A bad film can have a very good soundtrack, but a good film ceases being a good film when it has a bad soundtrack. Of course, a great film will have its soundtrack and content merge in perfect harmony, where each one feeds into each other to craft something beautiful. It's this quality that characterises most of the choices on this list - not only should the best film soundtracks be listenable in isolation, but they should make you want to go back and watch the film again, just to have that shudder of perfect recognition.
Also, while my choices are as informal and messy as they come, I've only gone for incidental scores in my list, sheerly to bring down the numbers. This means that there's no Raging Bull, no Goodfellas, no Pulp Fiction and no Trainspotting, to name but a few. I suppose I'll save those for another moment of boredom.
Blade Runner (1982)
Starting off with an easy one, Vangelis' score to Ridley Scott's sci-fi masterpiece - practically unavailable to own until the early 90s - is music that is both of its period and timeless in its spine-tingling beauty. The ominous Main Titles introduces us those iconic synth cords that made rain-drenched 2029 Los Angeles seem so awe-inspiring, legitimising and transporting us to an imaginary world of flying taxis and 50-foot-high Coca Cola billboards. Later tracks like Memories of Green and the saxophone-driven Love Theme inject tender humanity into the mix, while Tears in Rain beautifully underscores the greatest death scene in all of cinema. Heavenly stuff.
Days of Heaven (1978)
Ennio Morricone is, like Vangelis, another one of the all-time greats, whose lengthy discography could be the subject of an entirely different list. But it was on Terence Malick's 1978 masterwork that I thought his work reached an all-time poetic high. His opening track, lifted from Camile Saint-Saëns' "Carnival Of The Animals" and played over sepia-toned photographs of the Great Depression, is like a musical time machine, driving out thoughts of the modern world for something simpler, more innocent and more basically American. He reinforced it with the toe-tapping Enderlin which, accompanied by Linda Manz's wonderfully underplayed narration, takes on an Old West mythology, like a musical adaptation of the first act of a John Steinbeck novel. And the flute-inspired tracks Harvest and Happiness distil Malick's complicated view of nature into its essence, whereas The Fire - used to describe an invasion of locusts - is perfectly hellish. One to be listened to on an old gramophone player on a summer's evening, possibly while smoking a pipe.
Magnolia (1999)
Some film soundtracks are comfortable to stand outside the action and play in their own little world, whereas others take off their wellies and get stuck into the trenches, becoming inseparable from the action happening on screen. This is the case in most of Paul Thomas Anderson's films, but none more so than with Jon Brion's score for Magnolia, that not only compels but catapults the action into fifth gear - perfect for a film that somehow maintains an absolute fever pitch of emotion through its three hour-plus running time. Showtime is the best of the bunch, one that recurs a lot - notably during that long shot at the TV studio - and that gives a punchy, purposeful, even epic drive to the action. Of course, much like the film, the emotions are all over the place, giving us the moving Jimmy's Breakdown, the epic Stanley-Frank-Linda's Breakdown, the downbeat Magnolia, and the surprisingly Gaelic So Now Then. Though again, like the film, these tonal changes never feel less than organic. And neither to the memorable contributions from Aimee Mann: while only two were written explicitly for the film (I've already broken my own rules, so what) it's Wise Up that we remember best, that wonderful moment where the traditions of diegesis becomes blurred and the main characters begin singing together like a chorus of lost souls. It's something that music and cinema were invented for.
