Alternative Car Park

...is the name of the mime artist played by Rowan Atkinson in the 1980's "satirical" comedy sketch show Not the Nine O'Clock News. It just came into my head.

Found a blogger not one million miles away from chez moi - Have a Look. This blog onepointzero is another Brussels based one.

No new films to report, though I did watch the alternative musical soundtrack to Battle of Britain and the commentary track to Vertigo.

The original soundtrack by Sir William Walton for Battle of Britain appears to have been lost for a long time. It's nice that the age of DVD can reunite things in this way. However I can understand why his music was junked for Roy Goodwin's version. The Walton track is too classical, whereas Goodwin's is much more cinematic which I guess in 1968 was important for a mass market film. One positive of the Walton version is that there is much less musical melodramatic emoting in certain scenes, such as Suzannah York's reaction to the dead WAAF's after the first bombing of the airfield, and Ian McShane's reaction to the Rest Centre where his wife and kids were sheltering being flattened. As an aside the McShane character appears to take the loss of his family very well, as in the next scene we see him not entirely traumatised. I guess later at the end of the film as the Spitfire pilots wait for the scramble that finally never comes, the Ian McShane character looks pretty stressed out... One positive about the Roy Goodwin version, apart from being more suitable for a mass market film, is that when the Walton section “Battle in the Air” does come along the music sounds very special and really makes the montage scene.

The commentary for Vertigo doesn't add much to the documentary already seen on the DVD. Still it's was a good reminder of the amount of work that went in to the restoration. I didn't realise they had used a separate original recording of the soundtrack which meant they had to remake all the foley effects – this was a little obvious as things like rustling paper sounded too false.