The Best Music in Film

Favourites

Directors

(see also: Musicians)

Sight & Sound

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

Jonas Åkerlund
"Cat Stevens soundtrack for Harold and Maude (1971)."
Woody Allen
(Annie Hall, Manhattan, Anything Else)
"Juliet of the Spirits (1965) - I love Rota and it fits perfectly with the text."
Roy Andersson
(Songs from the Second Floor)
"My favourite film soundtrack is 'The Harry Lime Theme' in the movie The Third Man (1949) with Orson Welles. It is unique music and absolutely not predictable. It is of its own as the movie is. And that meeting, the movie and the music, creates a very special atmosphere: nice, beautiful but at the same time a little frightening and a little sad. This music was not planned, it was found. It existed already and maybe that is the reason behind its quality."
Olivier Assayas
(Irma Vep, Demonlover)
"With not a second of hesitation David Mansfield's music for Heaven's Gate (1980). Its the one movie soundtrack that I can listen to on its own. And then it's also the very soul of this film. Somehow it embodies everything the movie is reaching for, especially a heartbreaking sense of time passing. I remember the catch line on the poster, it went something like (I'm not sure of the precise wording) what one loves in life is things that fade. Usually this is stuff to make fun of, in this case it was pure poetry to me. And exactly what Mansfield's soundtrack is about. I haven't seen Heaven's Gate since the time it was made, and as much as I liked it then, I always felt that my taste for the film had to do with my fondness for its score that seemed to have it's roots at the deepest of the disturbing emotions of immigration, loss, vanity of human fate. Possibly the film doesn't have the most structured narrative, but then it's mostly about feelings, images, dreams, visions, in ways similar to those of poetry, unlike most of cinema. And the key is in the music. Runner up is Pyaasa (1957) by Guru Dutt. Possibly one of the most remarkable transpositions of poetry on screen. Dutt plays the poet himself and when he says the verses, he actually sings (using the beautiful voice of Mohammad Rafi). It's just out of this world. More than once I've had tears in my eyes listening to the audio tape I bought in Delhi in the late eighties. And yes it's music even sadder than the music in Heaven's Gate. In terms of recent films, it's Basquiat (1996). Schnabel has great taste in music (ie : I like the stuff he likes) and this instinctive sense of the dialectics between image and score."
John Boorman
(Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur)
"It should be modest, unobtrusive, sparing, supplementary, console the audience's emotions not suggest them, and strings betray."
Patrice Chéreau
(La Reine Margot, Intimacy)
"My favourite original score is the one from the film Devdas (2002) because it is of an extraordinary vitality. I can listen to it up to ten times back to back, with all the images of the film returning to me. I lift myself up from my armchair and dance in my office (hoping that the neighbours across the street are not at their window!!!)."
Francis Ford Coppola
(The Godfather, The Conversation)
"The Thief of Baghdad (1940), also, Spellbound (1945)- - the same composer, actually. They are just memorable, seemed to catch the essence of the film. But there are many great ones. I thought the recent work of John Williams on Catch Me If You Can (2002), was a great score, wonderful orchestration...really helped the film work very well."
Roger Corman
(The Little Shop of Horrors, The Trip)
"Maurice Jarre's original score for Lawrence of Arabia (1962) is my favourite because it most perfectly recreates and enhances the epic and subtly exotic feeling of David Lean's masterpiece. It mixes sweeping orchestrations with Arabian-sounding rhythms in a way that evokes the vast, mysterious expanse of the desert as hauntingly as David Lean's indelible images."
Alex Cox
"A film called The Big Silence (1968), directed by Sergio Corbucci with music by Ennio Morricone. It's completely different from everything else that he did."
Cameron Crowe
(Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous)
"It always changes, but right now my favourite is Mark Knopfler's score for Local Hero (1983). You can barely imagine the movie without it -- the music takes you by the hand and leads you into another world. It's unobtrusive and hugely effective. You can still hear that music long after you've left the theatre."
Joe Dante
(Gremlins, Matinee, Small Soldiers)
"I may not have consciously registered my own reaction to soundtrack music until 1964--before that I had been weaned on the bombastic Universal-International "sound" of the 50s, as these double bills were the most frequent at my local theatre, and of course I lined up to buy the seminal 1959 Coral Records' release "Themes from Horror Movies", featuring re-recordings of various U-I themes by Henry Mancini, Hans J. Salter, Skinner, etc. But it wasn't until chanced upon Ennio Morricone's score for Bullets Don't Argue (1963), an obscure Italian western released directly to US TV long before the Leone pictures arrived here, that I heard music that seemed to speak directly to me. Why I found so much emotional resonance in what came to be known as "spaghetti western music" I'll never know, but I wasn't the only one. So as to "favourites"--one is impossible to isolate, because there are so many. Offhand I'd list most of Herrmann, lots of Bernstein, especially To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957), although I'm also fond of Robot Monster (1953), Morricone, Steiner, Waxman, John Barry (especially his underrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972), Walter Schumann's Night of the Hunter (1955), and of course Jerry Goldsmith, who I have been lucky enough to collaborate with on all but three of my feature films. And let's not overlook the great Carl Stalling, much of whose music I've pirated over the years in one way or another."
Lewis Gilbert
(Reach for the Sky, Alfie, Educating Rita)
"My favourite film soundtrack is almost a tie between the Preminger film Laura (1944) and the Italian film Death in Venice (1971). I have chosen two because although completely different - Death in Venice having the 2nd movement of Mahlers 'Symphony No 5' and Laura which had a romantic pop theme - I loved both these scores. However, if you were to twist my arm, I would vote for Death in Venice for reasons given below."
Jason Groves (Shynola)
(Music videos for Radiohead's Pyramid song and The Rapture's House of Jealous Lovers, among others)
"A really difficult question. I would really have to split this into two questions: Which soundtrack is the most sympathetic to the film, and, which soundtrack would I listen to as a piece on it's own. Although it's a fairly new phenomenon that a soundtrack will have a life beyond the film it was created for, I think it's valid to judge the music this way. I certainly have soundtrack albums in my CD collection from films I didn't really like. I can't answer the first part of this question without coming across as a some sort of sci-fi nerd, but, for me, the most sympathetic soundtrack would have to be either John Williams' Star Wars or Queen's Flash Gordon (1980). Both of these soundtracks transformed what were already superbly crafted genre pieces, into unforgettable moments in my life. I only have to hear a few notes of either to be transferred to a place where thrilling adventure happens around every corner - heroes are pure and villains wear black. A place where post-modernism hasn't tainted valiant deeds and evil plots. My favourite soundtrack to listen to, independent of the movie, is Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1979) electric-classical nightmare. It's humorous but serious, moving but neutral and ridiculous but perfectly suited. A particularly inspired choice of music from a man who brought together more memorable soundtracks than most."
Guy Hamilton
(Battle of Britain, Goldfinger, Force 10 from Navarone)
"The Third Man (1949). Carol Reed having discovered the zither had to fight a long and thank goodness battle to resist a bog standard orchestral accompaniment. With a single instrument, Anton Karas supplies the feel of Vienna, tension, suspense and a sense of grandeur."
Chris Harding (Shynola)
(Music videos for Radiohead's Pyramid song and The Rapture's House of Jealous Lovers, among others)
"It's got to be Ghostbusters (1984)! Partly due to nostalgia, I suppose (I was only nine at the time), but also because the whole cinema in Gerard's Cross was singing along to Ray Parker Jr. It gave me a thrilling sense of camaraderie that you don't often get in films. I was so disappointed when they didn't use the same song in Ghostbusters II (1989), and also because the sequel was shit."
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
(Abouna)
"My favourite film soundtrack music is Paris,Texas (1984), because of the melancholic and bluesy way Ry Cooder plays guitar...it makes me feel the soul of the earth, it makes me feel my own country: the desert, the naked landscape of Sahel...it makes me dream with images full of my head..."
Arthur Hiller
(Silver Streak, Love Story)
"I've been overwhelmed by so many great scores that I just can't pick one or even ten favourites."
Dennis Hopper
(Hot Spot, Colors)
"Hot Spot (1990) is my favourite film in terms of the music, where I used John Lee Hooker, Miles Davis, and Taj Mahal all together, with the great scoring by Jack Nitzsche."
Norman Jewison
(The Thomas Crown Affair, Moonstruck)
"My favourite film soundtrack has to be Bernard Herrmann's score for Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). It literally creates the suspense and heightens the terror. Herrmann influenced so many composers, including John Williams. When you see Spielberg's Jaws (1975), you realise the influence of Bernard Herrmann. His score for another Hitchcock film, The Birds (1963), was also memorable. Every film he scored represents the power and contribution that a musical score makes to every film."
Isaac Julien
(Looking for Langston, Young Soul Rebels)
"Miles Davis Lift to the Scaffold (1958) musical score quintessentially represents French new wave as its best transcendental character. Davis uses African American musicality that becomes the hallmark of French cinema."
Jonathan Kaplan
(The Accused, ER)
"To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) for three reasons: melody, melody, melody."
Nelly Kaplan
(Le Regard Picasso, Néa)

"The Cotton Club (1984), by Francis Ford Coppola, for the perfect symbiosis between sight and sound."
Bruce La Bruce
A Case for the Closet, Skin Gang)
"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."
Neil LaBute
(Possession, The Shape of Things)
"Although I don't employ music as often as some of my contemporaries, I certainly am a fan of soundtracks and the general use of music in films. There are any number of great composers and soundtracks that have effectively utilised other kinds of music as well (pop songs, traditional, etc.) but since you ask for 'favourite,' I would probably have to say Gato Barbieri's score for Last Tango in Paris (1972). Wonderfully moody, perfectly calibrated to the images, just a delight to listen to, on screen and off. One section of that soundtrack in particular mean a lot to me--when I was scoring In the Company of Men (1997) by phone with a Canadian composer, I would play a tape of it for him so that he could hear the snarling, roaring saxophones that i wanted to punctuate our film."
Ken Loach
(Kes, Riff-Raff, Sweet Sixteen)
"I guess it would have to be one of the old musicals, probably not West Side Story (1961) because the stage sound was better, but if I wanted to put on a soundtrack it would have to be Fred Astaire or someone."
Sidney Lumet
(12 Angry Men, Serpico)
"The music for The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (1972, 1974). Aside from the brilliant casting of actors we fall in love with, nothing provided a source of identification with the characters more than the score. Music should always reflect something that is not present in the rest of the movie. Here, the score provided a heartfelt loss of innocence, a yearning for a simpler yet more desperate time for that family. It kept the family's unspoken wish for itself alive."
Jonathan Lynn
(My Cousin Vinny, The Whole Nine Yards)
"The Godfather (1972). It's evocative, instantly recognizable, and it so romanticizes the movie that it re-enforces the audience empathy with the central characters, all of whom are actually gangsters."
Kevin MacDonald
(Touching the Void)
"The sound track to Performance (1970) by Jack Nitzsche is my favourite. The line between what is "sound design" and what is "music" doesn't exist on this film. The soundtrack creates a sense of dread and depth without which the film would've run the risk of seeming silly and preposterous. Randy Newman's 'Gone Dead Train' and Jagger's 'Turner's Song' (apparently co-written with Donald Cammell) are just plain great songs - two of the best ever penned specifically for a movie."
Gillies MacKinnon
(The Grass Arena, Hideous Kinky)
"The Star Wars (1977) music catches the spirit of the film brilliantly. I would say the same for the James Bond theme and the score for The Piano."
John McNaughton
"My choice for favourite film soundtrack music is Ennio Morricone's score for Sergio Leone's Once upon a time in America (1983). It has stayed with me since I first saw the film by which I mean the so-called long version and not the cut down studio version, which was unfortunately the first version to be released. The movie is about a man, David "Noodles" Aaronson, haunted by the past, who returns to his old neighbourhood after a thirty-five year exile. The story is told in flashback and is sometimes difficult to follow but Morricone's use of thematic and harmonic repetition functions to connect the narrative and make emotionally clear that which may be intellectually confusing. As "Noodles" is haunted by the past so are we haunted by Morricone's music, which so beautifully evokes the past. Of special note is the cue, "Cockeye's song," played on the Pan Flute by Gheorghe Zamfir. The beautiful melody conveyed by the unique tonal quality of the Pan Flute transports us into "Noodles'" heart, so haunted by memory and loss."
Fernando Meirelles
(City of God)
"I find Paul Thomas Anderson's way of using music in his films extraordinary. Usually he doesn't cut the music in to pieces; he uses the entire piece, and mixes it with the dialogs in a loud level. I don't know any other director who has the courage to do this. It works very well. The soundtrack I like best, from all of his films, is the one from Punch-drunk Love (2002)."
Nicholas Meyer
(Star Trek The Wrath of Khan)
"My favourite film scores usually fulfil this double function, supplying atmosphere and encapsulating the movie itself. I think of the Nino Rota scores for the films of Fellini, William Alwyn's operatic masterpiece for Carol Reed's, Odd Man Out (1947), Dimitri Tiomkin's song-driven music for Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952), Paul Smith's much neglected ersatz Debussy accompaniment to the Disney/Richard Fleischer 20,000 Leagues under the Sea... No list would be complete to my way of thinking without Erich Korngold's The Sea Hawk (1940) and Robin Hood scores, as well as Miklós Rózsa's Ben-Hur (1959) and Ivanhoe (1952), also Alex North's Spartacus (1960), with its dissonant, clashing percussion, so influenced by the grand-daddy of all such film scores, Sergei Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky (1938), itself in a class by itself as is Philip Stainton's only film score, written for John Huston's noble and melancholy Moby Dick (1956). Then there's always Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kizhe, a soundtrack so wonderful it has been used in no less than four different movies! And who can forget the contribution of Simon and Garfunkel to The Graduate (1967), ushering in a whole new era of film music? Then there's John Williams' Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)... the list is endless. But if pressed, I suppose I would single out the music Sir William Walton wrote for the Laurence Olivier version of Henry V (1944). Made during World War II on what amounts to a shoe-string budget, Walton's musical contribution to one of movie's greatest films is hard to overstate. It supports the heroic and poetical aspects of the film, also its medieval character, thanks to Walton's inspired use of plainsong as well as various Chansons D'Auvergne, old folksongs from the Catalan. But Walton's music goes further: as the play progresses, its deliberately artificial beginnings give way to an increasingly "realistic" presentation, culminating in the Battle of Agincourt, where English long-bowmen inflict dreadful casualties on the armour-laden, charging French knights. What had begun as an imitation of the Tres Riche Heurs de Duc de Berri (the so-called Book of Hours) with its vivid, primary colours and two dimensional perspectives, gives way to brown fields, filled with water and blood. By the film's mid-point, the only thing which anchors the movie to its original stylised theatricality is - you guessed it - the pounding music, again lifted, or "inspired" (as the charge of the French knights itself was), from Alexander Nevsky. While the battle we are watching is more or less realistic, it is absent all sound effects, which are, instead, supplied by Walton's music. Every horse whinny, every clash of steel or flight of arrows is scored for orchestra. Then, as the film gradually works its way back in the second half from realism to theatricality again, it is the music, which keeps us company the whole way back. The greatest - and, James Agee argued - perhaps simultaneously the worst moment in the film occurs at the end when the Duke of Burgundy makes his speech about peace. As he waxes poetic about the virtues of what "hath from France too long been chased", the camera pushes past the Gothic window beside him and into a "Duc de Berri" forced perspective countryside, whose selected images illustrate the toll war has taken on the land. At the same time, Walton's arrangements of one of the Chansons D'Auvergne kicks in and the total effect is so dream-like and seductive that the audience may actually dial out what Shakespeare has the Duke of Burgundy express - which is not unimportant. But this to my way of thinking is splitting hairs. The Walton score - of which there are a half-dozen recordings - stands happily on its own as a piece of music, but at the same time recreates in the minds of those familiar with the movie, the entire exhilarating experience. (If you want your Shakespeare at the same time, there's a Chandos recording with Christopher Plummer's masterful readings from the movie version of the play's text, accompanied by Sir Neville Marriner and the orchestra if St. Martin in the Fields. It doesn't get any better.)"
