Movie stars are not the only stars of movies.
If you’re a movie fan, you probably have a few stars you follow. Whether it’s Michelle Pfeiffer or Freddie Prinze Jr., there are people who make you think. Even if the movie stinks, Michelle or Freddie will hold my interest.
If you’re a movie fanatic, your interests may extend further into the credits. Maybe you’re nuts for director Steve Soderbergh (“Erin Brockovich,” “Out of Sight”) or cinematographer Darius Khondji (“Seven,” “The Beach”). Or maybe there are composers whose names in the credits tell you, “At least the music will sound beautiful.”
The best situation, of course, is a great movie with great music. Think of “The Postman” (the sweet Italian one, not the heinous Kevin Costner one), where the lilting folk music established the tempo and tenderness of the story. Luis Cavalos won an Oscar for that score and, although subsequent efforts suggest that lilting, Italian folk music is all he can do, hey, at least he gave us one great piece of music. Often, top-notch composers are called on to bail out lousy movies. The most famous example is the mediocre “Chariots of Fire,” made by a director who hasn’t made a watchable inch of celluloid since. “Chariots” is widely acknowledged to have won the best-picture Oscar because of its music. (Composer Vangelis also won.)
More recently, “Hollow Man” gets dumber as it goes, but it’s aided immeasurably by the lush, tense music of Jerry Goldsmith, who has made bad movies seem good (“The Shadow”) and good ones seem better (“L.A. Confidential”) for four decades.
That’s a film composer’s job. He — or, rarely, she — is shown a nearly complete version of the film and then composes music to enhance its mood, often in snippets of only a few seconds. The timing makes composing movie music a tricky job, and so does this: Film composers have to write great music, and they have to write great music that works with the movie. The score shouldn’t be overwhelming. (It’s often said that movie music is best when you don’t notice it, whereas bad music — think Ennio Morricone’s distracting “Mission to Mars” — calls attention to its inappropriateness.)
If it can be enjoyed apart from the movie, that’s a nice bonus that can help you extend the fun well beyond the theater.
The best-selling composer is John Williams, whose music is reliably terrific (especially “Schindler’s List,” “Star Wars” and the wondrous “Jurassic Park”) even when the movies are not (“Angela’s Ashes”). The best-selling score of all time is the overblown “Titanic,” composed by James “I Tell the Audience Exactly How to Feel at Every Single Moment” Horner, whose overemphatic, ripped-off music also marred “Apollo 13” and “The Perfect Storm.”
Here are composers who regularly trip my trigger, and a few of their CDs from the last decade, to give you a place to start when you’re listening to the movies. (All of the selections are recent, because most record stores don’t keep older titles on hand.)
Angelo Badalamenti: His close alliance with David Lynch (he has been a Lynchpin since “Blue Velvet,” peaking with the sad/spooky “Twin Peaks” theme) suggested Badalamenti was a one-trick tone-y.
After excursions into schlock (hope you cashed a big check for “Christmas Vacation,” Angelo) and bizarrely beautiful melodrama (“City of Lost Children”), Badalamenti hit his stride with last year’s “The Straight Story.”
Yeah, it’s directed by Lynch, too, but the folky mandolin music is as different from Badalamenti’s other scores as the simple, homespun tale is from Lynch’s pervy oeuvre.
Carter Burwell: Burwell’s career was born with the loyal Coen brothers. He has scored all of their films, from “Blood Simple” to the upcoming, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” For the best example of the difference music can make, watch the non-Coen “The Celluloid Closet.” Burwell’s tentative, ultimately triumphant music traces Hollywood’s recognition of gay characters as surely and intelligently as the documentary’s images do.
Two other examples of Burwell’s work are available on one disc: “Fargo,” including the mournful, soaring tune that accompanies the image of a car slogging through a snowy landscape, is packaged along with the disturbing “Barton Fink” score.
Patrick Doyle: Doyle’s popularity skyrocketed when Paul Wylie won a silver medal skating to Doyle’s ebullient “Henry V” at the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France.
But Doyle does quiet moments as well as bombast. His “Sense and Sensibility” is as delicately, precisely emotional as Jane Austen’s tale of surprising love, and “A Little Princess” sounds like the music box of your dreams.
