Today on TCM, the 1971 May-December romance drama, Summer of 42 airs, and while I can’t say much about the movie has ever appealed to me, the musical score has. It was done by Michel Legrand, one of my favorite composers and as I started to think about Legrand, I started to think about how composers can shape a film as much as a director, cinematographer, or editor. It’s a credit to the movies that so many different areas of expertise each have such a dramatic impact on the final product. I’ve often discussed my favorite directors and actors but I think it’s high time I discussed my favorite composers and the movies that stand out the most for me. Not necessarily the best movies they’ve ever worked on, but the ones where their scores stayed with me long after the movie was over.
Now with someone like Michel Legrand it’s not easy to pick a favorite. After all, he has composed dozens of scores and written some amazing songs. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg alone would be enough to get Legrand ranked among the top tier but he did so many others it boggles the mind. Still, my favorite of his remains the theme from Summer of 42. Maybe it’s because it was one of the first songs I ever learned on piano.
John Barry is probably my all around favorite composer in the history of the movies and years ago I purchased the John Barry Collection which contains everything from his early rock and roll work through his later sumptuous scores. Monty Norman may have composed the signature James Bond theme (and despite Barry’s best efforts, the courts agree) but Barry, having scored more Bond movies than anyone else, gave the series its sound. His brassy and bold music created a kind of “spy music” for any thriller of the kind. But with great composers, my favorite works of theirs don’t necessarily ever come from the best movies they worked on (see Michel Legrand above) and Barry is no exception. My two favorite Barry scores are for the dud Raise the Titanic and the romantic time travel love story, Somewhere in Time. Raise the Titanic isn’t making anyone’s list of the best movies of all time anytime soon but, damn, I love that score. Somewhere in Time is much better and has a greater following and its theme is my favorite Barry and one of my favorite pieces of music, period.
Bernard Herrmann is a lot of people’s favorite composer with everything from Citizen Kane to Psycho on his resume, it’s hard to someone who can’t name at least one of his scores as a personal favorite. It’s harder to actually pick just one, actually. So I’ll pick two: The love theme of Vertigo and the main theme of Taxi Driver. I have a CD of Herrmann’s collected scores as well and those two tracks have gotten more play than any other tracks on the album by far. And this is a case where I think his best works (these two along with the previously mentioned Citizen Kane and Psycho) also match up with my favorites.
Randy Newman has been nominated so many times that he’s taken for granted but he has composed some really remarkable work over the years. His score for Ragtime remains a personal favorite and also a score that truly fits the movie’s time period perfectly. It sounds as if the music used in the movie was actually composed in the same period in which the movie takes place. And it’s beautiful. When Vangelis collected the Oscar for Chariots of Fire over Ragtime in 1981, someone should have called the police and reported a robbery.
Jerry Goldsmith won an Oscar for The Omen and it’s a perfectly composed piece of music to fit that story. To this day, many people associate ominous chants in Latin with devil music, much to the chagrin of monasteries everywhere, I’m sure. However, it’s his two scores for Planet of the Apes and Patton that are my favorites. Following in the footsteps of Ives, Cage, and Babbitt, Goldsmith’s Avant-garde scores are stand alone triumphs. They work great in the movies as well but on their own they are complete works and I’ve listened to them as if they stand alone compositions for years.
There are so many great composers in the world of film that naming my five favorites is leaving quite a few off. There’s Korngold, Steiner, and Bernstein, both Elmer and Leonard. And Morricone! And Mancini! And Jarre! And Rota! And on and on and on. So many others that I will leave it to the comment sections to fill in the enormous gaps but I’d like to come back to this topic again and focus on how a musical score can really change the movie, taking it from good to great. With rare exceptions, when it comes to movies in the sound era, music matters, and some of the greatest film artists in history have been composers.