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From Finnish Tango to Spaghetti Westerns: Classic moments of European Cinema Soundtracks

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Forget Pancake Day, Star Wars Day, Bagpipe Day, Cinnamon Bun Day, Doris Day, Dr Who Day, Bagpuss Day, Suströmming Day, Pokemon Day, Robin Day, because..

Today, Sunday 12 November is EUROPEAN ARTHOUSE CINEMA DAY

And 700 cinemas in 40 different countries will be celebrating the glories of European film-making.

How do I know this? Because the cinema where I am a volunteer, Bio Reflexen in the Stockholm suburb of Kärrtorp, is one of the 700 cinemas. My colleagues and I find the whole thing a tad OTT. We are all enthusiastic cinephiles and it is second nature to us to want to show the best new European films.

Whatever! A celebration of European Cinema is an excellent idea. (And that of course includes England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Eire.)

So, I have a question for you:

Which are your favourite soundtracks from European films?

There are so many films where the music creates such an atmosphere.

Betty Blue. The Wicker Man. Fellini’s Roma. For a fistful of dollars. A Man and a Woman. Suspiria. Chariots of Fire. Branagh’s Belfast and its use of Van Morrison.

No restrictions on historical period: you can go back as far as you like. Even modern soundtracks written for “silent” films.
(I was lucky enough once to catch Lambchop performing live to accompany Murnau’s silent film Sunrise.)

No genre restrictions! Kids films. Horror films. Cartoons. Erotica. Westerns.

And I’ll even be broad-minded about European directors making films outside Europe.

Herzog’s Fitzgarraldo. Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point. At a pinch, I may even accept Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Paul!

I am going to get things rolling by mentioning one of my favourite films from 2023: the great Finnish director, Aki Kaurismäki’s tragi-comedy, Fallen Leaves. Along with Celine Song’s debut, Past Lives, it is one of the best, and one of the most uplifting films of the year.

Kaurismäki has always thought carefully about his use of music to contribute to a rather melancholy, retro mood to his films. Never more so than here. The romance between Ansa and Hopalla begins when they first catch sight of each other in a karaoke bar. A very old-fashioned karaoke bar where they mostly play Finnish tango music.

Please tell us about your European soundtrack favourites!

Sergio Leone, John Barry, Vangelis, Olavi Virta, Yann Tiersen, Nino Rota…..

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Comments

  3. Great thread. My initial thought was “The good, the bad and the ugly” soundtrack, which was a hit of course, and I loved it. But I’m going with the soundtrack from “Un coeur en hiver” – all Ravel trios. Just perfectly captures the atmosphere and brooding sadness of the story. Plus you get Emmanuelle Béart doing a pretty good job of pretending to play the violin. I’ve confessed before she got out of a taxi right in front of me in Av. Georges V. I wasn’t right for a week.

  4. Earlier this year I watched Gagarine, a modest film about a space-obsessed young man living in a block of flats in Paris which are about to be torn down. I liked the film well enough, but was really struck by its atmospheric, mostly electronic soundtrack which I have revisited a few times since:

    • One of my favourite LPs consists of covers of Nina Rota music interpreted by a wide range of musicians, including the late Carla Bley and Bill Frisell.

      Here’s Jaki Byard’s contribution, the opening track :

      …and here’s the Dolce Vita Suite from the same LP:

  6. Betty Blue and The Big Blue are the two original soundtracks I listen to most. Both gorgeous.

    But Morricone is the soundtrack maestro. So many great moments to choose from. If you look up the dictionary definition of the Portugese word “saudade” it says: Saudade is an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone. It is often associated with a repressed understanding that one might never encounter the object of longing ever again. If you had to express that feeling using only music, you need look no further than Morricone. It’s captured to absolute perfection in his soundtrack to Cinema Paradiso and also in the lesser-known Tornatore film Malèna.
    I love this clip. It’s set in Sicily in 1940 but, apart from the clothes, it could easily be any small town in southern Italy today.

    Incidentally, I’ve never come across anyone else with the name Ennio.

    • Morricone likely is the master.

