Marathon Man / The Parallax View

FSM presents two superb Michael Small thriller scores long requested on CD: Marathon Man (1976) and The Parallax View (1974), both from the Paramount Pictures vaults—two classic works of pain and paranoia from the 1970s.

A huge part of the success of both films is their music by Michael Small, a master of the suspense and subtlety required of these pictures. Marathon Man features a melancholy main theme for Hoffman's troubled graduate student and a foreboding anthem for Olivier's Nazi, as well as fascinating textural ideas such as pitch-bending strings, ominous piano and piercing synthesizer. The Parallax View centers on a skewered patriotic march for the Parallax Corporation, and features a five-minute pop-rock source cue, "The Parallax Test," for a pivotal recruitment film. Both scores feature arresting action cues that emerge perfectly from the atmospheric dissonance.

Marathon Man, although produced second, comes first on this CD as it is newly mixed from the original 16-track 2" multitrack tapes for modern stereo sound. No scoring session masters survived for The Parallax View, so its score is presented in mono (given a light stereo reverb for listenability) from the film's edited music stem.

The booklet features incisive essays on the films by Scott Bettencourt and Jeff Bond, respectively.