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I like your list. Just kidding - I LOVE your list.
Thanks Fun Guy. I like all the scores on your list too, with the exception of Children of Dune, which I have never heard before. Is that the Brian Tyler score to the TV movie?
It was actually hard to narrow my list down to 10 - Coming up with a top 30 or 40 would be easy I think, but for the ultimate top 10 I just closed my eyes and pictured the scores I can listen to endlessly without getting sick of, and are good all the way through.
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Thanks to all for participating. All great selections. I've honestly thought about each and every one and can hear the music in my head for each one except for ONE!
To John: When and where? I mean come on man!....I'm stunned to see The Old Mill on any list about anything. I haven't even heard ABOUT that film since I was on that little ride on Disneyland. You know the one on the boat that goes into the whale's mouth...I think they call it the storybook ride or something! How many decades ago ...I don't know. Please tell us more or anything you can about that one. I thought it was completely lost, destroyed whatever.
Also, love your other choices. For North I was tossing up between Cleopatra and Spartacus. I keep going back and forth. But I think Cleopatra all in all is my choice as well (as far as the music's contribution)...I mean could anyone even imagine that movie without it??
To Dan: I'm right with you on The Blue Lagoon. What do we do with these films where the score is just way way so much more about what the film is about than anything else happening?
THE OLD MILL (1937) was an animated short released as one of the series of Disney's SILLY SYMPHONIES. Specifically, it was created to experiment with the newly invented Multiplane Camera, whereby different layers of a given shot from the film were filmed on different levels, with the camera looking down on them, so that changes on each level could be managed between individual shots. That same year, in fact, the Academy voted Disney a special Oscar for the invention of this device, which greatly increased the sense of depth in the scene.
For this short, Leigh Harline wrote a three-part score, which is essentially a mini-symphony, consisting of three movements with a coda: Evening, Frogs, Storm, and the finale. The music is breathtaking, and owning the film is virtually owning the soundtrack, as it has but few sound effects. Saw this first in black&white on our TV set, on the old MICKEY MOUSE CLUB, but managed to catch it in a theatre at, among other places, the Disney retrospective, at the Whitney Museum, back in the summer of 1982. On a big screen, the images have amazing depth, which they don't nearly have on a small screen. And the score is wonderful, one of those lovely themes that just repeats in my head again and again.
THE OLD MILL has been released on video; it's in the VOL. I of the Disney SILLY SYMPHONIES on DVD. (These were wonderful cartoons, with glorious scores, and I'd love to see a lot of them re-recorded, particularly THE OLD MILL.)
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Thanks guys,
Some great selections, more I need to consider. It seems one compiling such a list could easily list one hundred or so truly top fabulous scores...a few mentioned I haven't seen (or heard) so I will try to check them out.
To John,
Thanks so much for the info on The Old Mill. I will look into the S.S. Disney set immediately. Every time I see Leigh Harline's name on a movie it turns out to be a fabulous score...(particularly love his Man of the West.)
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The Empire Strikes Back
E.T.
Star Trek II
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Conan the Barbarian
Superman
Jaws
Clash of the Titans
Poltergeist
The Fog
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1. DRESSED TO KILL - Pino Donaggio
2. NORTH BY NORTHWEST - Bernard Herrmann
3. HAWAII - Elmer Bernstein
4. THE OMEN - Jerry Goldsmith
5. THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS - Jerry Goldsmith
6. HALLOWEEN - John Carpenter
7. THE CARDINAL - Jerome Moross (it actually needs MORE music)
8. THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD - Bernard Herrmann
9. AIRPORT - Alfred Newman
10. THE SIXTH SENSE - James Newton Howard
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tO ARTHUR- Can I list 10 more, because there are so many great ones from all eras. The sentiment that is said often on this board is so true, tomorrow I will have another top 10. By the way I notice how many on this board have listed PSYCHO, VERTIGO, KING KONG ETC, Since I was one of the first to list I am pleasantly surprise to see how many others list these 3 as some of their favorites.
The more the merrier, thanks Dan.
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Our top 10? Impossible! Here are two groups of 10, and I could easily include a 3rd and 4th and 5th and still feel like I've neglected some great scores. And definitely in no special order:
(1) A Single Man (Abel Korzeniowski)
(2) Twilight (Carter Burwell)
(3) Shakespeare In Love (Stephen Warbeck)
(4) Road To Perdition (Thomas Newman)
(5) To Kill A Mockingbird (Elmer Bernstein)
(6) King Rat (John Barry)
(7) Meet Joe Black (Thomas Newman)
(8) Somewhere In Time (John Barry)
(9) Dragonheart (Randy Edelman)
(10) Out Of Africa (John Barry)
and a second 10:
(1) An Unmarried Woman (Bill Conti)
(2) Dances With Wolves (John Barry)
(3) Incognito (John Ottman)
(4) Gettysburg (Randy Edelman)
(5) Rudy (Jerry Goldsmith)
(6) Ryan's Daughter (Maurice Jarre)
(7) The Tamarind Seed (John Barry)
(8) The Prince Of Tides (James Newton Howard)
(9) The Way We Were (Marvin Hamlisch)
(10) In Bruges (Carter Burwell)
Someone here included the wonderful Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) with its wondrous music by Michel Legrand, and I've adored it since I first saw that magical movie in the mid 60s, but because it is entirely sung, didn't include it here. I keep coming across great scores listed by others in this posting that I wished I had included myself, such as Miklós Rózsa's Ben-Hur and James Horner's Legends Of The Fall. And what about Leonard Bernstein's On The Waterfront and Paul Seiko Chihara's Noble House and John Scott's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan and Vangelis' Chariots of Fire, and Elmer Bernstein's The Magnificent Seven and Dave Grusin's Heaven Can Wait and Michael Small's Love And Pain And The Whole Damn Thing and Bill Conti's The Big Blue ... and ... and ... and .... There is simply a wealth of fantastic soundtrack music out there and, like asking a doting parent to choose a favorite child, impossible for most of us to pick one over another - or a favorite 10! That most of us have easy access to so much of this great music is simply staggering.