      It’s the variation in styles over his career that makes Morricone stand out.

      From Chi Mai and Come Maddalena in Maddalena…


      …which was remixed into a disco song in 1978. And on to the best piece of music in any of the Dollars Trilogy…

      It’s impossible to imagine a spaghetti western and not hear Morricone’s soundtrack of piano, guitar, gunshots, whip cracks and whistling. But could still, in My Name Is Nobody, come up with the jolliest piece of music you’re ever likely to hear…

      • You’ve really increased my knowledge of Morricone there, @Viva Avalanche. Thanks!

        I really to listen to a little more of music. That will keep me out of mischief!

        “Morricone composed for Hollywood directors such as Don Siegel, Mike Nichols, Brian De Palma, Barry Levinson, Oliver Stone, Warren Beatty, John Carpenter, and Quentin Tarantino. He has also worked with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Mauro Bolognini, Giuliano Montaldo, Roland Joffé, Roman Polanski, Henri Verneuil, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.”

        John Carpenter! Ooops! Not European.

        Surprising. Carpenter is no slouch at writing his own music.

  10. Popoh Vuh’s theme for Herzog’s “Aguirre: Wrath of God”. The opening tableau sets the folly of the Conquistadors against the sound of astral melancholy.

    • What an astonishing opening scene @Pessoa. I’ve never seen it before and I was totally gobsmacked. Astral melancholy indeed.

      I googled. Popol Vuh and Herzog did several films together. Here’s Herzog talking about Florian Fricke of Popol Vuh and their collaboration.

      Herzog has quite a career and has directed a lot of opera in addition to his film-making.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Herzog

      Once one gets googling about Herzog, there’s a lot to watch and enjoy.

  11. Hooray! This thread is the next best thing thing to Eurovision.

    And now the entry from Bosnia Hercegovina. A wonderful piece of music by Goran Bregović from Emir Kusturica’s Time of the Gipsies.

    “Time of the Gypsies (Serbo-Croatian: Дом за вешање, Dom za vešanje, lit. ’Home for Hanging’) is a 1988 Yugoslav coming-of-age fantasy crime drama directed by Emir Kusturica. Filmed in Romani and Serbo-Croatian.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_the_Gypsies

    They collaborated on several films. Here’s some rollicking Balkan brass from Underground (1994)

    And a Balkan tango from the same film.

    Underground won the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 1994.

    What a career Bregović has had!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goran_Bregovi%C4%87

    I’ve just discovered he worked with Iggy Pop for the soundtrack of Kusturica’s Arizona Dream (!993)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF0Zc0MGB1c

    • Not Albanian! I am disappointed, Hubert.

      What an extraordinary track that is. It catapulted Anton Karas to international stardom.

      Wikipedia tells the story very well:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Karas

      “In the summer of 1948, director Carol Reed was preparing to shoot The Third Man in Vienna and was staying in the Hotel Sacher, along with many of the British elements of the Allied Control Commission for Austria. Robert Baty, the young son of the Director of Education, C.W. Baty, was tasked with showing the director around the city. On the second day, they stopped at a Heuriger and heard Karas playing the zither in the background. This is described in Karas’ L.A. Times/Reuters obituary which states that:

      Reed, desperately searching for a theme tune … chanced on the tavern in Vienna’s Grinzing wine-growing district. Struck by the simple zither melodies, Reed asked a stunned Karas if he would compose the music for the film. Karas protested, saying he had never actually written music. As Karas later told the story, the director insisted and invited Karas to England. The Austrian became homesick and asked to return. Reed told him he could; when he had written the music. Under this pressure, Karas wrote his Harry Lime theme.

      The film—with the music a contributing factor—was a success, and Karas’ life was changed drastically.[4] As a result, he toured globally and performed for many celebrities, including members of the British Royal family. Princess Margaret invited him to London’s Empress Club, where he played twice a week while in London. He also appeared before Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, members of the Swedish royal family, and Pope Pius XII.”

      The first few bars of “The Third Man Theme” are engraved on his grave marker in Vienna.”

