Sound Recordings & Music
Who Has Seen the Wind (1977-78)
French Cinema and Music
(1978)
Musical Score on piano recreated for Ghosts Before Breakfast (2 takes) - pianist, Bill Livant
The Deverell Recordings
1984-85 (Edited)
The original recordings, now part of the University of Regina Archives & Special Collections, were produced by Dr. Rita Shelton Deverell in a series of in-depth interviews she conducted with Jean Oser beginning in the summer of 1984 and completed a year and a half later, at the end of 1985. Digital copies of the audio cassettes were made by Brian Stockton; and the edited versions were produced by myself, Nora G. Gardner, with Dr. Deverell's permission.
Notes on the multiplicity of Mephistos:
The character of Mephisto (Mephistopheles in the Faust legend) features strongly in German folklore from the early part of the 16th Century on, so it is not surprising that there should be paintings, plays, and even an early film in 1930.
In this recording, however, Jean is not only referring to the Klaus Mann novel of 1936 about Gustaf Gründgens, entitled Mephisto, but also to the 1981 film directed by István Szabó, which was an adaptation of the Klaus Mann novel to film, Mephisto. This film won an Academy Award in 1982.
The mentions of these "Mephistos" in the recording on the left are used by Jean in order to conjure up the atmosphere of the times as well as to indicate the company his late wife Ellen kept when he first met her....