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AKA:
La hija del guardabarreras (Spain)
The Gatekeeper's Daughter (UK)
The Daughter of the Railroad Crossing Guard (World-wide) (English title)
Limited edition of 500 copies.
First time on CD. Newly remastered expanded edition.
49 minutes of music, including 13 minutes of music never released before.
8-page CD booklet with French and English liner notes by Gilles Loison.
In late 1960s, Jérôme Savary created the musical theatre company "Le Grand Magic Circus". American audience may be familiar with its name because Richard and Danny Elfman performed with Savary's Grand Magic Circus in the early 1970s. The show, Zartan, included Danny's first public musical performance and compositions. According to Richard Elfman, his work with Jérôme Savary and the Magic Circus helped inspired him to create the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Savary has remained active, producing such diverse works in musical theatre (operas, operettas, and musical comedies) until his death in 2013.
La Fille du garde-barrière (aka The Daughter of the Railroad Crossing Guard), the 1975 French sex comedy starring Mona Mour, Michel Dussarat, Annick Berger, Jean-Paul Farre, and Valerie Kling is the second film to have been directed by Jérôme Savary, after Le Boucher, la Star et l'Orpheline. Based on the idea by Roland Topor (screenwriter of Roman Polanski's The Tenant), this very curious completely silent melodrama tells the story of Mona, who has left her father, the railway gatekeeper, after being raped on the train track. She is kidnapped and taken to a Parisian whorehouse. However, a disinherited prince, Dudu who tries to rescue her, is himself kidnapped and forced to serve as a male prostitute. The two captives meet there and fall in love. They are taken away by different rich people - he to an Arab "harem," she to a surgeon's home.
Éric Demarsan composed the score as a long improvisation. He even considered the score as a nod to Jean Wiener (composer from the Golden Age of French cinema). The piano acts as referent to the silent cinema but the composer also used a large-scale orchestra, that of the London Philharmonic. The music refers to all the codes of silent film music: it was entirely written, almost frame by frame, with a precise motif representing each character. The eclectic score highlights all musical diversity such as jazz music, pastiche of oriental dances, mickey-mousing, piano solos with Demarsan's melodic and harmonic strong personality.
In collaboration with Sugar Music, Music Box Records presents this new expanded edition, mastered from the composer's personal tapes, featuring thirteen minutes of previously unreleased tracks. The CD comes with an 8-page booklet featuring liner notes by Gilles Loison who discusses the film and the score. The release is limited to 500 units.
- Music Box Records
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