      • Karas’s music was also responsible for film director Guy Hamilton’s break as a director. He related the story in Leonard Mosley’s book about the making of “The Battle Of Britain”. It went sort of like this…

        Hamilton was under contract to Alexander Korda as an assistant director, and was itching to get a film as director, but Korda kept putting him off, as assistant directors were harder to come by and more valuable to the studio than another director. Every time the subject was broached, it was “Well, wait and see. Do one more picture and maybe we’ll talk about it.”

        He assisted Carol Reed in making “The Third Man”, and a near-finished cut was sent to the studio for approval. A telegram was sent in response along the lines of “Film looks great, but for God’s sake get rid of that bloody zither music.” The music was kept in, and was a major part in the success of the film.

        Hamilton pocketed the telegram, and later approached the studio once more about getting his own film. Brushed off yet again, he suggested to Korda that if that telegram got out, and it was revealed the head of a major studio almost scuppered a film’s success, it could look bad. He received a telegram reply, which said “Congratulations to our newest director, we have a script we think may interest you.”

  13. I mentioned that I saw Lambchop (at Söder teater, Stockhom) performing a live soundtrack to Murnau’s silent masterpiece Sunrise.

    And to my delight I just found this.

    The YT notes by the contributor are useful.

    “In the fall of 2004, Lambchop played a series of concerts in Europe, accompanying Friedrich Willhelm Murnau’s classic silent movie “Sunrise – A Song Of Two Humans”.

    The band performed with their backs to the audience, facing the screen.
    Most of the songs performed during the screening can be found on their brilliant double CD release “Awcmon/Noyoucmon” and were performed for the first time during the “Lambchop plays Sunrise” performances. The included recording is from their Potsdam, Germany performance. “

  15. I am horrified that we have got this far and no one has mentioned Goblin’s music for Dario Argento’s horror classic Suspiria from 1977. I saw it the week it came out at a swanky Odeon just round the corner from Cambridge Circus in Soho. I think they’d just had a new sound system installed and they turned the volume up to 11. I sat there like a terrified Italian rabbit throughout the whole film.

    The combination of Argento’s very sumptuous, lavish imagery and that music is magnificent.

    There was a remake recently. Quite unnecessary!

    Not really valid here as it was an America film but… How odd that Mike Oldfield’s Tubular tune became the theme for the Exorcist.

    We visited Legoland, Windsor at Halloween a few years back and they were playing it on the PA. Very spooky indeed.

    • Great shout Kai. I really like Profondo Rosso too.

      This may be the point for the regular reminder that Claudio Simonetti not only did all this wonderful stuff, but also part wrote the song Gioca a Jouer, translated into English as Superman (a hit for good old Black Lace).

    • Suspiria is a much better film on account of the music.

      Suspiria is not a subtle film and Goblin is not subtle music but Argento clearly realised how one best suited the other. Anytime there’s anything witchy happening, that piece of music crashes into the film without warning.

      On a big television and with a sound system cranked up, Suspiria’s mix of horror, Goblin and shockingly vivid colours is still marvellous.

      And you’re right…the remake was wholly unnecessary.

  18. Here’s a famous scene from Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” – such a beautiful trumpet melody (and yes, terrible sync, but Fellini wasn’t concerned about such things so you shouldn’t be either). Stay to the end of this short clip for a magical cinema moment

    Here’s Sharon Freeman’s arrangement of that tune from the aforementioned Hal Wilner produced album “Amarcord Nino Rota”. Go to 31.59 to hear Chris Stein play the tune on guitar and then Debbie Harry’s ethereal vocal comes in at 33.11

    And if you’re really keen here’s my own arrangement

  19. Fellini’s “Amarcord” (the word “amarcord” is Rimini region dialect for “I remember”)

    The first 11 or so minutes of this film contain, firstly, 3 great themes, the romantic title theme, the brass band, and the accordion. When the barber joins in with the brass band playing the flute at 4.14 it’s a great combination of non-diegetic music (ie soundtrack music) and diegetic music (ie music the characters on screen can hear). And I have no idea how they did this back in 1973.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MkwzA9Dyu0

