Yesterday we listenend to excerpts of Max Steiner’s score for ‘The Big Sleep’. I’m rather enjoying divorcing these rich orchestral works from the pictures they were designed to play under so today I’m presenting Miklos Rozsa’s score for ‘Double Indemnity’ (1944). It’s impossible not to visualize the opening shot of MacMurray on crutches walking back to camera over which the title credits play while listening to Rosza’s deeply sinister and melancholic theme. Although yesterday’s score was pulled from the soundtrack from the actual movie whoever there wasn’t dialogue playing over it, this appears to be a much more conducted ‘suite’ of Rosza’s themes. Did it exist as a seperate element in the Paramount vaults and find its way out after years of being forgotten? It’s not a new version as the orchestra is conducted by Irwin Talbot, one of the primo movie studio orchestra conductors of the era. While I appreciate the YouTuber who posted this wonderful find’s good work, I do wish they would have provided a little more background as to the, exact source  of what we’re listening to. Think of this, as your listening, as being written alone in the quiet of Rozsa’s studio before being placed against picture and imagine the thrill of seeing the soundtrack meld with the ‘dry’ dialogue tracks for the first time. As a filmmaker I know the soaring feeling of watching footage I shot suddenly being elevated into another stratosphere (or sometimes simply being saved) when the score is put behind it.