Laura

Keep one phrase from Main Title in mind and return to it through The Portrait. Does recognition make the music feel nearer, or does it introduce a different distance? David Raksin’s Laura offers that small experiment without requiring knowledge of the film’s revelations. A listener can begin by remembering a line and waiting for another encounter with it.

The film is from 1944. Kritzerland’s original-soundtrack presentation credits Raksin as composer and Alfred Newman as conductor. The linked Bacci digital edition carries a 2013 date and eighteen tracks in the same sequence as that label’s programme. Matching titles and order do not establish identical mastering across issuers. The date of the film and the dates attached to later editions describe different things.

Recognition as movement

A succession of short scene titles need not mean a succession of unrelated tunes. Notice how close a familiar line seems, and whether its surroundings alter your response. Move between Night and The Portrait, attending to sustained sound and the pauses that interrupt it. You do not have to reconstruct an image precisely to hear a change in musical distance.

Where the programme ends

End Title is track sixteen. The two remaining entries correspond to the test-theme material and the older suite identified as bonuses by Kritzerland. They should not be treated as the next two scenes in the film. Hear the main sequence first, then approach the additions as alternative groupings of familiar material. The distinction makes a long final track less puzzling.

A tune beyond the screen

The Boston Symphony’s account describes a 1945 hit after Johnny Mercer supplied lyrics. That is the reception of a song version, not an album-chart result for this soundtrack. Later jazz performances and vocal interpretations belong to another stage of the melody’s history. Its reputation need not decide your response: compare your memory of the opening with the feeling left by the end.