Unfinished Music

<p> I won't argue with anyone who claims <em>Citizen Kane</em> as her favorite film. It was and remains a tremendous accomplishment. But for me, <em>Kiss Me Deadly</em> ranks higher as a personal favorite from Hollywood's golden age. The 1955 crime drama from director Robert Aldrich is film noir at its darkest. The world, or at least Los Angeles, might be exploding at The End; the credits roll backward when the film begins; and some aficionados even theorize that the anti-hero, hardboiled private detective Mike Hammer, actually dies in a flaming car crash early on. If so, his ghost wanders the labyrinth of LA following a string of enigmas into the abyss. </p> <p>Heard periodically through the film, along with some melancholy late night jazz, are the motif-setting strains from Franz Schubert's Unfinished Symphony No. 7. The new recording by Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under David Zinman (on RCA Red Seal) is beautifully, thrillingly performed, and the jacket essay (although never referencing <em>Kiss Me Deadly</em>) gives some possible reasons for the music's inclusion in the film. “There are several tings about it that are unheard-of,” writes the essayist in a remark applicable to Aldrich's movie. Among them, the strangely somber tone set by Schubert's employment of the “black key” of B-minor (which had never been heard in a symphony). The motif itself (“a secret motor… woven repeatedly into the texture of the piece”) was oddly configured yet essential. And perhaps the idea of an unfinished symphony sounded apt for a film whose plot seems unfinished, its arc extending into blackness. </p> <p>RCA Red Sea has also released a CD of Schubert's 1st and 2nd symphonies as performed by Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. </p>