Choderlos de Laclos didn’t take his work lightly. It was a time when basically only the aristocracy, the clergy, and emerging bourgeoisie was literate, the mass of proletarian and farming classes being unschooled. Les Liaisons Dangereuses is cryptically subtitled A Collection of Letters from One Social Class for the Instruction of Others. At the same time he was adroit in military tactics and even invented a modern artillery shell. The career of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was primarily that of a military officer, a man who wrote opera and creative works to spare himself of the boredom of soldiery. In 1782, France was in prelude mode to its great revolution, a social structure founded upon a degenerating aristocracy and ripe for the collapse of a rotting monarchy. They lay dormant for 55 years, preserved from the gnawing criticism of mice and that universal solvent, H 2O, until found among Marcel Romano’s archives in 2014. They had never been considered for release on vinyl and were publicly forgotten except for their presence on Vadim’s movie. It is not too much to suggest that Monk transformed what would have been an edgy but relatively standard narrative film into avant-garde cinema.”Īnd then the Monk tapes simply disappeared. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk, Life and Times of an American Original, states in the liner notes to this CD/vinyl release, “ and his band delivered extraordinary music that challenged Vadim and Romano’s conception of how a soundtrack functions in film. Monk’s music is present on approximately 30 minutes of the 111 minute-long film, and several of the most tender moments are scored with solo piano. While Kael missed the point when she qualified Monk’s music as “background,” she was on the money when she commented about Blakey’s dubbed music in a bacchanal club scene: “Vadim also uses jazz and Negroes and sex all mixed together in a cheap and sensational way that was probably exotic for the French in the 50s.” It further didn’t hurt that contemporary reviews discussed the jazz soundtrack. It didn’t hurt that the protagonists were played by heart-throb Gérard Philipe, and the stunning Jeanne Moreau “at her ravaged best” according to ace American film critic Pauline Kael. With scandal-generating themes from a historic novel and publicity generated from a conservative reaction, Les Liaisons Dangereuses went on to break French film box office records.
Even the American release was delayed over censorship issues in an unsuccessful curve-ball, Duke Jordan attempted to stop the film because his music was not properly credited. The High Priests of the French literary establishment claimed that the film “desecrated a classic.” Advocat François Mitterrand, who went onto become the president of France, and the Société negotiated a ridiculous compromise: 1959 was added to the French title and 1960 to the American release, thus ending the blasphemy. The September debut screening, only six weeks after Romano brought the soundtracks to France, was delayed for a few hours and the film actually seized as the result of a lawsuit by France’s Société des Gens de Lettres. Initially the French government refused permits for export on the grounds that it portrayed contemporary France in an unfavorable light. Vadim’s film adaptation was equally sensational due to its perceived prurient content.
Yet it was also wildly popular, with twenty re-imprints within the first year.
The novel was notorious in its time, the scholarship indicating that it was never displayed openly in the homes of its readers.
The movie was an adaption of the four-volume 1782 epistolary novel by soldier and writer Pierre Choderlos de Laclos describing the elaborate social games of two libertines engaging in sexual seductions that purposefully result in the ruination of the reputations of pure, innocent, and virtuous young people, and ultimately the revenge of fate on the protagonists. He also carried a second set of tapes recorded by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers playing music composed by Duke Jordan.
The key man for the soundtrack’s realization, Marcel Romano, made it back to Paris with Monk’s tapes in time for a July 31 editing deadline. There he taped eight compositions for the soundtrack of the Roger Vadim film Les Liaisons Dangereuses. On the evening of Monday July 27, 1959, Thelonious Sphere Monk took his working quartet (Charlie Rouse, Sam Jones, Art Taylor) and guest saxophonist Barney Wilen into the Nola Penthouse Sound Studios at 111 W.