I thought some of the music in Groundhog Day was pretty helpful.
I don’t disagree, however, if even period music thematically fits a scene, or even an overall movie, than the “dated” music doesn’t necessarily “date” the overall work in a bad way.
IOWs, a '70s soundtrack for a 70s movie is appropriate, if the theme of the music matches the theme of the scene/movie.
American Hustle is probably my best, off-the-cuff example of where it works well.
The music for *Ladyhawke *does not suck because it is “dated.” I saw it back in the day & remember loving everything about the film. Except the music.
An excellent score (along with interesting art direction & some striking performances) can make me like a movie even if a script is incoherent. So it’s ore important to me than to the OP. And the music doesn’t have to be “correct”–it just should not suck.
No argument, but Goodfellas would have been my example.
Oh, it was always pretty terrible. But now it’s not only terrible but also jarringly anachronistic making the film (to me) unwatchable.
Aside from the opening “Swan Lake” and a bit of onstage music from Die Meistersinger, Tod Browning’s Dracula has no music. I think it’s all the more effective for it. For the past decade or so you could also buy it with a new score by Philip Glass. I don’t think it adds to it.
In answer to the question above, Paths of Glory has no score, except for the soldiers singing at the end (a scene that’s not in the original novel that I just read a few months ago). It stuck out in my mind because Stanley Kubrick became pretty famous for his choices of music in his films later.
Speaking of Kubrick, I think that the effect of 2001 would be severely diminished without the classical score he used, especially Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra that opened it and the Blue Danube during the spaceflight sequences. I just obtained a copy of a recording of the original score that Alex North wrote for the film (Kubrick had originally used pieces of classical music as “placeholders” during production – North’s score would be used later). With all due credit to North (who had written the music for Spartacus, among other films ), I think Kubrick made the right decision to go with the classical music – it’s infinitely more expressive and fitting for the scenes where it’s used. And the film would have been terrible with no music at all.
Similarly, the original Star Wars profited immensely from John Williams’ score, as did E.T. and Jurassic Park and other films he’s scored. I’ve said before that I love James Horner’s score for The Rocketeer, which also adds immensely to the film. You can get the sense of The Rocketeer’s First Flight from the score alone, without the visuals.
Forbidden Planet wouldn’t have been the same at all without Louis and Bebe Barron’s electronic “tonalities” (they weren’t members of the Hollywood musician’s union, so they couldn’t get credit for “music” as they ought to have), and I really can’t imagine any other score being appropriate for that.
Scoreless films work when you want to build tension or a mood of stillness. Even if a film otyherwise has music, doing some scenes scoreless is a good choice. But I wouldn’t say that music ruins a film, by any means. It can certainly heighten the emotional effect of ac scene, without being so intrusive as to be bullying the audience into feeling one way to the exclusion of all others. I agree with many of the choices above – Max Steiner’s scores for King Kong, Son of KLong, She, and others add to the film. Franz Waxman used to claim tat the scores alone “rescued” many of the 1940s Universal horror films. I grew up on Bernard Hermann’s music (used in Ray Harryhausen, Alfred Hitchcock, and other films, including The Day the Earth Stood Still). Dmitri Tiompkin’s scores for D.O.A. and The Guns of Navarone certainly made those films (although I could’ve done with more restraint in DOA). John Williams’ scores for many films were indispensable, and I;ve loved many other composers.
Perfect example of a generic 80s soundtrack:
Commando (James Horner)
It’s got everything - synthesizers, pan flutes, sweeping orchestral themes, even a Jamaican steel drum! Plus some dumb rock song that probably played during a “gear up” montage or over the ending credits.
90s had two types of soundtracks. Pop song mixes like Pulp Fiction or Singles. Or bombastic Hans Zimmer scores like Crimson Tideor The Rock.
Beat me to it with Flash Gordon. I loved that movie, goofy as it was, and the Queen score was great!
I thought all the big war movies had great theme songs and scores. The songs for the Godfather series, well, they could have done better. My favorite John Williams score was for Jurassic Park but I admit the one for Jaws was the most compelling.
I considered Goodfellas as an example, and rejected it; Goodfellas spanned multiple decades, with the music changing to reflect the time period. While it did this quite well, it was still more of a “moving target” than I wanted as an example.
I considered Boogie Nights, too; while it only covered two decades, the music still “moved” with the time frame of the story.
American Hustle was a much more compact time frame, story-wise, and the music selection encapsulated a more specific “feel,” and, I thought, conveyed my point more clearly. YMMV.