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The Best Music in Film
Tomasz Stanko
(Jazz musician and composer. Wrote the music for Michal Rosa's Cisza)
- S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?
- "I've been the most enchanted with Ennio Morricone's music for Sergio Leone's film Once Upon a Time in America (1983). It evokes some indefinite longing impressions, a state of suspended nostalgia, a charm. I love this music. But there are many composers that I appreciate very much. Krzysztof Komeda whom - having worked with - I've know the best, was a great composer, he could "feel" a picture and cold rightly enrich it with his beautiful motives. I also like very much composers from the Hollywood school, such as Jerry Goldsmith, for his score for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) in particular."
- S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?
- "For me the most important is adding musical value to a motion picture's mood, effecting viewer's subconsciousness, and putting him/her in a certain state that facilitates intuitive perception of the picture's message. But there are many ways, by which music works, for example counterpointing, such as matching some brutal scenes with specifically lyrical music, etc. I appreciate less illustrative merits of film scores."
- S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?
- "Some pieces of music for Andrzej Trzos- Rastawiecki's Leprosy (originally entitled Trad, 1971) because of contrast between the music and the picture, and - for the same reason (lyrical jazz ballads) - to Filip Zylber's Farewell to Maria (1993) a love story set in the Warsaw Ghetto during the WWII."