Spirited Away (2001)
There are composers that make music, and there are composers that open a direct line to your soul. Joe Hisaishi is definitely the latter. No matter where I am and what I'm doing, if I hear One Summer's Day I'm probably going to cry. It perfectly sets the tone for the film: a young girl, moving to a new home, is adrift, depressed, and maybe a little scared that her childhood is speeding along so fast and that she'll be expected to grow up soon. Like most of Hayao Miyazaki's films, it's all about trying to recapture something lost while learning to move on with the future, and Hisaishi's wistful piano chords manage to connect with the lonely child in all of us. His score is also magnificently exciting at times: Dragon Boy plays twice during the film, once during the brilliant opening sequence where the spirit realm descends on the abandoned fairground, and again during the scene where Haku is attack by animate paper airplanes (it's more affecting that it sounds). But the undoubted highlight is The Sixth Station. It plays over the most adult sequence in the film, and it's emotionally devastating - though I still don't quite know why. Whenever I watch it, I always wonder about that distant house with the washing line, or that ghostly girl on the platform who we only glimpse briefly, but who seems to be looking directly at us. And what's Chihiro thinking when she stares out the window? Frankly, when the music's this beautiful, I don't really care.
The Thin Red Line (1999)
We're back to Malick, though this time we couldn't be further away from Days of Heaven. Returning from a twenty-year absence, the reclusive director had cultivated such a legendary reputation that everybody in Hollywood couldn't wait to get their hands on him. While that didn't work out so well for people like Adrian Brody, we were blessed with an career-high performance from Hans Zimmer, one of the all-time great composers. His score to The Thin Red Line remains his most well-judged and restrained, even if most of it didn't make it into the film itself. The opening tracks of The Corall Atol and The Lagoon are like Malick's films in minature: epic and sweeping in scope, but infused with spirituality and an unfailing admiration of the natural world, represented here by Asian instruments and haunting Melanesian choirs. The most famous track from the album is Journey to the Line, that has been used repeatedly in film trailers (including X-Men: Days of Future Past and 12 Years a Slave), but this still hasn't dulled its impact - the first five minutes are still unmatched in their capabilities to inspire cinematic awe, especially when paired with the great scene where Allied troops invade a Japanese village. Equally beautiful is Zimmer's next track, Light, that plays over Elias Koteas' moving dismissal from the army, whereas the choral piece that closes the film - God U Tekem Laef Blong Mi - is effortlessly appropriate.
The Third Man (1949)
While most scores are written to match the film, many are there to throw you, to feel so out of sync from what's happening on-screen that it completely changes the effect of the narrative. Anton Karas' slide guitar is relentlessly jovial, yet when paired with Carol Reed's one-of-a-kind noir it changes: it becomes dark, sinister, dreamlike. When Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna, he doesn't understand the people he meets, not only because of the language barrier but because of the criminal conspiracy that he accidentally stumbles upon that prompts several people to try and kill him. Karas takes the action into the realm of the absurd, as if there's a great puppet master controlling the figures on the screen, bashing their heads together and laughing as he watches the commotion unfold.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Is this a great soundtrack from a bad film? Or is it just one ingredient of an overlooked masterpiece? I think my views lie somewhere in between, but even the detractors of David Lynch's follow up to his legendary TV series argue that this is one of the best things composer Angelo Badalamenti has ever done. Beginning with a masterful subversion of the Laura Palmer theme, his Main Theme, played over the image of TV static, established the film as just that - a proper, cinematic offering, part-noir, part-horror, part...well, something implacable. These incredible jazz elements run throughout the remarkably consistent album, notably joining with the haunting vocals of Jimmy Scott in Sycamore Trees - though Badalamenti goes to alternative places, including a grinding, dangerous nightclub theme in The Pink Room, and, of course, incorporating Julee Cruise with Questions in a World of Blue: a heartbreaking lament of a damaged soul trapped in a neverending nightmare. While I still think there's a lot to love in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in spite of some of its excesses - Sheryl Lee's brilliant performance, the disturbing power of the Bang Bang bar and Red Room sequences, the fact that Lynch dared to unearth the dark soul of his supposedly mainstream hit - it's the soundtrack that almost everyone can agree on, as an accomplished yet intimate journey through a very personal vision of Hell.
And if that wasn't enough, then here's some more:
Angels in America (2003)
I know it's not technically a film - though with Mike Nichols directing and Thomas Newman composing stuff as wonderfully as the Main Title, it might as well be.
