Primary navigation
The Best Music in Film
Pawel Pawlikowski
(Last Resort)
- S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?
- "In the usual industrially made movie, music tends to be used like a sauce on an otherwise stale dish; its main purpose is to cover up the lack of emotion or form. I keep hearing that good film music is music you don't notice. I couldn't disagree more. Films with personality tend to feature music with personality. Nino Rota's circular, obsessively mutating melodies in Amarcord (1973) and 8 1⁄2 (1963) or Krzysztof Komeda's tunes in Cul-de-Sac (1966) and Rosemary's Baby 1968); or the mock ominous chords in Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965)- are all very much noticeable and present. They are like additional characters in their films."
- S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?
- "In some films music manages to lift the world on the screen to a mythic or dream-like level. The instances that come to mind are Days of Heaven, 1978 (Ennio Morricone), The Time of the Gypsies,1989 (Goran Bregovic), Taxi Driver, 1976 (Bernard Herrmann) or The Mirror, 1974 (J.S. Bach). But then, maybe the reason the music works so well in these films is because their directors had real poetic vision in the first place, because they managed to create a world for the music to interact with. In industrially made films, or in those which strike pretentious poses, the same music would appear vacuous and irritating. Conversely, Kes (1969) proves that no amount of bad music can destroy a good, emotionally honest film."
- S&S: What is the most effective sequence of music in your own films?
- "As regards my own work, my favourite musical moment is in the 1990 documentary From Moscow to Pietushki in which I used Handel's 'Per le Porte del Tormento' for a sequence evoking delirium tremens and death. The aria, sang by a contralto, seemed to make the moment feel lyrical, transcendental and brutally ironic all at the same time."