    Here’s those first 3 tracks on their own. I love this music

    • Not European, thus displaying anarchic disregard for this thread’s premise, but what a great film it is! I loved it so much as a teenage boy I even read the book! One would have predicted great things for Michael Beck (Swan) on the strength of it. I thought he could have played Jim Morrison. Instead his only other big film after that was Xanadu. Whereas James Remar (Ajax) had a far more illustrious career. I don’t recall the soundtrack much, except for Joe Walsh’s In The City, which was a superb choice to end the film. “Somewhere out on that horizon… “

  21. The great Greek composer and pianist Eleni Karaindrou has written the scores for so many of Theo Angelopoulos’s films. Most of them are available on ECM records, which is always a good sign.

    Some examples:

    Dust of Time
    Eternity and a Day
    The Suspended Step of the Stork

    … and my favourite, the classic “Ulysses’ Gaze”:

  22. I think we can all agree that Terence Davies’s Distant Voices, Still Lives is the best European film ever made and its soundtrack is pretty marvellous too. Here are the songs it features:

    I Get The Blues When It Rains 
    There’s A Man Goin’ Around    
    My Yidishe Mamme  
    In The Bleak Mid-Winter 
    Limelight   
    Taking A Chance On Love (Excerpt)   
    Barefoot Days     
    (‘Cause I Love You) That’s-A-Way    
    Buttons And Bows  
    A Pastoral Symphony (No.3) By R.Vaughn Williams (an Excerpt From The Last Movement) 
    A Hymn To The Virgin By Benjamin Britten     
    The Birthday Of The Little Princess 
    Dreamboat   
    Brown Skin Gal    
    That Old Gang Of Mine   
    I Want A Girl (Just Like The Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)      
    Mississippi Honeymoon   
    I Wanna Be Around    
    I Love Ladies     
    On The Road To Anywhere 
    Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing    
    The Isle Of Innisfree   
    The Candy Store On The Corner 
    My Thanks To You For All You Mean To Me   
    O Mein Papa 
    O Waly Waly

    Here’s the dynamic opening sequence featuring the shipping forecast, a front door, a staircase and banister, the song I Get The Blues When it Rains sung by someone, a front door again from an excitingly different perspective and the song There’s A Man Going Round Taking Names sung by Jessye Norman. If this doesn’t get you jumping up and down on your sofa in a Tom Cruise stylee I truly don’t know what will.

    • You certainly know how to get us interested @Gary.

      That opening scene from the film is superb.

      I was delighted to discover that someone has made a playlist with many of the songs you mention.

      There are a lot of enthusiasts who do this kind of thig on Spotify. Here’s a superb playlist for Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves made by someone called Joonas.

      One of my favourite tracks is by Toshitake Shinohara. He’s a Japanese singer who lives in Finland who translates Finnish songs into Japanese. It works a treat.

        • Honestly @Gary once your start rooting around on Spotify and YerTube for soundtrack stuff, the jewels to be discovered are quite wonderful. There are some real enthusiasts out there.

          This one for Ida is good too although he got a bit carried away.

          The again, I’m not to grumble about him including a lot of vintage Coltrane

  23. Two from me.

    Restless Natives, which is a Big Country fan’s dream movie soundtrack..

    And Local Hero. It’s a wonderful film, and Knopfler (and Rafferty) deliver with the music.


  24. Great soundtrack from King Creosote. I must however in the spirit of full disclosure mention that a dear friend had a hand in the making of this utterly wonderful film.
    I urge everyone to watch it if they get the opportunity. It’s a wee gem.

    • Excellent choice @Rigid Digit, A completely new name to me.

      He did a lot of soundtracks!

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Budd

      “In 1971, still in his early twenties, he composed one of his best known scores, the music for the film Get Carter.[1] The film’s budget reputedly allowed only £450 for the score, but he overcame this restriction by using only three musicians, including himself playing electric piano and harpsichord simultaneously. In 1981 The Human League covered the film’s theme on their album Dare.”

