MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer and songwriter Paul Misraki died in Paris on October 29, 1998, at the age of 90.

One of the most prolific figures in French popular music and cinema, Misraki enjoyed a career spanning more than six decades, writing hundreds of songs and scores for well over 100 films. Although best remembered in France for a succession of enormously popular songs, film-music enthusiasts know him for works including And God Created Woman, Les Cousins, Le Doulos and Jean-Luc Godard’s science-fiction classic Alphaville.

Paul Misrachi was born in Constantinople, then part of the Ottoman Empire, on January 28, 1908, into a Jewish family of Italian ancestry. He spent part of his childhood in Bucharest before the family settled in Paris, where he received a classical musical education and developed an enthusiasm for jazz and popular song. His professional breakthrough came when he joined Ray Ventura’s celebrated orchestra, Les Collégiens, initially as a pianist and arranger and soon as one of its principal songwriters.

During the 1930s Misraki became one of France’s most successful popular composers. His songs included “Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise,” “Qu’est-ce qu’on attend pour être heureux?” and “Ça vaut mieux que d’attraper la scarlatine,” witty and immediately memorable pieces that became closely associated with Ventura and the carefree musical culture of pre-war France. He also began composing for films, an activity which eventually became a major part of his career.

Following the German occupation of France in 1940, Misraki fled the country because of his Jewish background. He spent the war years travelling through South America and the United States, continuing to compose and perform before returning to France after liberation. His experiences during this period also deepened a lifelong interest in religion, philosophy and mysticism, subjects about which he later published several books.

Misraki became particularly prolific in cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. His most internationally famous early assignment was Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman (1956), starring Brigitte Bardot. The score combined jazz, Latin rhythms and sensual orchestral writing, helping establish the relaxed, provocative atmosphere that made the film an international sensation.

He subsequently worked with a wide variety of leading French filmmakers. For Claude Chabrol he scored Les Cousins (1959), one of the important early films of the French New Wave, while Jean-Pierre Melville employed him on the crime drama Le Doulos (1962). Misraki’s ability to move between elegant melody, jazz and darker dramatic writing made him particularly adaptable during a period when French cinema itself was undergoing enormous stylistic change.

His most unusual film score was undoubtedly Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965). Godard’s strange mixture of film noir and dystopian science fiction required music that could simultaneously suggest hard-boiled detective cinema and an oppressive futuristic world. Misraki responded with forceful brass, ominous orchestral gestures and deliberately exaggerated noir conventions, providing an important part of the film’s peculiar atmosphere.

Other film credits encompassed comedy, romance, crime and adventure, and Misraki continued writing for cinema and television long after his greatest period of popular-song success. Despite the modernist reputation of directors such as Godard and Chabrol, Misraki remained fundamentally a melodist, bringing the craftsmanship of the French chanson tradition into his screen music.