Down Memory Lane

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

From its rich silver package through its equally smart silver liners and the special Art Deco labels on the six records themselves, it is a superproduction -more so than most of the quickly made, carefully cost-controlled movies it celebrates. But Warner Brothers' Fifty Years of Film and Fifty Years of Film Music (which can be purchased separately for $12.98) is one of the pop cultural bargains of the year. No history of movies, however well written or lavishly illustrated, can so effortlessly transport one back to the matinees of yesterday as this anniversary collection of samplings from the studio's sound tracks.

Nostalgic Pangs. The music album best opens the door to memory. How fine to have at hand the true tone of all those Busby Berkeley production numbers. No subsequent recordings of the songs quite recapture the tinny excitement of the original scoring as it was caught by primitive sound systems. But the record devoted to the work of the music department heavies-Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner and Franz Waxman-stirs the sweetest nostalgic pangs. Only by hearing in isolation the sweeping romanticism of Korngold's Sea Hawk score or the brooding march Steiner used to drive the prospectors toward The Treasure of the Sierra Madre can one realize how much the music contributed both to the original success of these films and their afterlife in the mind. All by themselves, the themes evoke whole movies.

The dialogue album is generally less successful. Segments are often too short. One is just getting into, say, The Sea Wolf only to be jerked rudely on to They Died with Their Boots On. Worse, that picture is represented not by its great scene-Custer's farewell to his wife -but by a battle sequence that does not have much meaning without director Raoul Walsh's superb imagery. However, films that depended on snappy cross talk for their best effects-Casablanca and The Big Sleep, for example-survive nicely as snippets of sound. In any case it seems graceless to be anything but grateful for what amounts to a collage education (or reeducation) in film history. In the good old, bad old days, studios were often criticized for trying to imitate one another's successes, thereby creating tedious cycles. This time, however, the competition should be encouraged to follow Warner Brothers' lead. MGM, come on! Paramount, let's hear from you! Richard Schickel

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