SOUNDTRACK REVIEW : ‘Bridges’ a Picture-Perfect Accompaniment

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VARIOUS ARTISTS

“The Bridges of

Madison County”

Malpaso Records

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“Music,” says Clint Eastwood, “can either enhance a film or destroy it.” And if there’s a director around who has a better instinct for enhancing a film with music than Clint Eastwood, I’d like to hear some nominations. From “Honky Tonk Man” to “Every Which Way but Loose” and “Bronco Billy,” he has found ways to make music an intrinsic element in the furthering of the dramatic action.

In “Bird,” he deeply delineated the character of Charlie Parker via the use of the legendary jazz saxophonist’s own recorded solos. In other films, he has used relatively obscure music to create atmospheric settings. Roberta Flack’s reading of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in “Play Misty for Me,” for example, both enhanced the drama and propelled the song into a No. 1 hit record.

But Eastwood has never used music more effectively than he has in “The Bridges of Madison County.” Appropriately, perhaps, the jazz-tinged selections from the score are included in this first release from his new Malpaso record label.

The album’s--and the picture’s--most important music cues are provided by recordings by Dinah Washington and Johnny Hartman. Washington’s “I’ll Close My Eyes” and “Blue Gardenia” are classic crossover hits from the ‘50s. But Hartman, who died in 1983, has long been one of the unrecognized masters of romantic jazz ballad singing.

Eastwood uses Hartman’s gorgeous, honey-smooth renderings of “For All We Know” and “I See Your Face Before Me” to accompany the unfolding romance between the Eastwood and Meryl Streep characters in “Bridges.”

It wouldn’t work, of course, if the music wasn’t first-rate, and the Hartman and Washington tracks are superlative examples of jazz-oriented ballad singing. By choosing this kind of music--rather than the country tunes one might expect to hear in 1960s middle America--to establish a common ground between his two primary characters, Eastwood underscores both their uniqueness and the inevitability of their need to reach out to each other.

Although they are only briefly heard in the film, two tracks by Irene Kral (“It’s a Wonderful World” and “This Is Always”) are also included in the album. Like Hartman, Kral (who died in 1978) was a supremely gifted but tragically obscure singer who had a special gift for reaching into the heart of a song.

Barbara Lewis’ mid-’60s R&B; hit, “Baby I’m Yours,” and Eastwood’s gently evocative theme music, “Doe Eyes,” orchestrated by Lennie Niehaus, make up the balance of an album that offers encouraging evidence of Malpaso’s future promise as a producer of quality, jazz-oriented recordings.

* Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent).