Mid-Century Melodramas:
Peyton Place (1957) and Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962)
La-La Land Records, 2017
This is probably one of the more enjoyable soundtrack projects I've worked on. This limited edition, 2-CD set from La-La Land Records contained a pair of newly-remastered albums of music written by Franz Waxman, one of the all-time great film composers who fled Nazi Germany to come to Hollywood and, over the course of his career for the big studios, helped to define what we think of as classic movie music.
The various posters for the film (above) may have a certain nostalgic appeal, but I felt the designs and illustrations were far too dated to be repurposed.
Waxman's two scores included in this release, Peyton Place (1957) and Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962), were very different musically, but the films shared common ground. Both were dramatic literary adaptations, exploring dark subject matter through a wide casts of characters. Both had also been underserved by rather unremarkable poster campaigns upon release, and had been all but completely overlooked on home video in the years since. This meant I was free to design something new, something that would reflect the films and music more effectively, but also more faithfully, which meant more dramatically.
My intention for Peyton Place, was to create a cover that trapped each of the various characters within thin vertical shapes -- always shown in part, never in full -- to suggest the way the film depicts the darker moments a group of friends and neighbors in a small town try to keep hidden from each other. I went through the stills from Fox, looking for any that showed the characters at their most emotional, vulnerable, angry, or deceptive. Some of the shots even had an almost voyeuristic quality, which was perfect, since it was important to me that each character not make eye contact with the viewer. (The mother and daughter characters are intentionally shown to bend this guideline, mainly because the mother insists on presenting such a rehearsed, false face to the town.)
Each of the photos, whether color or black and white originally, were treated and adjusted to create a richer, darker tone. Shadows were deepened, backgrounds were changed. In some cases, like the below shot of actress Hope Lange leaning against the tree, specific photos were more extensively edited-- in this case to better suggest the character's desperation and trauma after being assaulted by her step-father.
It's a minor detail, but the finished artwork uses a flecked, textured black for the shadows, rather than a solid color. This was to help keep the characters, even the more poised ones like the mother and daughter, from feeling too perfect, too comfortable. The paper texture gave the artwork a more illustrative feel as well, so the new title treatment created for the cover design was then given a similar treatment, shading the letters in hand drawn fashion (below).
Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man, featured on disc two of the double album, was an adaptation of author Ernest Hemingway's semi-autobiographical Nick Adam stories. Nick, played by West Side Story's Richard Beymer, is a restless, small town youth who escapes to see the world and ends up fighting and falling in love alongside the Italian army in World War I. Along the way, he encounters a colorful cast of characters, each of whom leaves a lasting impression on the man he starts to become.
While I wanted the two covers to compliment each other, the second film demanded a looser style. Where Peyton Place was confined and unyielding, the Hemingway adaptation was wandering and impressionistic. Working mainly on my iPad Pro with AdobeSketch and Procreate, I sketched over a photograph of the lead actor, using a more gestural style and diverse color scheme that hopefully creates the impression of a man coming into focus but not wholly formed.
This 2-CD collection of music from composer Franz Waxman was a limited edition set released by La-La Land Records in 2017. However copies may still be available for purchase here.
