BFI | Sight & Sound | The Best Music in Film

The Best Music in Film

(Wrote the James Bond theme and composed the music for Dr. No (1962) and Terence Fisher's The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1959))

S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?: "Over the years there have been many wonderful film soundtracks but probably my favourite is Elmer Bernstein's big-band score for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) Groundbreaking stuff, and inspirational for composers in the usage of popular music for contemporary subjects."
S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?: "Other than main themes and obvious moments where music should be right in the foreground, the best soundtracks are those which work subliminally on the listener. As someone once said: "If the cinemagoer doesn't realise that the main enhancement of that particular scene is the music - then the composer has done his job!"
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S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?: "I wish I had written 'The Harry Lime Theme' for The Third Man (1949). Anton Karas's zither score is remarkable. Nowadays with all the technology available unusual sounding scores with strange sounding instruments are quite normal.. But not in the late Forties. I do believe that Karas wrote one of the great film themes of all times."