Don't Look Know (1974)
Pino Donaggio contributed a vast amount to Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece, but his Love Theme remains the most significant for turning a supposedly profane sex scene into one of the most beautiful scenes of marital love in the history of cinema.
Far From Heaven (2002)
Hollywood legend Elmer Bernstein's final score before his death is both an evocation of those over-the-top 1950s melodrama scores and reflects a more modern, subtle quality. It's really lovely.
The Godfather (1972)
Who cares that Nino Rota re-used music from his score to 1958's Fortunella? If I wrote something as good as Love Theme I'd re-use it a million times.
In the Mood for Love (2000)
If Yumeji's Theme doesn't make your lips purse and your lip stiffen with the longing restraint of an unfulfilled romance, you might as well be from an alien planet.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Fuck everyone who says folk music is rubbish.
Jaws (1975)
Du-duh-du-duh-du-duh...
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Deeeee, duuuuuuh.....deeduuhdeeduuhDEEEEE...DUUUUUUH...
Miller's Crossing (1990)
It's only really one track, but my God... The image of that hat blowing in the wind was forever seared into my brain by Cartel Burwell's transcendent Opening Titles. Look into your heart!
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Angelo Badalamenti's chords are so basic but so good. Hey, while you're at it, why not throw in Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and The Straight Story? Dude's a genius.
Paris, Texas (1984)
Legendary musician, songwriter, film score composer and all-round badass Ry Cooder plucks his guitar in an oh-so-lovely way in Wim Wenders' vivid slice of Americana.
The Piano (1993)
How Michael Nyman can play a wooden box with a few sticks of ivory attached so well is beyond me. Frankly, I don't want to know the creative processes behind The Heart Asks Pleasure First - it is, and shall remain, an act of musical witchcraft.
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
Will have you shedding your rigid undergarments and jumping into a lake faster than you can say "henceforth."
Psycho (1960)
VWING VWING VWING VWING
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
Any musical with a song named "Uncle Fucker" gets my vote.
The Village (2004)
James Newton-Howard elevated M. Night Shyamalan's cack with his elegant, violin-based score.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The best Hollywood musical ever (yes, really) with some of the best 'choons on offer. Somewheeeere...
Also, while my choices are as informal and messy as they come, I've only gone for incidental scores in my list, sheerly to bring down the numbers. This means that there's no Raging Bull, no Goodfellas, no Pulp Fiction and no Trainspotting, to name but a few. I suppose I'll save those for another moment of boredom.
Blade Runner (1982)
Starting off with an easy one, Vangelis' score to Ridley Scott's sci-fi masterpiece - practically unavailable to own until the early 90s - is music that is both of its period and timeless in its spine-tingling beauty. The ominous Main Titles introduces us those iconic synth cords that made rain-drenched 2029 Los Angeles seem so awe-inspiring, legitimising and transporting us to an imaginary world of flying taxis and 50-foot-high Coca Cola billboards. Later tracks like Memories of Green and the saxophone-driven Love Theme inject tender humanity into the mix, while Tears in Rain beautifully underscores the greatest death scene in all of cinema. Heavenly stuff.
Ennio Morricone is, like Vangelis, another one of the all-time greats, whose lengthy discography could be the subject of an entirely different list. But it was on Terence Malick's 1978 masterwork that I thought his work reached an all-time poetic high. His opening track, lifted from Camile Saint-Saëns' "Carnival Of The Animals" and played over sepia-toned photographs of the Great Depression, is like a musical time machine, driving out thoughts of the modern world for something simpler, more innocent and more basically American. He reinforced it with the toe-tapping Enderlin which, accompanied by Linda Manz's wonderfully underplayed narration, takes on an Old West mythology, like a musical adaptation of the first act of a John Steinbeck novel. And the flute-inspired tracks Harvest and Happiness distil Malick's complicated view of nature into its essence, whereas The Fire - used to describe an invasion of locusts - is perfectly hellish. One to be listened to on an old gramophone player on a summer's evening, possibly while smoking a pipe.
