BFI | Sight & Sound | The Best Music in Film

The Best Music in Film

(Composed the music for Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid, Peter Yates' Bullitt and many others)

S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?: "My favourite soundtrack is Alexander Nevsky (1938) with music by Sergei Prokofiev, because in it, he and the director, Sergei Eisenstein, elaborated and put in practice the concept of audio-visual counterpoint."
S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?: "The answer to this question is obvious. We should go back to the days of silent films and ask ourselves why they had a live orchestra in the theatres in order to help the images."
S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?: "I am very happy to have done the best I could on all the scores I have written. I am also very content in accepting the ones I have been assigned to compose music for. I never gave any thought about trying to compose music for films whose scores have been composed by my colleagues."