Songs perfectly matched to a movie scene

[Maeglin]

Many good choices so far.

I have two additional pics, both from the 1998 version of Elizabeth.

William Byrd’s motet Domine secundum actum meum was brilliantly rearranged by Hirschfelder ran during the “Night Of The Long Knives,” a palace purge. The arrangement and performance are luminous, and the contrast with the brutality of the event depicted onscreen is chilling.

Likewise the segue in the end of Elizabeth between Elgar’s Nimrod Variation and the Introitus of Mozart’s Requiem. Elizabeth’s former identity is stripped away: the noble young lady is replaced by Elizabeth Regina. As the requiem unfolds, the watcher can only muse that Elizabeth is dead, long live the queen.

[Trunk]

Golden Years was a great choice for the dance scene in A Knight’s Tale.

@Albert Rose

One of my favorites was in Almost Famous, when the lead singer (Russell Hammond, played by Billy Crudup) had been behaving atrociously and alienating the rest of the band. On the bus ride, Elton John’s Tiny Dancer played as one by one, everyone starts singing along, with even Russell joining in, and through the song, he apologizes and is forgiven. A beautiful scene from a great movie.

That movie is filled with great musical moments. It’s practical a study in matching music to film. But the Tiny Dancer scene is probably the best.

[Wee_Bairn]

I may be in the minority, but I loathe when movies have group sing-a-longs- UGH!

[zagloba]

Speaking of Apocalypse Now, I’ve always thought The Ride of the Valkyries was nicely paired with the helicopter attack.

[Cervaise]

@Stranger On A Train

The use of The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Take Five” in Pleasantville, in the diner scene where people start asking about the previously empty books in the library, is also extraordinary.

Seconded, this was going to be my nomination (damn you for beating me to it! ;)). It’s utterly perfect on many levels: it’s not just appropriate to the period, it reflects a sense of radical discovery and change within the period, making it the ideal thematic counterpoint to the scene’s actual content; it has exactly the right nervous energy mirroring the characters’ emotions; and if that weren’t enough, the editing of the scene flawlessly follows Take Five’s structure, its build, its rising and falling tensions, its pauses, its punctuation…

I recall, when I first saw the movie, getting that prickly-skin feeling when I recognized the tune and how they were using it, and a building adrenaline rush as the perfect balance of the scene and music was maintained all the way through to the end. Awe-inspiring, and a big reason I’m a real apologist for a movie that otherwise has some significant flaws. In many ways, that scene makes the movie.