= ARABESQUE =

EXCITEMENT, TENSION AND COLOR ARE AMONG THE CENTRAL elements that bind together the totally engrossing motion picture called 'Arabesque', produced and directed by Stanley Donen. A dominant factor in the establishment of these dimensions is the music of a master craftsman, Henry Mancini, who's without peer in the highly specialized art of using music to add to the dramatic values of a screenplay (This is Mancini's second collaboration with Donen, for whom he provided such a striking score in 'Charade.')

"'Arabesque' presented a special problem," says Hank, "Here we had a story about people with names like Yasmin Alir, Beshraavi and Hassan Jena, in the exotic costumes and flowing robes of the Middle East; yet the picture was set in England. I ended up with a bit of both. I believe the music managed to present an appropriate atmosphere and set the right musical curtain behind every scene."

It is not Mancini's habit to write a specific theme for association with each of the main characters. "Arabesque" has only two special motifs, one for Yasmin (Sophia Loren), the other a main-title theme that opens the first track here, introduced by Shelly Manne's drums and three English horns. In We've Loved Before (Yasmin's Theme), trombonist Dick Nash and the strings establish the melody, a lovely and beguiling one with lines as sinuous as Miss Loren's.

At one point in his score, Mancini suspended the Eastern mood in a manner that offered a valuable contrast 'The racetrack scene," he points out. "is set at Ascot. With those men in their top hats
and the ladies in colorful gowns, it was a very special moment, one that called for something typically British." The gay, early English-music-hall melody uses, among others, the violins, woodwinds, bells and trumpeter Manny Klein.

On Dream Street, part of which stems from the terrifying opening scene at the optometrist's office, Mancini had a chance figuratively to pull out all the stops. Among the effects used are mallets on piano strings, two bass flutes (doubling regular flute and piccolo) channeled through a tape-delay echo device, three percussionists, an autoharp (a small, zither-like instrument), and some thirty strings providing a low haze throughout.

Facade has a different type of exotic touch, as much Latin as Eastern, with Bob Bain's mandola (heard on several tracks through the album). Pearl Kaufman is at the regular piano and Jimmy Rowles at the upright (both specially detuned for the occasion). The flute work is by Ethmer Roten and the French-horn solo by Vincent De Rosa. 
This side concludes with Something for Sophia, a strongly jazz-oriented passage, with Jack Sheldon's trumpet and Ted Nash's alto sax heard jointly and separately, plus a touch of Mr. Rowles.

We've Loved Before, the vocal version of Yasmin's Theme, has lyrics by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, with whom Mancini has collaborated on such earlier successes as Dear Heart, Dreamsville and Mr. Lucky. A choir of ten voices is skillfully blended with the orchestra, all beautifully enhanced by Arnold Koblentl's oboe and Vincent De Rosa's French horn solos.

Shower of Paradise recalls the precarious and amusing moments spent by Gregory Peck hiding in a shower, fully clothed.

The Zoo Chase sequence is without question the picture's most dramatic illustration of the perfect wedding of music and action. The tape-echo effect is employed again, along with various eccentric uses of the autoharp (Mancini tried stroking it with a coin and dropping a rubber ball on it).

Bagdad on Thames, as its title states, brings sharply into focus the dual nature of the film, with its staid background and mysterious characters Bain's mandola, Koblentl's oboe and Roten's bass flute are featured. Toward the end the strings achieve an almost human quality as they rise and fall in vast but gentle waves.

In a filmed interview conducted by this writer with Henry Mancini, screened to promote 'Arabesque' and its magnificent use of music, Hank made his main point by showing one brief film clip twice - first without and then with music. The difference was startling. Perhaps it is the best tribute of all, though, that you are now able to derive genuine, detached pleasure from this musical score in an exclusively aural dimension.

- LEONARD FEATHER