The music is just another actor?

The Graduate
The Sterile Cuckoo
M*A*S*H*
The Clint Eastwood sphagetti westerns

American Graffiti

Some excellent choices! Thank you all.

I woke up this morning whistling "The Bridge Over The River Kwai" tune. I know the song was not written for the movie but still it really is a character in the movie.

That Clint Eastwood movie whistle thing - love that!

I watched "Last of the Mohicans" last night. The music was awesome.

"Kramer vs. Kramer" featured wonderful classical pieces. I purchased that soundtrack.

Pirates of the Carribean /At Worlds End - Hans Zimmer

Deliverance

For use of pop music, I'll also add The Royal Tenenbaums.

There's also that wonderfully cheesy use of Chopin in John Woo's Face/Off where the evil Nicholas Cage, behind the face of the good John Travolta, is dining with (and seducing) Joan Allen. The scene is set to Chopin's "Raindrop" Prelude, which begins and ends in D-Flat Major but has a middle section in C#-Minor. D-Flat and C-Sharp are the same key, just as Nicholas Cage and John Travolta have the same face; the piece has an inner section in the minor key contained within two outer sections in the major key, just as the evil Nicholas Cage is hidden beneath the exterior of the good John Travolta.

The Magnificent Seven
Bridge over the River Kwai
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (Forbidden Colors, Seed and the Sower)
The Great Escape
Edward Scissorhands (still makes me weird/sad hearing it)
Repo Man (world falls apart to american punk)
Forrest Gump (this one is a little weird because the 'acting' is better if you recognise the tune)
Liquid Sky (done on a fairlight CMI and really twists your perceptions)
Gallipoli (the bit that used Jean Michel Jarre)
Clockwork Orange (Wendy Carlos doing Moogified Beethoven to Singing in the Rain and Erika Elgen's 'I want to marry a lighthouse keeper' - sinister to bizarre and juxtaposition aplenty)
Dr Zhivago
Dead man walking
Good Morning, Vietnam
Dogs in space (70s aussie indie/punk with iggy and eno running as Michael Hutchence's co-star)

Then there's the theremin soaked weirdness of Forbidden Planet and The Day The Earth Stood Still

and what about Baraka and Koyanisqaatsi? The music is much more than an actor, it's virtually collaborating with your mind to write the script.

Re: The music is just another actor?

The Third Man

The Graduate

Pulp Fiction

Re: The music is just another actor?


I've been thinking about this question. I don't think the music's been an actor in our choices - it's something else but I'm not sure what to call it. For example, the pool scene in the Graduate (Dustin underwater and S&G's Sound Of Silence).

I keep thinking of the different impact that scene would have if you replaced SOS with Nirvana's 'Smells like teen spirit' or Boston's 'More than a feeling' or Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyrie' or Robert Fripp's 'Haaden Two' or 'I'm forever blowing bubbles'.

Music in film is an emotional signifier. It informs you of things that only a combination of backstory, acting talent and effectivescript writing could. I think it can be a psychic channel to a character's emotional state. But in the Jaws example it's something else. It subliminally magnifies the tension and dread already implicit in the onscreen action. I don't think an actor can do any of those things I've mentioned.

What's more music can be used as Spakfilla (sorry - don't know a non-Oz term for that) for cinema that doesn't stand up on it's own, making up for wooden acting, bad writing, poor direction and implausible story lines.


I'VE GOT IT!!!!! Music in film is salt in food.

It can bring out the flavour

It can override the flavour and make your mouth catsbum

It can be the only flavour in a tasteless dish, making it edible but unsatisfying.

Jack Nitzche did the music for Cutter's Way. I think it provided form to the the narrative..

I agree with Hinge for what it's worth.

Always liked Crossroads, a music movie...