Les Felins

Music by Lalo Schifrin

 

 

 

 

 

 

"This score contains my twin passion for jazz and modern music. Probably some influence of Olivier Messiaen too, he was one of my masters. Sometimes the writing is clear, in others it is abstract and it  transmits a poisonous atmosphere, somewhere between seduction and anxiety. A few years later I fownd a comparable atmosphere in The Beguiled by Don Siegel " – Lalo Schifrin

 

With the music of Les Felins (1964), the jazz-based soundtracks went a step further as music for movies. The film was a co-production between France and the United States and the script practically divides the narrative between the first part of action, with Marc (Alain Delon) running from the mob, and the second more psychological, when Marc finds a suposed refuge in the mansion of Melinda (Jane Fonda). Considering that content, the soundtrack chooses to please both markets, American and French. Filled with ideas and making use of all musical forces that he could, Schifrin oriented the soundtrack for Rene Clement´s thriller to intensity. Much of what the composer developed here would appear in later soundtracks: the dynamic pulse of acoustic and electric basses, harpsichord sound for a sophisticated tone or mystery, jazz language for suspense, as well as the use of rhythms and winds more intensively than usual in jazz soundtracks.

 

"If my career is compared to a house, Les Felins is the foundation. The score contains seeds of Bullit, Dirty Harry and Enter the Dragon" – L. Schifrin

 

The score opens with the elegant Searching and Detecting with the cool sound of muted trumpets and goes on in constant movement: 50´s exotica lounge (in Mediterranean Chase), dynamic suspense, percuted pianos, dixieland (in Funeral Blues). The track Marc Has Company is an exemplary "suspense jazz", ahead of his time. Track Melinda displays frightening female vocalizations that anticipate the theme of Scorpio (Dirty Harry). The main theme and Searching and Detecting – to the scene when Melinda dances to the mirror – have become references in the composer's repertoire. This tracks received new recordings with organist Jimmy Smith for the album The Cat. Finding many musical possibilities, Les Felins is a essential item to know the work of Lalo Schifrin.