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The Best Music in Film

Bruce La Bruce

A Case for the Closet, Skin Gang)

S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?

"I have so many favourite movie soundtracks it's difficult to narrow it down to one, or even to a single composer. At the top I would have to include George Duning's seasonal music for Bell Book and Candle (1958), Jerry Goldsmith's church bell-infused suite for The Trouble With Angels, Bernard Herrmann's groundbreaking Psycho (1960) soundtrack, John Barry's spooky music for Boom! (1968), David Shire's simple piano compositions for The Conversation (1974), Dominic Frontière's wild soundtrack for Hammersmith is Out (1972), Neal Hefti's catchy, kitschy work on The Odd Couple (1967), Harlow (1965), and Sex and the Single Girl (1964), Marvin Hamlisch's quirky soundtrack music for The April Fools (1962), John Carpenter's own compositions for Halloween (1978), etc., etc., the list goes on. I like movie music that interprets the mood or tone of a movie but which also stands on its own as a musical composition. I collect vinyl soundtracks, so I'm in the habit of playing my favourite albums over and over again until the neighbours complain. I've also been known to steal obscure soundtrack music for my low-budget movies."

S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?

"Music for movies can serve to reinforce the tone of a scene, or it can work contrapuntally and at apparent odds with the visuals. Kubrick was always the master at using odd or unexpected music which might not at first seem to support the scene, as when he used Singin' in the Rain to accompany a brutal beating in A Clockwork Orange (1971). His infamous use of classical music in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was famous for giving hippies who dropped acid to watch the movie in the sixties a bad trip because, according to them, the music didn't match the visuals. Obviously Kubrick was doing something right."

S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?

"In my new movie, The Raspberry Reich (2004), I steal an obscure piece of music from a sixties Italian soundtrack to accompany a montage of Gudrun, the leader of a group of would-be terrorists, as she walks around the streets of Berlin, meets her fiancé, buys a gun, and reads the Communist Manifesto in a cemetery. The music gives a retro-romantic feel to her character while also establishing the theme of the glamourization of terrorism."