This Month's Thrift Store Vinyl Sharity

Claude Bolling, Borsalino (Paramount, 1970)

Here's the soundtrack from Jacques Deray's 1970 French gangster buddy movie, Borsalino.

According to Tana Hobart, of the All Movie Guide:

Based on a Eugene Saccomano novel entitled The Bandits of Marseilles, this movie was followed by a sequel entitled Borsalino and Co. This movie captures the mood of 1930 Marseilles beautifully with the use of ambience and music. Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo portray two gangsters who kill their way to the top.

I've never seen the picture, but from the lobby cards, there seems to be a quite a bit of violent mobster hi-jinx. It seems the sequel is even more violent.

Borsalino is actually a hat maker. I guess the mobster fedoras somehow connect to the title. Perhaps the world of Italian hat-making is incredibly violent: who knows?

The soundtrack is by Claude Bolling, the French composer who worked on several of Deray's films. It attempts to transport us to the 1930s by relying on a lot of honky-tonk piano. In general, it reminds me of Hamlisch's Scott Joplin score for The Sting (1973), although Borsalino predates it. Supposedly Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is an influence on Deray, but I don't really remember much about that film score (it featured some Flatt and Scruggs).

The album, with art, is available as two .zip files at rapidshare.com: side one and side two.