For me, music is usually in the “background” during movies. I don’t really notice it unless the movie is specifically about the music. I’ve been known to buy soundtrack albums, and think, “Wow, I don’t remember this song! THAT was in that movie?”
But sometimes I’m struck by how perfectly a song fits with what’s going on in the scene, and it actually changes how I feel about the particular song. The scene and the song become interwoven until I can’t picture one without the other.
The best example I can think of right now is “Under Pressure” in the movie Grosse Point Blank. Martin Blank, a hit man, is at his high school reunion and contemplating getting out of the death business. He’s sitting with a friend who doesn’t know his profession, and holding her new baby. Music swells, and we hear:
“Cause love’s such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care
For people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way
Of caring about ourselves”
while Martin is staring into the baby’s eyes. It chokes me up every time (I’m choking up writing this!) and I can’t hear that song without picturing that scene.
What are some other “perfect matches” between music and film?
The monkeys fighting in 2001: A Space Oddessy
Filter’s Hey, Man, Nice Shot playing during the basketball scene in Cable Guy What A Wonderful Wolrd at the end of the last episode of the BBC’s HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV miniseries.
I don’t know if it precisely fits what you’re describing, but Jaws and Psycho both contain unique scores that make one immediately think of the movie. (Music when shark’s coming near, music during the shower scene).
Ok I’ll be the supreme geek here and bring up the score used in Babylon 5 “Sleeping in Light” when the station gets blown up. Really effective stuff, very powerful.
The moment in ‘Snatch’ when Frankie-Four-Fingers is told -not- to go to the casinos, they do one line (the title line) from ‘Viva Las Vegas’ and show stills of Frankie in casinos. It’s a three second thing that totally establishes -exactly- why Frankie should -not- go to casinos!
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings during that climactic scene at the end of Platoon; that was the first thing that leapt to my mind.
My favorite film score is for the 1983 (or was it 1984?) Nick Nolte film “Under Fire”, composed by my favorite, Jerry Goldsmith. There is a scene (a rather dramatic scene with an element of triumph in it) where news of a wonderful (so everything thinks) event is being spread across a South American country. There really isn’t any dialog in this scene, it just shows newsboys and various other people spreading the news, showing the newspaper, etc. etc. All the while this wonderful South American-sounding music builds and builds. It gave me goosebumps when I saw and heard the entire effect. I can’t explain it; it just did.
Classic Trek had some, uh, “classics”: The “fight theme”, which played whenever the cast started throwing puches and/or karate kicks, the “chase music”, whenever one starship was chasing another, and of course, that descending glissando which meant that Kirk had just taken notice of a pretty girl wandering through the scene.
Any real Trekker will now have one or more of these themes running through their their head for the rest of the day…
The shower Scene in Physco must surely be one of the best bits of music to set a scene. Even now just hearing those chords can send shivers down your spine.
Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up” becoming a chorus of despair for the characters of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia”.
Hans Zimmer’s battle theme in “Gladiator”, which was based on a waltz, as a means to illustrate both the sophistication and barbarity of the Roman empire.
The music that plays when Leon Lai guns down his targets in Wong Kar-wai’s “Fallen Angels”.
The constant playing of “California Dreamin’” by Faye Wong’s character in Wong Kar-wai’s “Chungking Express”.
2001: A Space Odyssey is filled with iconic musical moments:[ul][li]The monkeys discovering the monolith to the music of Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zaruthustra is a scene of earth-shaking revelation.[/li][li]Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube played while the ship is docking with the space station is swirling and graceful. A perfect match to the beautiful visuals.[/li][li]Ligetti’s chattering vocal music when the astronauts discover the monolith on the moon provides a wonderfully unsettling backdrop.[/ul][/li]Other favourites:[ul][li]The opening of Raging Bull showing Jake La Motta sparring alone in the ring to the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana * endows La Motta with a grace that starkly contrasts with the brutish thug potrayed in the movie. It also lends the movie sense of operatic tragedy.[/li][]The opening of Fargo where the camera pans across snowy fields to the delicate chiming chords of Carter Burwell’s score. As a car breaks through onto the screen the full orchestra booms out and the previously charming theme of the music takes on an ominous tone.[/ul]And, of course, any piece of music by Bernard Herrman, Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone, or Nino Rota is, axiomatically, perfect for the scene in question.
Very ironic for the thread, isn’t it?