One more post while I'm ever eager to discuss music in film. Jean-Luc Godard, for many of his films, plays with all of the examples of soundtracks I listed above to create masterful, dramatic, and comic use of sound.

There is a scene in the brilliant "Pierrot Le Fou" that always has me almost on the floor laughing. Throughout the scene where Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo are getting ready to steal a car at a tire change place, a beautifully intense cue from the score violently bursts in and out, and while the music is playing, my heart is beating fast with the sheer power of image/music, but when Godard decides to spontaneously fade it out and then in again, and then out, and then in, I just break into tears laughing, but in the meantime also marveling at the brilliance of comic/dramatic execution. "A Woman is a Woman" also does similar things. I can't see how anyone else could pull it off, but he does it perfectly (perhaps to show exactly how much impact music has on a film, and then striping it to see what the absence is like, then going back and forth). Godard is also known to have beautiful underscore in his films, as well as total and utter absence of music (and sometimes dialogue!). Ah, Godard...one could talk weeks and weeks about his technique and body of work without exhausting a thing...there's so much there.

Dylan

John Lurie's score for Stranger Than Paradise: sad and beautiful. It makes the film seem very distant and eerie. Its quite catchy too! Rings in my ears all the time.

The score for Les Carabiniers is interesting- I do not want to promote it if it was "real" war music used by some dictator, but if it is an original score for the film, I love it.

Wow, I started this thread only 23 hours ago, and BOOM! Guess this one was necessary. Glad you guys are enjoying it.

And Dylan, you're cut off for a page or two. Hee hee.....

What about Nitszche's "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" or the eerie hums of Rosemary's Baby?

Axel.

If you dig the theme from Rosemary's Baby, you should check out the Fantomas album, Director's Cut which is fronted by former Faith No More/Mr. Bungle mad musical genius Mike Patton. It's an album entirely of movie theme covers but done in the Fantomas' trademark style: avant garde speed metal. Besides Rosemary's Baby they also do covers of themes from The Godfather (which truly has to be heard to be believed), Spider Baby, Charade, Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me and Cape Fear.

Oh my God Fletch, so I'm not the only person who listens to Fantomas? I picked up Director's Cut a few years ago and it blew my mind. Their rendition of the Godfather theme is awesome!

I had the pleasure of seeing them perform live at the Knitting Factory in NYC and their version of The Godfather theme in a live setting gave me goosebumps.

Interestingly, their next album, Delirium Cordia sounds very much like a soundtrack waiting for a movie.

Yes, Delirium Cordia is atmospheric, to say the least.

Somebody posted a link on the forum before to an Alan Splet CD collection that was selling for over $200. Anybody know anything about this? It seemed like a ridiculous price for a 3-CD set. Unless they're some kind of special CDs or in nice packaging, this is price gouging in the extreme.

Any details greatly appreciated.

What about the music for Requiem For A Dream? Imagine listening to the soundtrack while driving in the middle of nowhere. The music still sticks to me since watching the film some years ago.

Michael, you don't know what piece of music that is, do you? I've wondered ever since I saw the film.

Leonard Bernstein for On the Waterfront, Morricone for Before the Revolution. Peter Gabriel's score for Last Temptation of Christ would be up there for me. And, more recently, Minghella uses music fantastically in his movies, particularly in Ripley and Cold Mountain. And any film by Cameron Crowe.

Masaru Sato's score for Yojimbo -- that opening march sets the tone perfectly, and the music throughout conjures up exactly the right type of sly humor to accompany the action on the screen. The sound of the harpsichord is somehow suits the sight of the wind-swept village street quite well, too. (And then there's that great story in Richie's Kurosawa book, where he quotes Kurosawa as saying that he had seen a documentary about bull-dozers, and reasoned that since, in the movie, Mifune "was just like a bull-dozer...he ought to have bull-dozer like music. I told Sato and he sighed and came back with it.")

What do you mean?

I was listening to the Suspiria soundtrack by Goblin today, I forgot how creepy it is! Easily the best horror soundtrack, and it comes with the 3-disc dvd!

Sorry. I asked that question half-assed. Do you know what piece of music plays at the end of Requiem For A Dream - during the scene at the end when Sara is in Bellevue, Jared Leto's in the hospital, etc. The really sad, bittersweet number. Forgive me if I'm sounding vague. I know it played in the Two Towers teaser a few years back, too.

BC, that's part of the original score by Clint Mansel. In the film, it's performed with synths and the Kronos Quartet. For the Two Towers trailer, I was told that it was re-recorded with an orchestra.

Dylan

Hey Dylan! Now that we are all absolutely past the "two only" limit, what about the Beethoven Razumovsky Quartet Op. 59 No.1 first movement for all the key Macha Meril scenes in Godard's UNE FEMME MARIEE. This was the point at which, for me, Godard's tendency to classicism in the sixties movies gained full expression - and it parrallels the scene of Karina watching PASSION DE JEANNE D'ARC in VIVRE SA VIE. (So long since I have seen UNE FEMME MARIEE but I remember a series of mini-tracking shots at Orly airport, some running past verbal gags like "Pas Sage" for passage while this music played splendidly. (Should add have never seen it with English subs, first and only time saw it in Madird in 1968 with Spanish subs whcih I couldn't read - a further demonstration of the centrality of Image over subtitles, etc...)

The SUSPIRIA-soundtrack by GOBLIN is absolutely amazing!

Could you imagine the world of cinema without the work and artistry of Bernard Herrmann? Far too many to mention, but his score to The Ghost and Mrs Muir will keep a lonely heart warm until eternity takes over. Wonderous, hauntingly beautiful music, that Hollywood had the good grace to set to images of Gene Tierney walking along wintery coastlines.

(In only a few days I'll be catching the Kronos Quartet perform some of Herrmann's pieces, along with works by Terry Riley, Sigur Ros and Steve Reich - let the mind's eye flow!)

Speaking of B Hermann, was watching Vertigo last night--what a powerful score. Brilliant.

Another fun soundtrack is for Black Cat White Cat. PITBULL!!!...terrier.

Just remember it....! Hillarious! We used to say that line over and over again me and my brothers after we rented that on a whim! Brought back fun memories!

No need for that.

Thanks to Dylan for the answers. I remember that piece of music...doesn't that start when Sarah walks in the room to meet her friends at the hospital? I checked the CD on Amazon.com and there are two different versions...one of them is remixed.

Add me to the fan list. I'm trying to think of the modern horror films with amazing music. The Shining and In A Glass Cage come to my mind. The music sounds like demon breathing.

Goblin's music for Dawn of the Dead is pretty good, I wouldn't say it's a great score however. I guess some obvious horror soundtracks would include The Exorcist and Psycho too.

My favorite film soundtrack is perhaps a silly one:

Casino Royale by Burt Bacharach.

I think it's the greatest film score ever done. So zany and over-the-top and imaginative. Really wacky. Joyfully wacky.

Yes, it's silly. I know.
It doesn't help that the film is not good. Oh, well.
(Okay, perhaps it's not the greatest film score ever done, just my guilty pleasure favorite maybe.)

Any other lovers of this score out there?