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| Portrait of Wojciech Kilar by Cezary Piwowarski Image source: Wikipedia |
Born in 1932, Wojciech Kilar has become one of Poland's most esteemed composers, and has provided a number of highly regarded film scores and symphonies, including Exodus in 1981. Of all his film output however, his most famous is arguably his score to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I will be shortly posting a retrospective review of this film, but I have decided to single out the soundtrack for this post.
This was Kilar's first true entry into scoring for a mainstream Hollywood film, and the resulting soundtrack is regarded by many to be one of the very best things about the film. Gothic and dripping in atmosphere, it is regarded even by the film's detractors as an appropriate backdrop to the events. Kilar's range is fully demonstrated here, as the music switches from the dark and gothic tone of The Brides, and the sensitive and subtle Love Eternal. The latter is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Golden Age composers such as Miklos Rozsa.
This was Kilar's first true entry into scoring for a mainstream Hollywood film, and the resulting soundtrack is regarded by many to be one of the very best things about the film. Gothic and dripping in atmosphere, it is regarded even by the film's detractors as an appropriate backdrop to the events. Kilar's range is fully demonstrated here, as the music switches from the dark and gothic tone of The Brides, and the sensitive and subtle Love Eternal. The latter is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Golden Age composers such as Miklos Rozsa.
Video uploaded by Valdez244
Kilar worked in his native Poland on movies since the early 60's, so when he finally worked with Coppola, he had 100+ film scores under his belt. He went on to score two of his fellow countryman's (Roman Polanski) films ''The Ninth Gate'' and ''Death and the Maiden''. Enjoyed the post and look forward to your retrospective of the movie.
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