The Best Music in Film

Sally Potter

(The Gold Diggers, Orlando)

S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?
"Probably The Third Man (1949). because of its consistent and memorable sound and identity. The choice of a single instrument (the zither) and a predominant, repetitive theme which expresses tension, irony, playfulness, and also evokes a fractured political and personal world, makes for a brilliantly simple, effective piece of scoring."
S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?
"Music can 'enhance' a film in many ways, but for me it is at its most interesting when it argues with the image rather than underlining it, and therefore demands to be heard in its own right. The argument can be between contradictory atmospheres; softness where the scene is hard, spaciousness where the scene is claustrophobic, or lyricism where the scene is emotionally or physically violent. Alternatively, the argument can lead to cross-referencing, where the music brings surprising meanings, jokes, or associations to the image. In this way a sort of meaning-mosaic can be built up and connections made that otherwise would not be evident or possible. The least interesting and most traditional use of music on film tends to be emotionally descriptive of the scene we are watching, an is specifically designed not to be heard at a conscious level. But emotionally descriptive music can be wonderfully interesting when pushed to an extreme, for example in The Cranes Are Flying (1957),directed by Mikhail Kalatozov."
S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?
"It is hard for me to judge the most effective music in my own films but Orlando (1992) was the first score where I discovered some principles which I have continued to apply and develop in successive films. For the sequence when Orlando first meets Sasha on the frozen river Thames David Motion and I created a long sequence of overlapping, interlocking harmonic 'fields' (in A minor). Then Fred Frith recorded some guitar lines which I edited to precise moments on screen - especially the eye movements of the protagonists. This combination of apparently unstructured, floating sounds with sudden moments of musical precision locked to the characters' inner change points or thoughts (which eye movements tend to indicate) seems to create a very particular, spacious tension between sound and image."
Last Updated: 29 Sep 2008