Film’s an art form that is an amalgam of art forms. Very different pursuits – acting, writing, photography and musical composition – play essential roles in nearly every film (- there are some great films with no musical score). A truly great film – when each aspect is great and fits with the others – is a sort of miracle, it has always seemed to me: my experiences with large groups of people suggests the more people, the more chances for botches. Some very good movies will be especially strong in two or three of those aspects. But if just one aspect is flat-out poor, then the movie fails.
Offhand, it is difficult to think of a movie that has been killed just by a crappy musical score, although I’d say – for me – almost all of the movies I’ve seen with John Williams’ scores have suffered as a result, especially Schindler’s List.
(I am of course aware the wider public loves Williams’ themes and pays to hear John Williams’ scores played by live orchestras at pops concerts while the movie plays behind on huge screens. In fact, I would say that supports my point. The wider public thinks Beyonce has talent and is civil rights leader. The Star Wars theme was the worst thing that ever happened to soundtracks, but I digress… or I’ve digressed enough…)
Most of the music on this Mixtape is drawn from the list of what I consider to be truly great films at the end of this post… There are a couple of exceptions in the mix – outstanding music from films I do NOT consider all that great – Morricone’s theme from Days of Heaven being the prime example – or films, like the 1993 Russian film version of The Master and Margarita, I haven’t seen at all. (Well, I watched a few minutes on Youtube; there’s a 2005 adaptation that looks better.)
Many of the century’s great composers – e.g. Shostakovich and Schnittke – wrotes scores of scores, not unlike the way 19th Century composers churned out ballets, except maybe a bit more detached. Among the Shostakovich scores I’ve heard, two – Hamlet‘s and The Gadfly‘s – stand out as worth repeated listenings. The others – and I’ve hardly heard them all, as he wrote dozens – are among the least interesting things I’ve heard from him. (The piece on the mix is sort of a cheat – it’s the prologue (or title music) to Katarina Izmailova, the 1966 film version of his opera Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk… I think it is unique to the movie…)
There are also great composers who focused almost exclusively on film scores, most notably two Americans – Elmer Bernstein and Bernard Herrmann – and two Italians – Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota – as well as a handful of Japanese composers. It is rare that their works – soundtrack or otherwise – turn up on concert programs or blanched-out classical music radio shows.
Whatever, I think orchestras would do well to play more soundtrack stuff in concert – other than John Williams, that is. I’ve often thought that if I had input into a regional symphony’s programming, I would have one Ennio Morricone night every year. I know I’d pay to hear the Asheville Symphony play the “Spaghetti Suite” I fashioned for this mixtape…
Regarding the music on the mix, one more thing: somebody needs to put out Margaret Chardier’s soundtrack to The Transfiguration. I included a piece of hers that is from a sort-of film – concert footage interspersed w/ shots of offal – you can watch on Youtube, called Bestial Burden.
Finally, a note about the list of films that follows the playlist… It is a mixture of what some would call oddities or obscura along with some of those bonafide classics – like Citizen Kane and Bicycle Thieves – that appear on all critics’ best-of lists because their brilliance is undeniable. There is a unifying thread – or vibe – some people might pick up on immediately, or not. I tend to gravitate to the dark side, let’s put it that way. I love films that do what Shostakovich or Schnittke does with music. Which is to say, I love movies that reach high, create a world that is unassailably real, and aren’t afraid of the weirdness or bleakness of human existence.