  26. If you’re going to do a comedy film about a 70s band trying to hit the big time secound time around, amke sure you have decent writers (Clement and La Frenais – check), a decent cast (Tim Spall, Jimmy Nail, Bill Nighy, Billy Conneley, plus – check) and get some decent songwriters in for the songs (Chris Difford, Russ Ballard, Clive Langer, and Mick Jones -check)

    From the pen of Mick Jones (not the Leeds Utd player, or The Clash plank spanker):

    • Oddly enough @moselymoles, when I mentioned my euro-soundtrack quest to my colleagues at Reflexen, they recommended Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours Blue Music is by Zbigniew Preisner.

      Another Polish film with a fine soundtrack is Ida.

      There is some splendid jazz.

  28. To my surprise my Swedish Reflexen pals mentioned several British films with fab soundtracks.

    David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia – Score by Maurice Jarre

    Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man! Songs by Alan Price

  29. When I mentioned Betty Blue at the start of this thread, I had no idea who composed the music.

    Then I discovered that it was a Lebanese-French composer: Gabriel Yared who had won an Oscar for The English Patient directed by Anthony Mingella.

    From a YouTube channel called Classical Music and Soundtracks (I’ll be investigating), here’s an overview of the score.

    I mentioned him yesterday at Bio Reflexen and they named his superb soundtrack for The Talented Mr Ripley.

    Here’s Gabriel at the joanna with The Budapest Symphony Orchestra.

    And a French suite based on the film music.

    Here is Yared talking about his life and composing the Patient Soundtrack. Fascinating bloke! A superb interview. Well worth your time.

    • Excellent info, KFD. I loved the soundtrack to Betty Blue so much (still do) that I bought Yared’s soundtrack to L’ Amant (a film I’ve never seen) on the strength of it after noticing his name on the cover. I was disappointed, didn’t find it anywhere near as wonderful as Betty Blue and never bothered investigating him any further. I had no idea until now that he did the soundtrack for The Talented Mr Ripley, which is one of those films I’m happy to watch again and again. I must have seen it at least half a dozen times. I want to watch it again now, with headphones!
      (And I look forward to watching that interview with him later today.)

      Incidentally, I’ve just remembered a time, many aeons ago, when my niece was staying with me. Betty Blue was playing on the stereo and she came into the room and asked what music it was. “It’s so beautiful” she said in rapt wonder. She must have been all of 10 years old at the time.

      • That is impressive@Gary. Your niece is clearly a very discriminating lass.

        It is a wonderful moment when a child or young person, who hasn’t been told what they should or shouldn’t like, reacts so positively to a work of art.

        Our son (now 20 year old!) is currently studying at a “folkhögskola” in a small town called Arvika. He never tells me about stuff he likes. Talking to your parents about films, music etc is just not the thing to do. A few weeks ago he rang home and to my surprise asked me “Have you seen Peaky Blinders? It’s totally brilliant.” I was rather chuffed about that.

        As you noticed, I posted that Yared interview on Facebook too. It is superb. Once again, YT came up trumps with something I wasn’t even looking for.

        • Just watched the interview. KFD. Very interesting man. I was surprised to hear he worked with Hungarian singer Márta Sebestyén. I know of her from her collaboration with Deep Forest.

  30. Here’s a another composer whose name was new to me , but not his work: Evgueni Galparine who did the music for Gagarine, as mentioned above by @Sewer Robot.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgueni_Galperine

    The film based on a real housing estate, was a great favourite at the Reflexen film club. Magical realism at its best!

    Evgueni Galparine has done the music for several other films not least of which was Andrey Zvyagintsev’s stupendous film Loveless.

    A very convincing and extremely bleak picture of life in modern Russia.

    I just found out that he also did the music for another excellent Russian film: Beanpole.

    Once again , bleak as hell.

    Beanpole make DuCool favourite the Turin Horse look like Steptoe and Son.

  31. Aki Kaurismäki is (like Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, Edgar Wright and many others) a director with a large and interesting record collection that he uses in his movies. Pedro Almodovar, who certainly deserves a mention here, is another, and he has a superb ear for passionate, OTT ballads.