Magnolia (1999)
Some film soundtracks are comfortable to stand outside the action and play in their own little world, whereas others take off their wellies and get stuck into the trenches, becoming inseparable from the action happening on screen. This is the case in most of Paul Thomas Anderson's films, but none more so than with Jon Brion's score for Magnolia, that not only compels but catapults the action into fifth gear - perfect for a film that somehow maintains an absolute fever pitch of emotion through its three hour-plus running time. Showtime is the best of the bunch, one that recurs a lot - notably during that long shot at the TV studio - and that gives a punchy, purposeful, even epic drive to the action. Of course, much like the film, the emotions are all over the place, giving us the moving Jimmy's Breakdown, the epic Stanley-Frank-Linda's Breakdown, the downbeat Magnolia, and the surprisingly Gaelic So Now Then. Though again, like the film, these tonal changes never feel less than organic. And neither to the memorable contributions from Aimee Mann: while only two were written explicitly for the film (I've already broken my own rules, so what) it's Wise Up that we remember best, that wonderful moment where the traditions of diegesis becomes blurred and the main characters begin singing together like a chorus of lost souls. It's something that music and cinema were invented for.
Spirited Away (2001)
There are composers that make music, and there are composers that open a direct line to your soul. Joe Hisaishi is definitely the latter. No matter where I am and what I'm doing, if I hear One Summer's Day I'm probably going to cry. It perfectly sets the tone for the film: a young girl, moving to a new home, is adrift, depressed, and maybe a little scared that her childhood is speeding along so fast and that she'll be expected to grow up soon. Like most of Hayao Miyazaki's films, it's all about trying to recapture something lost while learning to move on with the future, and Hisaishi's wistful piano chords manage to connect with the lonely child in all of us. His score is also magnificently exciting at times: Dragon Boy plays twice during the film, once during the brilliant opening sequence where the spirit realm descends on the abandoned fairground, and again during the scene where Haku is attack by animate paper airplanes (it's more affecting that it sounds). But the undoubted highlight is The Sixth Station. It plays over the most adult sequence in the film, and it's emotionally devastating - though I still don't quite know why. Whenever I watch it, I always wonder about that distant house with the washing line, or that ghostly girl on the platform who we only glimpse briefly, but who seems to be looking directly at us. And what's Chihiro thinking when she stares out the window? Frankly, when the music's this beautiful, I don't really care.
The Thin Red Line (1999)
We're back to Malick, though this time we couldn't be further away from Days of Heaven. Returning from a twenty-year absence, the reclusive director had cultivated such a legendary reputation that everybody in Hollywood couldn't wait to get their hands on him. While that didn't work out so well for people like Adrian Brody, we were blessed with an career-high performance from Hans Zimmer, one of the all-time great composers. His score to The Thin Red Line remains his most well-judged and restrained, even if most of it didn't make it into the film itself. The opening tracks of The Corall Atol and The Lagoon are like Malick's films in minature: epic and sweeping in scope, but infused with spirituality and an unfailing admiration of the natural world, represented here by Asian instruments and haunting Melanesian choirs. The most famous track from the album is Journey to the Line, that has been used repeatedly in film trailers (including X-Men: Days of Future Past and 12 Years a Slave), but this still hasn't dulled its impact - the first five minutes are still unmatched in their capabilities to inspire cinematic awe, especially when paired with the great scene where Allied troops invade a Japanese village. Equally beautiful is Zimmer's next track, Light, that plays over Elias Koteas' moving dismissal from the army, whereas the choral piece that closes the film - God U Tekem Laef Blong Mi - is effortlessly appropriate.
