‘Murder Theme’ from Jess Franco’s ‘Diamants Pour L'Enfer’ - Daniel J. White
‘‘Yeah, life is shit, and we’re in it up to our necks, and anyone who thinks she’s free and happy is paddling around in it without knowing it.''
Indeed, the postcard town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the south of France is not the most obvious setting for this sordid little story, shot around September 1975, and the production history is a real mishmash of legal problems between the respective producers and right-holders in France, Italy and Switzerland, (maybe even including Franco’s very own ‘Manacoa Films.’) Given that just about every other aspect of the production was simply thrown together out of convenience, it is inevitable that most of the music heard in the finished film was sourced, specifically from Daniel J. White’s album, ‘Mood Music Selection N° 01 - Cocktail’ (released by Magnodis Music in the mid 1970s.) However, there is still some evidence of original programmatic material, written and recorded especially for this project.
The story tells of Shirley Field (Lina Romay) who is sent to a seaside penitentiary after shooting dead her fiancé (perhaps symbolically played by her soon to be divorced husband of real life, Ramon Ardid.) Ostensibly a fit of jealously over the man’s infidelity, this murder could also have had something to do with a fortune in diamonds he had recently stolen, and the new prisoner soon attracts unsavoury interests, from the regional governor at the top, right down to her fellow inmates.
In one particularly well-orchestrated scene, Shirley and one of her allies resolve to murder the resident stool-pigeon (Martine Stedile), after the lights go out in their billet - ‘’never run short of stoolies in the shithouse.’’ This is the case in point for White’s film-scoring, which begins with a gentle two part fugue on electric piano, as the two would-be assassins creep out from under their sheets and towards their quarry, now blissfully fast asleep. Electric organ, ARP String Ensemble, cello and xylophone also join in, but it is the long pedal point in the middle section which really gets the tension up as the girls close in and garrote their victim to death - her asphyxiation is painfully stretched out over a series of ten arpeggiated chords - Am11, FM7, Dm9, BbM15, CM, DM, D Aug., BM, EM, C# M. The musical climax is almost joyous, however horrific the images it accompanies on screen, and as the pair then cover the dead body and return to their beds like nothing happened, the fugue quietly recapitulates and brings this nasty little scene to its conclusion. The sound and visual aesthetic is not unlike the infamous slow motion sequence in Franco’s ‘Frauengefängnis’, shot the same year, accompanied by the same musical ensemble and most likely recorded in the same session by Daniel J. White.
Ultimately, it may be futile to defend a film like Jesús Franco’s ‘Diamants Pour L'Enfer’ as anything more than exploitation fodder, but within the mess, there is at least one sequence of great film-scoring from a composer who deserved much better.
I am just an amateur and do not own any of this.