    Here’s one from High Heels( Spanish: Tacones lejanos, meaning “Distant Heels”)

    Pienso en ti by Luz Casal.

    One more: Estrella Morente with Volver (Return)

  32. We haven’t had a single Swedish film yet. Here’s a scene from the wonderful Sven Klang’s Combo from 1976, which was one of the first Scando films I ever saw. At the National Film Theatre at Waterloo in the late 1970s.

    Set in 1958, it’s the story of how a young, dynamic sax player from Stockholm with a bebop obsession rocks the boat for a dance-band in Skåne.

    After observing the vibrant nightlife here, it’s easy to understand why as a young chap, I wanted to relocate to Sweden!

    https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Klangs_kvintett#Medverkande

  33. Two very synthy soundtracks that deserve a mention.

    Vangelis’s theme for Chariots of Fire (1981)

    Much of the rest of the score is songs by Gilbert and Sullivan and suchlike.

    William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977). Ok, an America film, but the music was by the mighty Tangerine Dream.

    Synthesisers must have really revolutionised the writing of soundtracks. Not least the cost.

    As mentioned, John Carpenter very successfully wrote music for his own movies. Are there any European directors who wrote music for their own films?

  34. One director who, if not a composer himself, was very actively involved in the composition of the music for his movies was Jacques Demy. His composer of choice was Michel LeGrand who scored many movies and was uncle to Beach House’s Victoria Legrand.

    Two of Demy’s films must be on this thread. The light, fluffy, colourful, often rather camp Young Girls of Rochefort.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znlKuELSGXM

    And it features Gene Kelly!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YLVmvWdkS4

    For preposterous escapism, it take some beating.

    The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a total contrast. All the dialogue is sung and the story of two young lovers split up when he gets called up for military service is a real tearjerker.

    I was lucky enough to see it a few years back on a big screen. During the final scene where Genevieve and Guy meet up years later, I got some dust in my eye and needed a handkerchief. The cleaning in Swedish cinemas really is not up to scratch.

    What a superb piece of cinema that is. I confess! I am a big softy who gets a bit weepy over melodramatic French musicals.

    Michel Legrand had many hits under his belt.
    Not least this one from the Thomas Crown Affair.

    He was jazz pianist as well as a composer and played with Miles Davis.

    Th YT notes are worth reading:

    “French pianist, composer and arranger Michel Legrand made a name for himself in the mid fifties with a string of easy listening mood music albums, with titles like Bonjour Paris, Holiday in Rome, Castles in Spain, and the popular I Love Paris. But he was also a jazz fan and when a payment dispute arose with Columbia Records a deal was struck: he would be allowed to make a jazz album, on his own terms, with his pick of musicians.

    Legrand Jazz was the result, recorded at three sessions with an impressive cast of US jazz musicians, such as Ben Webster, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, and Hank Jones, and including Columbia’s new star Miles Davis, the only player whose name was featured on the LP front cover alongside Legrand’s. This would be Miles’ final appearance as a sideman until the comeback years of the 1980s.”

    • I’ve never really taken to Wes Anderson much. I know a lot of people who adored Grand Budapest Hotel, but “trying too hard to be quirky just for the sake of being quirky” is my general reaction to his films.

  37. I recently finished reading Jans B. Wager’s book Jazz And Cocktails – Rethinking Race and the Sound of Film Noir. A fair few pages are devoted to the film Elevator To The Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’echafaud 1957).

    ” Twenty-four-year-old Louis Malle’s first feature film, Elevator features two couples and gestures toward late classic Hollywood film noir and forward to the French New Wave. Classic Hollywood film noir provides a dark but familiar outline for the older protagonists’ pessimistic tale of illicit love and murder, while the careless younger couple evoke the protagonists in Breathless (A bout de soufflé’s 1960).”

    The soundtrack is by Miles Davis.

    • That’s a fascinating description of the film @Alias. I must look out for that book.

      Here’s a clip of Miles watching the film and improvising as he goes along. At the end Louis Malle (only 24 year old) explains to a reporter what is happening. Not many films have a soundtrack recorded in this way!