I ranked the movies to make a Top 40, which is sort of preposterous. (What makes it most preposterous is all the movies I haven’t seen…) There is, though, a genuine 3-way tie for first – three movies I love fanatically and equally; after that, the list is pretty arbirtrary. All of the movies in the Top 10 are ones I’ve watched many times (except for The Transfiguration, which I first saw a few months ago and Irreversible, which I doubt I will, or can, ever watch again.), in some cases ten or twelve times. The list, with a couple obvious exceptions, is pretty much the syllabus for the film history classes I got to teach in a couple high schools. Almost every other film in the Top 40 is one I’ve watched at least twice. They are all ones that moved me and I would encourage everyone to see, with a couple of exceptions vis-a-vis “everyone.”*
0:01:31
Elmer Bernstein
Prologue from Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann; U.S.,1958)
0:06:04
Franz Schubert
from Au Hazard Balthazar (Robert Bresson; France, 1966)
0:08:05
Johan Söderqvist
from Låt den rätte komma in / Let the Right One In (Sweden, 2008) :
Then We Are Together
0:10:42
Martin Luther
from das Weisse Band /The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke; Austria, 2009)
0:13:29
Dmitri Shostakovich
from Katarina Izmailova (Mikhail Shapiro; USSR, 1966)
0:16:29
Alfred Schnittke
from The Master and Margarita (Yuri Kara, USSR, 1994)
0:21:25
Oleg Yanchenko
from Come and See (Elem Klimov; USSR, 1985)
0:27:34
Unknown
from The Music Room (Satyajit Ray; India, 1959)
0:29:59
Aleksandra Vrebalov
from Beyond Zero, 1914-1918 (Bill Morrison; U.S., 2014)
0:32:22
Gyorgy Ligeti
from 2001, A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick; U.S., 1968)
0:38:49
Aaron Copland
from Our Town (Sam Wood; U.S.,1940)
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0:49:49
Bernard Herrmann
from Citizen Kane (Orson Welles; U.S., 1941)
0:52:24
Ennio Morricone
from L’Istruttoria E Chiusa: Dimentichi ( ; Italy, 1971)
0:54:57
Margaret Chardier (aka Pharmakon)
from Bestial Burden
(because The Transfiguration‘s soundtrack has yet to be released…)
0:56:00
Art Zoyd
from Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau; Germany,1922) : Harker’s Ride
0:59:59
Johan Söderqvist: Let the Right One In “Suite”
from Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson; Sweden, 2008)
1:11:37
Ennio Morricone: “Spaghetti Suite”
from For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone; Italy, 1960s)
Ringo Rides Again
Once Upon a Time in the West
1:18:30
Alessandro Cicognini
from Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio de Sica; Italy, 1948)
1:25:54
Virgil Thomson
from The Plow That Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz; U.S.,1936) : Devastation
1:31:36
Basil Poledouris
from Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven; U.S., 1997)
1:36:30
Michael Gordon
from Decasia (Bill Morrison; U.S., 2002)
1:45:16
Ennio Morricone
from Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick; U.S., 1978)
1:48:55
Lubos Fiser
from Valerie & Her Week of Wonders (Czechoslovakia, 1970)
CC recommends…
1. Au Hazard Balthazar (Robert Bresson; France, 1966)
Come and See (Elem Klimov; USSR, 1985)
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson; Sweden, 2008)
4. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, U.S., 1940)
5. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles; U.S., 1958)
6. Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (F.W. Murnau; Germany, 1922)
7. The Music Room (Satyagit Ray; Bengal, 1958)
8. The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford; U.S., 1940)
9. Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio de Sica; Italy, 1948)
10. The Transfiguration (Michael O’Shea; U.S., 2016)
11. Jeux Interdict (Forbidden Games) (René Clément; France, 1952)
12. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick; U.S., 196 )
13. In This World (Michael Winterbottom; U.K., 2002)
14. Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven; U.S., 1997)
15. Salo (Pier Paolo Pasolini; Italy, 1977)
16. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke; China, 2013)
17. Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey; U.S., 1937)
18. Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann; U.S., 1958)
19. Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin; U.S., 1936)
20. The Searchers (John Ford; U.S., 1956)
21. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pasolini; Italy, 1964)
22. Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman; Sweden, 1960)
23. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel; U.S., 1957)
24. Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro; Spain, 2006)
25. The Man Who Wasn’t There (Coen Brothers; U.S., 2001)
26. Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsey; Scotland, 1999)
27. Jude (Winterbottom; U.K., 1996)
28. 28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo; U.S., 2007)
29. Kes (Ken Loach; U.K., 1969)
30. Super (James Gunn; U.S., 2010)
31. Martyrs (Pascal Laugier; France, 2008)
32. Irreversible (Gaspar Noe; France, 2002)
33. Import/Export (Ulrich Siedl; Austria, 2007)
34. Pennies from Heaven (Herbert Ross; U.S., 1981)
35. Fire on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa; Japan, 1959)
36. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jaromil Jireš; Czech, 1970)
37. Katarina Ismailova (Mikhail Shapiro; USSR, 1966)
38. Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis; U.S., 1950)
39. Monty Python & the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones; U.K., 1975)
40. … and pretty much every black & white Yasujirō Ozu movie I’ve seen. and most of the color ones.
* Squeamish people should avoid numbers 10, 15, 16, 28, and definitely 31 and 32.
Concentration Camp 