JULY – AUGUST  2019

A skilled composer can tell a story with sheet music in the way a director can with actors or a screenwriter can with a word processor.  But there's a dearth of great film composers to compare to the likes of John Barry, John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Vangelis and Danny Elfman.  In the main, most of the scores and songs for most film genres – be they action, romantic, thriller, indie, comedy or horror – seem so completely unmemorable.  Recent Oscar ceremonies have highlighted the lack of a killer soundtrack.  In fact, probably the most distinctive one was back in 1997, with Celine Dion warbling ‘My Heart Will Go On’ on Titanic.

While the standard of Oscar winners for Best Film is getting markedly better, the actual soundtracks are hard to recall.  Perhaps, of course, that's the point.  An overbearing or prominent soundtrack may detract from the film's images, plotline, acting and so on.   Most seem pretty unexceptional.  One exception being Pixar's sumptuous Up in 2009.  And animation (particularly the animations by Pixar) is the one area which excels with its soundtracks.  Michael Giacchino's work on Up was memorably stirring, enhancing this gorgeous film's weep-factor.  Similarly, Randy Newman's work – including the songs ‘You've Got A Friend In Me’ and ‘We Belong Together’ – on the Toy Story trilogy is outstanding.

However, gone, it seems, are the days when you leave a cinema humming the score.  John Williams, in particular, was a master of the unforgettable soundtrack, composing the background music to Jaws ("Der-dum der-dum dum dum dum dum"), Star Wars ("Der der der, der der-der, der der-derrrr"), and Raiders of the Lost Ark ("do do-do do doo do do, do do-do do doo do do") during a giddy two decades – 1970s and 1980s – for film soundtracks.

And then there's Quentin Tarantino, whose use of music on Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown was undeniably ingenious.  (How much different would the ear-lopping scene have been if some solemn or even manic strings had been used instead of the humorous ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’?).  However, Tarantino, by rifling through his record collection and selecting his favourite songs, may have sounded a death knell for original material on movies.  Why bother creating new songs when there's so much pop music out there you can use?  And film scores feel sloppy as a result. 

  It makes you hanker for Harold Faltermeyer's synth work on Beverly Hills Cop and it definitely makes you pine for the rousing soundtracks on 1980's teen gems such as Pretty In Pink (featuring OMD's ‘If You Leave’), Risky Business (featuring Tangerine Dream) and The Breakfast Club (featuring Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget about Me)’).  But, then, as long as crunch-bang-wallop bombast predominates in action fodder such as Transformers and Captain America, there seems little hope of a full-blown film soundtrack renaissance.  Maybe we just need better films.…

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