      If we are in France and talking about jazz, it really is time to mention Bertrand Tavernier’s Round Midnight, one of the very best films I’ve seen about jazz. Dexter Gordon is superb as the American musician who flees to France to straighten himself out and is befriended by a young French jazz fan.

      • ‘Round Midnight is one of my favourite films and a brilliant soundtrack. Dexter Gordon should absolutely, definitely and without any reservation have won an Oscar for his amazing performance, but instead it went to Paul Newman for The Color of Money.

          • I think he was the first African American to win an Oscar for best soundtrack (for ‘Round Midnight).

            From Bertrand Tavernier’s sleeve notes on the album:

            As Herbie Hancock and I were quietly strolling about the set of the Blue Note, which was under construction at the Epinay Studios, he voiced his deep concern over the picture’s sound. He had every reason to feel nervous. I had decided that all the music in the film would be recorded live: we would never use the playback system. It would be the first time that the whole score would be done this way in a fictional feature film.

            Suddenly we heard the soft and heavily accented voice of master set designer Alexandre Trauner (who created the sets of so many classics of the French and American cinema, including Quai des Brumes, The Children of Paradise, The Apartment, and The Man Who Would Be King). He assured us, “I’m well aware of the dynamics of sound. I did the first talking picture with René Clair back in 1930….” There was a weighty pause. After such a statement, no one dared to express even the slightest doubt. Finally, when the first dailies came in. Herbie was enchanted. The sound quality was so extraordinary that he marveled, “If only every jazz club could have such good acoustics!”

      • The Miles clip’s not there. I would be interested to see how it compares to the description in the book, which is quite academic. One for film studies students and buffs too.

        I’m going to have to watch Round Midnight again. Martin Scorsese plays Goodley in it. If American films were included in this thread, I’m sure plenty of his films would feature.

        A lot of American jazzers were very well received in France. The Art Ensemble Of Chicago did the soundtrack to Les Stances A Sophie, from which this is magnificent.

        • Well @Alias. This thread has had such a lot of interest that I think it is definitely a great idea to do one on North American soundtracks.

          And then there’s Asian soundtracks. South American soundtracks……

          Lots of possibilities!

  39. I suspect you are wondering: has no one mentioned Ingmar Bergman?

    Here is Scott Walker to help put things right.

    And a very perceptive essay about Ingmar and his love for classical music.

    https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/universe/unrequited-love-music

    “If I was forced to choose between losing my hearing or losing my sight, I would keep my hearing. I can think of nothing worse than having music taken away from me.’ This confession by Ingmar Bergman is rather surprising, coming from a filmmaker renowned for the astonishing beauty of his imagery.”

    He was not too keen on pop and jazz. You’ll have your work cut out finding any ABBA tunes in his movies

    This bloke really puts the boot in!

    https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/lup/publication/58555557-24c1-44da-9c4a-2c62bcd31161

    “This article explores the recurrent use of jazz music in some of the early films of the Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman: Kris/Crisis (1946), Till glädje/ To Joy (1949), Sommaren med Monika/Summer with Monika (1953), En lektion i kärlek/A Lesson in Love (1954), Kvinnodröm/Dreams (1955) and Tystnaden/The Silence (1963). In these films jazz is presented as derived from the corporeal body, as powerfully erotic and as culturally alien; it is also directly connected to a potentially destructive form of ‘modern’ female sexuality that is socially damaging. In each of the films this leads to social embarrassment, personal failure or even tragedy for the characters involved. The article considers the relationship between Bergman’s use of jazz to express distaste for modernity in relation to the cultural and social transformation of Sweden during the post-war period, and argues that the director’s attitude to the genre reflected a broader, often racist, approach to American popular culture generally and to African American music specifically within Swedish intellectual life.”

  40. Is anyone else experiencing difficulties reading or contributing to this thread?

    On my iPhone running 16.7.2, and using Safari, I get a WordPress error at the top of the screen, and then the thread disappears, and an error message saying that it has encountered a problem repeatedly appears. Same thing happens using another browser.

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