The High Notes

After Audrey Hepburn saw the finished Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Henry Mancini’s score and her rendition of “Moon River,” she wrote him a mash note: “You are the hippest of cats — and the most sensitive of composers!” Apparently so, for Mancini took home Academy Awards that year for best score and best song. The latest in a series of salutes to the movies’ musical greats, Legendary Composer: Henry Mancini spotlights the man who introduced jazz, pop, and melody into film soundtracks. You know his work even if you don’t recognize the name; Mancini’s immortal theme for The Pink Panther is reprised in A Shot in the Dark, playing today with Breakfast. Tomorrow’s double bill showcases Mancini’s gift for suspense with the S.F.–filmed Experiment in Terror, as well as his light touch in another Hepburn vehicle, Charade. The miniretrospective also includes Orson Welles’ delirious Touch of Evil paired with the taut Wait Until Dark, starring a spooked Hepburn, and Blake Edwards’ Days of Wine and Roses(another Mancini Oscar-winner for best song) with Two for the Road. Say, is this a tribute to Mancini or Hepburn? Don’t sweat it, Jack — it’s a ’60s thing.
Jan. 2-8, 2009