The Third Man (1949)
While most scores are written to match the film, many are there to throw you, to feel so out of sync from what's happening on-screen that it completely changes the effect of the narrative. Anton Karas' slide guitar is relentlessly jovial, yet when paired with Carol Reed's one-of-a-kind noir it changes: it becomes dark, sinister, dreamlike. When Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna, he doesn't understand the people he meets, not only because of the language barrier but because of the criminal conspiracy that he accidentally stumbles upon that prompts several people to try and kill him. Karas takes the action into the realm of the absurd, as if there's a great puppet master controlling the figures on the screen, bashing their heads together and laughing as he watches the commotion unfold.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Is this a great soundtrack from a bad film? Or is it just one ingredient of an overlooked masterpiece? I think my views lie somewhere in between, but even the detractors of David Lynch's follow up to his legendary TV series argue that this is one of the best things composer Angelo Badalamenti has ever done. Beginning with a masterful subversion of the Laura Palmer theme, his Main Theme, played over the image of TV static, established the film as just that - a proper, cinematic offering, part-noir, part-horror, part...well, something implacable. These incredible jazz elements run throughout the remarkably consistent album, notably joining with the haunting vocals of Jimmy Scott in Sycamore Trees - though Badalamenti goes to alternative places, including a grinding, dangerous nightclub theme in The Pink Room, and, of course, incorporating Julee Cruise with Questions in a World of Blue: a heartbreaking lament of a damaged soul trapped in a neverending nightmare. While I still think there's a lot to love in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in spite of some of its excesses - Sheryl Lee's brilliant performance, the disturbing power of the Bang Bang bar and Red Room sequences, the fact that Lynch dared to unearth the dark soul of his supposedly mainstream hit - it's the soundtrack that almost everyone can agree on, as an accomplished yet intimate journey through a very personal vision of Hell.
And if that wasn't enough, then here's some more:
Angels in America (2003)
I know it's not technically a film - though with Mike Nichols directing and Thomas Newman composing stuff as wonderfully as the Main Title, it might as well be.
Don't Look Know (1974)
Pino Donaggio contributed a vast amount to Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece, but his Love Theme remains the most significant for turning a supposedly profane sex scene into one of the most beautiful scenes of marital love in the history of cinema.
Far From Heaven (2002)
Hollywood legend Elmer Bernstein's final score before his death is both an evocation of those over-the-top 1950s melodrama scores and reflects a more modern, subtle quality. It's really lovely.
The Godfather (1972)
Who cares that Nino Rota re-used music from his score to 1958's Fortunella? If I wrote something as good as Love Theme I'd re-use it a million times.
In the Mood for Love (2000)
If Yumeji's Theme doesn't make your lips purse and your lip stiffen with the longing restraint of an unfulfilled romance, you might as well be from an alien planet.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Fuck everyone who says folk music is rubbish.
Jaws (1975)
Du-duh-du-duh-du-duh...
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Deeeee, duuuuuuh.....deeduuhdeeduuhDEEEEE...DUUUUUUH...
Miller's Crossing (1990)
It's only really one track, but my God... The image of that hat blowing in the wind was forever seared into my brain by Cartel Burwell's transcendent Opening Titles. Look into your heart!
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Angelo Badalamenti's chords are so basic but so good. Hey, while you're at it, why not throw in Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and The Straight Story? Dude's a genius.
Paris, Texas (1984)
Legendary musician, songwriter, film score composer and all-round badass Ry Cooder plucks his guitar in an oh-so-lovely way in Wim Wenders' vivid slice of Americana.
The Piano (1993)
How Michael Nyman can play a wooden box with a few sticks of ivory attached so well is beyond me. Frankly, I don't want to know the creative processes behind The Heart Asks Pleasure First - it is, and shall remain, an act of musical witchcraft.
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
Will have you shedding your rigid undergarments and jumping into a lake faster than you can say "henceforth."
Psycho (1960)
VWING VWING VWING VWING
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
Any musical with a song named "Uncle Fucker" gets my vote.
The Village (2004)
James Newton-Howard elevated M. Night Shyamalan's cack with his elegant, violin-based score.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The best Hollywood musical ever (yes, really) with some of the best 'choons on offer. Somewheeeere...
