Dollar Bin Delights: André Hossein's Les Yeux Cernés OST EP

André Hossein's slinky, tension-filled themes set the mood for his actor/director son Robert's 1964 French noir Les Yeux Cernés. A crime jazz gem!

French filmmaker Robert Hossein (1927-2020) – probably best known today for directing the 1982 film adaptation of Les Misérables – launched his film career as an actor in the role of the drug-addicted thug Rémy Grutter in Jules Dassin's classic 1955 heist film Rififi, a key inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. 

Hossein would go on to act in more than 100 more films (often playing morally bankrupt dregs of society, the drifters, ex-cons, thieves, sociopaths, etc), and would typically redirect the money he made from his screen roles into his own independent productions, starting with Les salauds vont en enfer (The Wicked Go to Hell).

Like many of the auteur's own films, he co-wrote the screenplay and directed it while also acting in it but had the good sense to leave the soundtrack to his pianist/composer father André Hossein. Although the elder Hossein was busy with his own symphonic orchestrations and ballets (noted for his seamless way of weaving the familiar melodies of his Persian heritage into Western classical structures), he always found time to score his son's features. 

No matter what genre his son chose to explore – gangster melodrama, spy thriller, true crime bio pic. period piece, war movie or a straight-up spaghetti western (listen to Scott Walker croon the dust-blown theme Robert Hossein's "Une Corde, Un Colt" right here) – André was down for whatever. A stretch for some no doubt but Hossein Sr. proved to be just as adept at creating appropriately slinky, tension-ratcheting cues for 1964's Les Yeux Cernés (Marked Eyes) as he was knocking out a hip-shaking hully gully number that same year for the crime drama La Mort D'un Tueur (Death of a Killer) – the height of the hully gully craze in French cinema. 

In fact, some sharp archival operation should put pair up the two overlooked soundtracks for one sweet single LP reissue. Check out Andre Hossein's work on Les Yeux Cernés followed by the film below.