Focus Features' Vanity Fair, the new film version of the classic novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, unites one of America's most popular stars, Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, Sweet Home Alabama) with one of the world's most acclaimed directors, Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Salaam Bombay!). Together they bring one of the greatest female characters ever created, Rebecca (Becky) Sharp, to life on to the big screen. The soundtrack was composed by Mychael Danna (Monsoon Wedding, Girl, Interrupted) featuring Scandinavian songstress Sissel, who lends her soaring vocals to the standout track "She Walks In Beauty." The original motion picture soundtrack was released in the USA on Decca/UMG Soundtracks 31. August 2004, and the film opened in USA theaters nationwide the following day, 1. September 2004.
A favorite since her lilting vocals enhanced James Horner's Academy Award®-winning score to the all-time blockbuster Titanic in 1997, Sissel will once again win hearts with her performance of "She Walks In Beauty" (heard as the end title song in Vanity Fair). The piece was composed and produced by Danna - working from a poem by Lord George Gordon Byron. Sissel comments, "It's one of the most enjoyable recordings I've been part of. I saw some scenes from the movie and immediately fell in love with it. I was played a demo of the song and one hour later I had recorded the song - the whole process from start to finish only took two hours. It was an amazing experience!"
Among the other vocal tracks on the soundtrack are "El Salam," performed by Hakim; "Gori Re/O Fair One," performed by Shankar Mahadevan and Richa Sharma; and "Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal" and "Over The Mountains/The Great Adventurer," performed by Custer LaRue and produced by Danna. The soundtrack harmonies lend themselves perfectly to this sumptuous film. Danna has composed a relaxing yet enthralling mix of timeless rhythms, lush orchestral strings, and memorable melodies.
Mychael Danna previously collaborated with Mira Nair as the composer of the scores for Monsoon Wedding and Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love. He is recognized as one of the pioneers of combining non-Western sound sources with orchestral and electronic minimalism in music for films, which include Ang Lee's The Ice Storm and Ride with the Devil, John Greyson's Lilies, Gillies Mackinnon's Regeneration, Joel Schumacher's 8MM, James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted, Scott Hicks' Hearts in Atlantis, Denzel Washington's Antwone Fisher, Jim Simpson's The Guys, and Billy Ray's Shattered Glass. Danna has enjoyed a long artistic collaboration with filmmaker Atom Egoyan, scoring seven features, most recently Ararat. Those scores have garnered him several Canadian film awards. He served for five years as composer-in-residence at the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto. Prior to that, he completed an undergraduate degree in music composition at the University of Toronto, where he was awarded the Glenn Gould Composition Scholarship.
Vanity Fair introduces a new audience to the beautiful, funny, passionate, and calculating Becky (played by Witherspoon). The daughter of a starving English artist and a French chorus girl, Becky is orphaned at a young age. Even as a child, she yearns for a more glamorous life than her birthright promises. As she leaves Miss Pinkerton's Academy at Chiswick, Becky resolves to conquer English society by any means possible. She deploys all of her wit, guile, and sexuality as she makes her way up into high society during the first quarter of the 19th century.
