L.A. Confidential - Original Score - The Deluxe Edition

No composer was better suited to score a picture than Jerry Goldsmith with L.A. Confidential (1997), director Curtis Hanson's masterpiece of the James Elroy novel about corruption in 1950s Los Angeles. Not only was a Goldsmith a master of the thriller and crime genres, but his own career started in the era depicted in the film, and he had scored the all-time great detective noir, Chinatown.

L.A. Confidential starred Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce and Kevin Spacey as police detectives, with Kim Basinger as a Veronica Lake-lookalike prostitute, in a labyrinthine but brilliantly constructed plot connecting city hall and the cops, organized crime, Hollywood tabloids and the gutter. The film received nine Oscar nominations - including for Goldsmith's score - and won two, for Basinger and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was heralded as an instant classic and, 25 years later, is every bit as captivating.

Goldsmith's score combines a modern pulse, pace and suspense with period idioms - notably a bluesy trumpet theme, performed by Malcolm McNab, which to Goldsmith represented masculinity. The score distills the 1950s atmosphere of smoke and seediness, as well as a certain bygone era of honor and justice, while making the film ingeniously slick and contemporary - and, as always for Goldsmith, emotional.

L.A. Confidential's score album was released by Varèse Sarabande after the film in 1997. This Deluxe Edition features two programs on one disc: 28 tracks, running 45 minutes, representing the cues heard in the film, followed by the original 11-track, 30-minute score album. New liner notes are by Tim Greiving.