9-29-13: A postscript to the above. A couple of pages forward, I was reviewing what Arthur Grant asked when he first started this thread, which includes the following:
Re: "I am preparing an article for my website and would like to hear what readers think are their top film scores for what they contributed to the films they were composed for rather than for the more subjective listening experience on their own."
And I realized that I hadn't given that any concern when I made up the above lists, nor do I believe that many others here gave it much thought either. I looked at my 2 lists of 10, and, going through them one by one, decided that most of them, besides being gorgeous music, worked quite nicely with their films, which I had seen repeatedly. For example, Carter Burwell's score for "In Bruges" has some lyrical, piano-led cues that are perfect for the beautiful images of Bruges in Belgium. But he also fashioned some explosive cues that are almost symphonic in their accompaniment to the gun fights between Ralph Fiennes and Colin Farrell, and, indeed, one of the things that drew me to both "In Bruges," the movie and the soundtrack, was a cue called "Shootout Part 2" that just exploded out of my speakers, both shaking and exciting me. Plus the wistful and sometimes sad moments, such as "Walking Bruges," that remind me a little of Chopin. I could easily examine the cues from the rest of the movies and probably find similar ways in which the music was such an integral part of the images and action on screen.
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Posted: |
Sep 28, 2013 - 9:37 AM
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By: |
ToneRow
(Member)
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...for what they contributed to the films they were composed for rather than for the more subjective listening experience on their own.
Here's some of my favorite films (most of them without corresponding soundtrack albums) whose music contributes so much atmosphere during the viewing experience that I'm unable to imagine these films having any different music.
1. ONIBABA; music by Hikaru Hayashi. Thunderous percussion, yelps from the brass, vocalizations from the musicians, and magnetic tape recordings of pigeons cooing altered & edited during playback. There's no other score quite like this one & ONIBABA wouldn't be the same without it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMIeGZIdpR0&feature=player_detailpage
2. WOMAN IN THE DUNES; music by Toru Takemitsu. The most iconic film collaboration of Hiroshi Teshigahara & Takemitsu is also a very unique & outstanding score (featuring microtonal shifts in the strings and a variety of musical/natural sounds altered by tape editing and electronics).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ceienj-4QfQ&feature=player_detailpage
3. LES BICHES; music by Pierre Jansen. Mesmerizing themes rendered via chamber-music-type variations. Can serve as a great introduction into the cinema of Claude Chabrol.
For more than 40 years, the rare Cinevox LP was the only soundtrack until 2012 when Saimel released the entire score on CD.
4. TAM LIN; music by Stanley Myers. Lyrical music for a film set in Scotland.
This would likely be my favorite Stanley Myers soundtrack - that is if TAM LIN's music will ever surface onto an album. (sample Myers' work at 4 min 27 seconds into the YouTube clip below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bc_9BJHH0E&feature=player_detailpage
5. PRESSURE POINT; music by Ernest Gold. Sounds initially like it could come from one of Van Cleave's TWILIGHT ZONE scores - but Gold's PRESSURE POINT has so much more!
Contains 1920s speakeasy jazz, Nazi marches, & queasy cello/double-bass for a slab of raw liver!
6. THE FOX; music by Lalo Schifrin. Another late-'60s Lesbian film (not unlike Les Biches from above). My favorite Schifrin film music. Viewing the film is the only way to hear how seductive it is - both the 1967 LP and the 1999 Aleph CD are re-recordings which don't quite capture the effect of the actual film tracks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RBIt9HWCvGs
7. KNIFE IN THE WATER; music by Krzysztof Komeda. Roman Polanski's first feature film; it's not the first time Polanski & Komeda worked together, though, but it's my favorite of their collaborations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f1DpoYLBTc&feature=player_detailpage
8. POCIAG aka NIGHT TRAIN; music by Andrzej Trzaskowski. A mono-thematic jazz score, but what a score!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfAIvoHMeF4&feature=player_detailpage
9. THE HAUNTING; music by Humphrey Searle (original 1963 version). Superlative specimen of British horror scoring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhSpP_IZ0NY&feature=player_detailpage
10. THE MEPHISTO WALTZ; by Jerry Goldsmith.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RgGmYgs5WZQ
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ToneRow: A very entertaining posting, and I'm looking forward to others! I went to find out where you were from, expecting it to be Nagasaki or Hiroshima, and surprised to find Philadelphia!
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Posted: |
Sep 28, 2013 - 12:44 PM
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By: |
ToneRow
(Member)
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ToneRow: A very entertaining posting, and I'm looking forward to others! I went to find out where you were from, expecting it to be Nagasaki or Hiroshima, and surprised to find Philadelphia!
Hi RH.
Yes, I've always lived in Phila. My interests, though, lead me towards international cinema.
I'm particularly fond of the late 1950s, the entire 1960s, & the early 1970s (and black & white photography). Not only Japanese films, but Swedish, French, British, Italian, Hungarian, Czech ... and ... Polish. (my lineage is half Polish and half Ukranian).
If you've been intrigued by my selections, then wait for my additions above containing jazz from 50-year old Polish movies. 
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