Dirty Harry

Music by Lalo Schifrin

 

 

 

 

 

First complete edition of Dirty Harry soundtrack in a release that can be hailed as historical by Aleph Records. With Dirty Harry, composer Lalo Schifrin created the modelar soundtrack for police action genre with its constant rhythmic impulse and bass lines.

What could be nice or melodious in the jazz tradition (as was in Bullit) virtually disappears in Dirty Harry and the score concentrates forces in an economic music of incomparable nervous tension. With this work (and later with Magnum Force) the heavy throbbing of electric basses become a must in genre films during the 70s. The opening theme is exemplary in this line, as well as sadistic pleasure in vocals of Scorpio's View. Even what could be recognized in the jazz tradition, as the flute solos in Scorpio Takes the Bait, sounds here distorted, nocturnal, intoxicated. Seldom we could hear the suspension and tension effect as Floodlights (Scorpio injured on the football field) or Goodbye Callahan (Harry beated before the cross) or the heavy instrumental as in Liquor Store Hold Up (variation on Scorpio´s theme). Curiously in Dirty Harry there is no main theme, Scorpio's View is the recurring material on the film, becoming its most recognizable musical theme. The label Aleph released the score in very complete edition including even source themes heard on radios, bars, playgrounds and night clubs.