior sound quality. American distribution was and still is slow on uptake with European made films and their soundtracks - the movie was not distributed in the US until three years later, probably because rights holder Trans-Lux wanted to create some temporal distance to Dassin's movie and take advantage of additional promotion through a pending sequel. The movie was dubbed for release through WB's Seven Arts.
One of my quirky faves from Trovajoli who in the US was only known for his music for Sophia Loren movies like "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" and "Marriage, Italian Style".

Comes also as WWLP 7201 Japan not gatefold. Same track list. Off cause the above is not from 1965, but from 80'ties or 90'ties as the one i mentioned here. No year.