Michel Legrand - Music from the Film 'Lost Continent'

The great composer, conductor and pianist Michel Legrand died in Paris earlier today. Here is a small remembrance of him from early in his career - a 1957 EP of music from the film Lost Continent.

Legrand was only 25 when the film and record were released in the US in early 1957, but he already was a well-known artist here because of his best selling LP I Love Paris, which Columbia had quickly followed with Castles in Spain. The series soon encompassed visits to Rome, Vienna and Rio, and eventually a jazz version and a stereo remake of the French excursion.

Lost Continent was an Italian documentary about Southeast Asia that came out in 1955 with music by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, who scored a vast number of films during his career. The history of the soundtrack is unclear to me, but I do know that music from it was released in the US on M-G-M in 1957. There also was a French EP of Legrand's version. Both of these had far more, shall we say, exotic covers than the bland travelogue pic that fronts the Columbia EP. (Images are in the download.)

The young Legrand

The French critic Roland Barthes in fact complained that Lost Continent perpetuated a European sense of exoticism, while imposing Christian values onto the Buddhist traditions of Southeast Asia - or so Wikipedia tells us.

That exoticism comes through in Lavagnino's music and Legrand's arrangements, which, despite Barthes' protestations, are enjoyable period pieces.

This EP is a footnote to Legrand's remarkable career. I am sure I have a few dozen of his records in my collection alone, and I've always enjoyed his work, whether as composer, arranger or pianist. I had this EP transferred and ready to go a few years ago, but never posted it. It's too bad that Legrand's death was what impelled me into action.

The Lost Continent EP has not, to my knowledge, been reissued, although two cuts appeared on a Legrand compilation of movie music on a Columbia LP. The sound is excellent.