From my family apocrypha, it appears music could make or break the silent movie experience. As a young bride living in Fargo, ND, my grandmother was hired to play piano at the local silent movie theatre. She left when she became pregnant, not intending to return, but when attendance fell off precipitously after the silent films became truly silent, the proprietor came to her, hat in hand, begging her to return. She did, attendance rose, happily ever after, etc. She continued to play until the silents became the talkies.
(Off topic, I know, but a great story I had to share)
I’m not saying that exactly. There is a correlation, sure, but great music is very hard to write, and most great movies don’t have great music.
For all the praise La La Land earned, I heard very little praise for the music itself. Had I liked the songs, I may have tipped over into like from dislike. OK, I’m disobeying my own preemptive strike here, but I didn’t want someone doing a drive-by and saying, “The music in The Phantom of the Opera movie was great!”
But great music is difficult to do whether it’s a musical or a film score.
Not for nothing but my grandparents had a zither playing at their wedding. Whether it played as a constant score under the entire ceremony ala The Third Man, I don’t know. However, that does bring up something interesting. Noir films are unique and defiantly follow their own set of rules, but I don’t think that I know of another movie that had the balls to play (for the most part) the theme throughout the entire movie. Even if it’s the motif for the movie, they usually just come back to it a few times. The theme music, on the zither, was played nearly throughout the movie. FTR, while it is one of my favorite movies, I haven’t seen it in a while, so forgive me if anything I said isn’t totally correct.
Also, if you like ‘odd’ movies like this, I encourage you to watch Peter Lorre films, he was a master of that kind of stuff (see: Arsenic and Old Lace, another Cary Grant film, who I could go on and on about).
The best movie music supports the story, and doesn’t hang around to fill up space. It should manipulate how you feel, but not tell you what to think. It can direct your attention, misdirect your attention, but shouldn’t obscure information. It can describe a character, but should not be a character*. You shouldn’t notice it’s there, or not there, but afterwards you should be humming it, and when you hear the piece out of context it should remind you of that scene.
*A lot of filmmakers might disagree on that one, judging by some movies I’ve seen.
I’d imagine the BBC decided that paying for people to moderate the usual sort of online squabbles that often had only tangential relevance to their programmes and issues wasn’t core business, which is fair enough. They do have other routes for comments/complaints/suggestions.
Sometimes you get Ladyhawke which is (to me) unwatchable with that Alan Parson’s 80s synth soundtrack. Good lord. I suppose in the 80s it wasn’t as bad since it was at least contemporary to its time but now it’s pseudo-feudal Europe plus 80s electric keyboard playing.
I never liked the Vangelis '80’s synth music for the period piece Chariots of Fire. Now watching the famous beach run scene is especially jarring to me because the music is dated, but in a completely different way than the movie is historical.
My #1 movie gripe is soundtracks that are too full. I’m a musician, and I love movies and movie music, but too many (most) contemporary movies have too much music. Too much underscoring. Let’s have some silence; just dialogue and environment.
We can all name examples of great movies with great music. But can the OP or anyone else name even a single great movie without music? If music were really, on the whole, detrimental, then there should be plenty of them.
Some movies do it well. The movie Garden State, with it’s eclectic soundtrack of trip-hop, adult alternative singer songwriter and indie songs hand picked by Zach Braff fit in seamlessly with the film.
OTOH, many films just come across as a string of music videos and many of the songs themselves have almost become tropes. Like the audience can’t tell it’s an emotionally powerful and uplifting scene unless Coldplay’s Fix You or The Fray’s Just Let Me Go is playing in the background.
I think IMHO, music was the only thing that made the ending of United 93 ‘epic’.
I’m putting epic in single quotes not because it was a good ending but rather John Powell’s song captured the suspense perfectly. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever come across an ending like that before.
So going by the OP, without that music, it would have been relatively bland
My pet peeve is podcasts with obtrusive background music. It usually comes off as saying something like: “Attention – prepare to feel sad about something I am about to say!!”