La corta notte delle bambole di vetro

As eighth volume in the series dedicated to the Giallo movies scored by Ennio Morricone, Digitmovies proudly re-issues a Deluxe CD edition of the OST for the movie "La corta notte delle bambole di vetro" (Aka "Short Night of the Glass Dolls"- "Malastrana" - "La corta noche de las muñecas de cristal" ) directed by Aldo Lado in1971 and starring Jean Sorel, Ingrid Thulin, Mario Adorf and Barbara Bach. The movie chronicles the misfortunes of Gregory Moore (J.Sorel), a curious journalist lost in a macabre Prague while searching for a mysterious doctor who is suspected of some murders. The protagonist falls into a sinister web made of pure evil connected with a macabre sect which practises strange rites. At the end and after the man has been put into catalepsy by the treacherous doctor and is therefore believed to be dead, his apparently lifeless body will be used by medical students and nobody can hear the silent cry of pain when the scalpel will cut into his meat. Although this OST has already been released - with the same material (42:25) - by Screen Trax/GDM and later by Dagored/Abraxas, both these CDs did feature the score only in mono sound. Whereas "Valzer", "Titoli" (issued on an Italian compilation) and "Emmetrentatre" (included in a promotional CD produced by Morricone) were the only three tracks to appear on the market in stereo sound, the complete stereo mixes seemed to be lost forever until today. Like "L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo" (recently issued by Cinevox in very good stereo sound) also "La corta notte delle bambole di vetro" is a kind of OST which on the strength of its atonal orchestrations and the psychedelic colours of the electronic experimentations did absolutely deserve it to be presented again to the audience in stereophonic sound. The hunt for the stereo tapes had positive results only in very recent times: In two different archives we could find the complete master tapes which were recorded in full stereo. And not only this, but there is an even bigger discovery: We have rescued an album mock-up in stereo (duration: 29:15) which had been prepared at the time of the film's release by Ennio Morricone, surely conceived for a promotional album of the SP series which then never saw the light in those days. For the joy of the Ennio Morricone fans and for a historic matter, besides the stereo LP mock-up and those extra tracks previously issued in mono, we have added here about 17 minutes of music never released before so that this CD has now a total time of almost one hour of material. The macabre plot is magisterially scored by Ennio Morricone starting with the main titles (Tr.1) with a heartbeat, human sighs and other vocal effects performed by Edda Dell'Orso. String glissandos and electronic effects do create the perfect background to a gloomy Prague which is immersed in a surreal atmosphere. Strings and electronic music, enriched with Edda' s voice, produce a deliberately unpleasant, unbearable and obsessive sensation in several orchestral tracks (Tr.2,Tr.4,Tr.6,Tr.) or in one with pure electronic music(Tr.7). The waltz - the love theme for the journalist and his girlfriend Mira Svoboda (B.Bach) - breaks up this cold dimension of terror in Tr.5,Tr.11,Tr.14,Tr.21. The score is also enriched with original themes of a classical kind (Tr.8) and particularly in Tr. 19 where we find - a very interesting musical discovery - fragments of something that seventeen years later will become the theme of "Infanzia e maturità" from "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso"! The voice of Edda, accompanied by a guitar, performs a Beat style theme for the scene of the hippies at the bar (Tr.13.)