Unavailable for over thirty years, Jerry Goldsmith’s score for George Cukor’s 1969 film Justine, titled after book one of the four Lawrence Durrell novels known jointly as The Alexandria Quartet, is available once more, and is now more complete than ever. In revisiting Justine we discover a score that is extremely beautiful, exotic and exceptionally flavourful. Goldsmith's mystical melodies were spiced with recorder, auto harp and sitar and he succeeded well in producing an intoxicating work that stands proudly as a highly unique and individual opus among his other truly extraordinary and more famous work of the time.

Justine is a complicated tale of love and politics. The film is told in flashback, through the eyes of L.G. Darley (Michael York), a schoolmaster from Ireland and would-be writer who is trying to come to terms with, and better understand, his recently ended love affair with Justine Hosnani (Anouk Aimée). Justine, a Jewess, is married to Nessim, a Christian millionaire and one of the country's wealthiest bankers. Together, they are involved in a plot to send arms to Palestine to aid the Jews, thereby helping the Christian Arabs who live in fear of Moslem wrath. With her husband's consent, the hypnotically beautiful Justine becomes involved in relationships with many men, both aiding and complicating the political web which she and her husband have spun.

As was not uncommon at the time, the release of a soundtrack album brought about an entirely new recording of the music. For the new recording, the composer relocated to London and even composed a couple of new pieces which would be exclusive to the album. Other than this, the rethinking of the score for LP presentation consisted largely of resequencing the music and retitling some of the film’s cues.

But along with the album recording, this CD presents, for the first time anywhere, the original soundtrack recording from the film. The ultimate and last word on Jerry Goldsmith’s Justine is now available as a very special deluxe edition from the Varèse Sarabande CD Club.