http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/0,23220,soundtracks,00.html
RICHARD SCHICKEL:
The Adventures of Robin Hood: Erich Wolfgang Korngold was the
greatest of Hollywood's many romantic composers' let's give a
grateful nod here to Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Miklos Rosza Jerry
Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein' and this is Korngold at his best'
excitable, cheeky, yet always romantically caring.
Citizen Kane: It's impossible to choose a single Bernard Herrmann
score as his best. His was a protean talent, embracing every genre,
but with a peculiar gift for illuminating psychotic behavior
(Hangover Square, Psycho, Taxi Driver). Let his contribution to
everyone's favorite great movie, Citizen Kane, represent everything
that was wonderful about this most daring of Hollywood's musical
sophisticates' his gift for blending major and minor chords (not to
mention electronic music and sound effects), his skill with
pastiche (the fake opera excerpts he composed for the film) and
above all, his ironic spirit.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Moaning chorales, electric guitars,
brass bands, the occasional twang of a Jew's Harp; Ennio Morricone,
vastly expanded the movie composer's instrumental and tonal palate
and this is but one of his several ear-bending, mind-expanding
masterworks.
Laura: Forget, if you can, the pop song derived from David Raksin's
theme. Concentrate, instead, on the plaintive, permanently haunting
variations he created for the film itself. It is largely his score
that lifts this otherwise limited movie beyond its genre limits.
Lest we forget: this is something great scores sometimes
accomplish.
On the Waterfront: Leonard Bernstein only wrote one film score, but
it is a haunting masterpiece, seamlessly blending modernist tropes
with the darker hues of late romantic melody, which he also loved.
In a curious way this movie summarizes his tastes and strengths as
a composer and as a conductor-proselytizer for Twentieth Century
music.
RICHARD CORLISS:
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at RKO: When Fred and Ginger paired
for nine song-and-dance films in the 30s, the top pop composers of
the day (which means, pretty much, the best of all time) lined up
to provide them with great tunes. This two-CD set contains
irrefutable evidence that Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter
and the Gershwins did some of their most lingering work for Ginger
and Fred. It contains all 30 numbers from their RKO couplings, plus
four from Fred's solo effort A Damsel in Distress and the
Arlen-Mercer "One for My Baby" from The Sky's the Limit. Need more
convincing? Here's just a taste of the playlist: "Night and Day,"
"Cheek to Cheek," "The Way You Look Tonight," "Nick Work If You Can
Get It," "They All Laughed," "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off,"
"They Can't Take That Away from Me." Case closed.
The Man With the Golden Arm: For Otto Preminger's film about a
Chicago card dealer (Frank Sinatra) who falls victim to heroin
addiction, then tries to get the monkey off his back, Elmer
Bernstein came up with a powerful, pioneering concoction of cool
jazz, big band and the Hollywood symphonic style. The score sets a
bunch of moods"tension, anxiety, the grand swagger of being a cool
guy in a tough town" with varied orchestrations and memorable
melodies. How memorable? I haven't seen the film (also highly
recommended) in 30 years, yet a half-dozen tunes from Bernstein's
score still lodge in my brain. I'm humming one now and "without the
aid of any drug" man, do I feel juiced!
Jules et Jim: Movie romance has no better friend than Georges
Delerue. As scores became brasher and brassier, or clanged with
rock chords, Delerue stuck to his plangent melodies. He was the
house composer, the engaging sound and soaring soul, of the French
New Wave; his music ornamented films by Jean-Luc Godard, Alain
Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Philippe De Broca
(18 collaborations!) and Francois Truffaut's most spectacularly in
Shoot the Piano Player and this eternally beguiling triangle tale.
The score accompanies, and often carries, Jeanne Moreau through her
affairs with best buddies Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri
Serre). But the indelible musical moment may be when Moreau sings a
charming folkish tune, "Le tourbillon," as its composer Boris
Bassiak plays guitar.
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: Kids might sneak a play of
this soundtrack for the kick of hearing four-letter words rarely
put to music. But adults, especially those who grew up on Broadway
melodies, love the South Park movie score for its fond, roguish
evocations of songs from Oklahoma, Fiddler on the Roof and Les
Miserables. Parker's not-so-secret sin is that "virtually alone
among heterosexuals under 50" he loves the grand ambitions and
soaring chords of the old songs. He stashes versions of them in the
TV episodes of South Park (who can forget Cartman's rousingly lurid
gospel number "Body of Christ"?) and, abetted by super-arranger
Marc Shaiman, packed a dozen fabulous parodies into the movie.
Actually, parody schmarody. These are terrific songs' the finest,
sassiest full movie musical score since the disbanding of the Freed
Unit at MGM.
Roja:Though he is renowned as the preeminent composer of modern
Bollywood, A.R. Rahman was born and still works in Madras, 1,000
miles south of Bombay. His Tamil compatriot, the writer-director
Mani Ratnam, yanked him out of jingle-writing to compose his first
full score for Roja (The Rose) the tale of a woman whose lover is
kidnapped by terrorists. Through this grim political parable,
Rahman laced some spectacular melodies that not only serve the
drama, they create their own[EM]as in the duet ballads "Yeh Haseen
Vadiyan" and "Roja Jaaneman," which first are grounded in
recitative, then suddenly ascend into celestial melody. This
astonishing debut work parades Rahman's gift for alchemizing
outside influences until they are totally Tamil, totally Rahman. He
plays with reggae and jungle rhythms, fiddles with Broadway-style
orchestrations, runs cool variations on Morricone's scores for
Italian westerns