Many composers have paid homage to Hitchcock favorite Bernard Herrmann, but Doyle’s tribute, in Kenneth Branagh’s cheeky Hitchcock knock-off, “Dead Again,” is among the best.
Ennio Morricone: If you asked film composers to name the best of their kind working today, most would point to Morricone, whose rousing “The Mission” theme is a staple of commercials and trailers for other movies.
Having scored 400 films, he’s astonishingly prolific and versatile, with collaborators ranging from Warren Beatty (Morricone scored his last three films) to Brian De Palma (“The Untouchables”) to Clint Eastwood (the instantly recognizable “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” theme).
Morricone scored again last year with the lyrical, plaintive “The Legend of 1900.”
Michael Nyman: More than the others on this list, Nyman’s work is instantly recognizable. He uses the serial music ideas of Philip Glass to create tension in such scores as “The Piano” (pianos are often featured prominently in Nyman’s music), but his recent work is lusher and more romantic.
The “Wonderland” soundtrack, which includes pieces named after each of the film’s 10 characters, suggests Beatles-esque pop and has a more upbeat quality than most of Nyman’s work, but, like “The Piano,” its intensity drives us right into the heads of the characters.
Zbiegniew Preisner: In this country, we don’t get to hear Preisner much.
He scores the occasional American film (the delicate “FairyTale: A True Story,” “When a Man Loves a Woman,” the only movie I’ve seen at which the composer’s name in the credits earned applause).
But he seems to prefer the freedom of foreign films. When you listen to Preisner music, you know the string section will be working overtime, often creating a sound that suggests the distance between hope and reality. Preisner scored virtually all the late Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films, including the “Decalogue,” as well as “Blue,” “White” and “Red.”
Gabriel Yared: Yared’s score for “Betty Blue” belongs on anyone’s top 10 list. In addition to the main theme, a lullaby played on a lonely piano, its nods to French boulevard music underscore the movie’s achy tone and stand gorgeously on their own.
His Oscar-winning music from “The English Patient,” along with the scores for “City of Angels” and “Autumn in New York,” suggests he’s been pigeonholed as the go-to guy for weepy romances, but last year’s jazzy “The Talented Mr. Ripley” indicated a different direction for Yared.
SOUNDTRACKS TO SCORE
Ten movie CDs to buy:
1. “A Fistful of Film Music: An Ennio Morricone Anthology.” This two-CD set is a great value, encompassing spaghetti westerns, cheesy B-movies and synthesized disco in its more than 50 tracks, which also include recent classics such as “Cinema Paradiso” and “The Mission.”
2. “Gods and Monsters.” Carter Burwell’s score is as intricate, wounded and vital as the movie’s tortured hero.
3. “The End of the Affair.” Michael Nyman’s best work is last year’s achingly beautiful “Affair.” It suggests the influence of `40s greats such as Max Steiner, who scored many of Bette Davis’ movies.
4. “The Straight Story.” Sunny, hopeful and bluegrass-inflected, its main theme instantly recalls the movie and instantly makes you happy.
5. “Red.” The way to go for a first-time Zbiegniew Preisner buyer is this elegant score. The stunning main theme owes a bit to the tango and to Ravel’s “Bolero.”
6. “Michael Collins.” Elliot Goldenthal’s moody, Irish-tinged “Michael Collins” boasts a beautiful love theme, and it was orchestrated by Minneapolis’ own Robert El Hai.
7. “Henry V.” It’s a great score, with rousing martial music and the triumphant orchestral swell that accompanies Kenneth Branagh’s delivery of the “Once more into the breach” speech.
8. “Betty Blue.” Piano music so expressive and sad you may not even need to see the movie.
9. “The Natural.” Randy Newman cribbed from Aaron Copland here, but he did it well. His rousing main theme has become a staple of World Series and Olympics broadcasts, and the ’20s jazz on the other cuts is memorable.
10. “Moviola.” The compilation is new-ish, although the music is a bit older. This collection of John Barry’s main themes from “Somewhere in Time,” “Dances With Wolves,” “Out of Africa” and James Bond films is packed with enduring classics (sadly missing: his wonderful “Cry, the Beloved Country” theme).
— Chris Hewitt