Paul Morrissey
(Trash)
"On The Waterfront (1954) by Leonard Bernstein. It's the best piece of music by any 20th century composer for any film"
Jonathan Mostow
(U-571, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines)
"I have dozens of "favourite" soundtracks, but one in particular is John William's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). The main theme is perhaps one of the most rousing pieces of film music ever written."
Ronald Neame
(The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Horse's Mouth, The Poseidon Adventure)
"After seventy-five years in film, it is difficult for me to narrow my favourite musical soundtrack down to one production. But since this is mandatory my choice is Peter Shafer's Amadeus (1984), directed by Milos Forman. It is a perfect combination, and the magical music from Mozart."
Alan Parker
(Birdy, Evita)
"In recent times I liked Clint Mansell's score for Requiem for a Dream (2000), which still hangs in my head. It's haunting and powerful as it subliminally tweaks at your nerve-ends - viscerally ratcheting up the emotional stakes from bar to bar and shot to shot."
Pawel Pawlikowski
(Last Resort)
"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."
D. A. Pennebaker
(Don't Look Back, Monterey Pop, The War Room)
"These are a few of my favourite tracks: (to be sung by Julie Andrews) I guess my favourite track for a proper movie was The Band Wagon (1953), with Fred Astaire, which I never get tired of, that and Michael Power's I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) But you know there was a radio show I once heard back in the mid sixties when everyone listened to WBAI. It was called 'Miss Macintosh My Darling' and it had an incredible track by Charles Ruas that was done entirely on a veraphone. I hope that's spelled right. You lined up a bunch of drinking glasses and filled them with different amounts of water then you ran your finger around the tops and out came a kind of haunting sound, which Ruas was able to make into a sound track. It was incredible. And then to get a little drama into the show every once in a while he would toss one of the glasses on the floor and, well you would have to hear it to really like it. I wish I had a copy now."
Sally Potter
(The Gold Diggers, Orlando)

"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."
Simon Pummell
(Bodysong)
"Among my favourite soundtracks are the Michael Nyman soundtracks for Peter Greenaway and the Philip Glass for Godfrey Reggio; For me these combinations of film-maker and composer work in a complex conversation with each other, rather than the music somehow always underscoring the picture. My absolute favourite moment of interaction between music and picture is in A Zed and Two Noughts (1985); about two thirds of the way into the film the mourning twins Oswald and Oliver have set up their whole range of bizarre time lapse shots of decaying animals in their lab: Then as the camera tracks back through the lab the clicking and whirring of the film cameras and the flashing of strobe lights syncopates with the really heartbreaking music theme create a music/picture synchronisation as dense as one of Disney's Silly Symphonies, and yet also a really dense emotional image of the the whole film's pre-occupations, that emotions will always overflow our attempts to hem them in with obsessive rationality. Another favourite pairing is Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. I guess it is significant that in each of my favourite pairs the music is not purely scored to picture, but created in parallel to the picture track, becoming organic to the process of writing, shooting, editing. The most effective sequence for me in my own films is in Jonny's soundtrack to Bodysong (2002) the film builds to a climax, after language has been introduced. After portraying how we learn language using the basic sounds we can make with out mouths, building up into words and sentences the soundtrack threads many of the previous themes into one so music that we've associated with very different acts and emotions from conception of a baby to violence combine into a single wall of sound."
Bernard Rose
(Ivans xtc.)
"Ken Russell's film of Tchaikovsky and The Music Lovers (1970)- to give it its full title. Great music, great movie - in that order."
Ken Russell
(The Music Lovers, Tommy)
"Strangers on a Train! (1951), Dimitri Tiomkin: Who else could write such great music depicting two-toned shoes."
Martin Scorsese
(Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Gangs of New York)
"A big question. There are so many, and they all work so differently – from a big, beautiful score for full orchestra like Jerome Moross' for Wyler's The Big Country (1958) or David Raksin's for Force of Evil (1948), to a more modern score with very spare instrumentation, like Giovanni Fusco's for L'Avventura (1960) or Hans Werner Henze's for Resnais' Muriel (1963). I suppose that if I were hard-pressed to answer this question – and I suppose I am – I'd have to say Bernard Herrmann's score for Vertigo (1958). Hitchcock's film is about obsession, which means that it's about circling back to the same moment, again and again. Which is probably why there are so many spirals and circles in the imagery – Stewart following Novak in the car, the staircase at the tower, the way Novak's hair is styled, the camera movement that circles around Stewart and Novak after she's completed her transformation in the hotel room, not to mention Saul Bass' brilliant opening credits, or that amazing animated dream sequence. And the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfilment and despair. Herrmann really understood what Hitchcock was going for – he wanted to penetrate to the heart of obsession."
Santosh Sivan
(The Terrorist)
"Amadeus (1984) and Stalker (1979) for very different reasons."
George Sluizer
(Dark Blood, UTZ)
"One of my favourite soundtracks is Bernard Herrmann's music for Psycho , (1960, also for Vertigo, 1958). I think the score of Psycho is very successful because I feel that Herrmann catches in his music the psyche of Hitchcock, his fears and longings. And storywise, the music is attacking one's nervous system in a brilliant way, heightening the suspense but also highlighting the darkness of the human soul. The instrumentation (cello and violins) vibrates and screams beautifully throughout the film."
Penelope Spheeris
(Wayne's World)
"The soundtrack from O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) is not the kind of music that I would usually listen to, but, because it is so perfect for the movie and so uplifting, I listen to it all the time. It always puts me in a good mood."
Ron Underwood
(City Slickers)
"It is difficult to narrow my favourite film score to only one choice. I love motion picture music. It is half of the movie experience in many films. Favourites include Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965) by Maurice Jarre, Psycho (1960) and North By Northwest (1959) by Bernard Herrmann, The Mission (1986) and Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) by Ennio Morricone, The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963) by Elmer Bernstein, The Pink Panther by Henry Mancini, Jaws (1975) and Schindler's List (1993) by John Williams, American Beauty (1999) by Thomas Newman. There are also so many musicals from Singin' In The Rain (1951) to Moulin Rouge (2001) which I love. Then there are movies that use previously recorded music such as A Clockwork Orange (1971) and American Graffiti (1973) that are very effective in their use of the soundtrack. And, I would say that movies using pop songs owe a debt to The Graduate (1967) by Simon and Garfunkel with Dave Grusin for its highly unusual use of contemporary music at the time. I should stop this before filling many pages with favourites. Because the music is so integral to the film that it accompanies, I almost cannot separate the music from the rest of the film going experience. Therefore, I would choose Lawrence of Arabia as my very favourite."
Wim Wenders
(Paris, Texas, Buena Vista Social Club)
"My all-time favourite soundtrack is Miles Davis' score to Louis Malle's 1958 masterpiece Lift to the Scaffold. What I like(d) so much about it, was its spontaneity. Miles Davis apparently just stood in front of the screen and played along to the film. Utterly cool."
Last Updated: 05 Sep 2006