Tag: Academy Awards

Film Review: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

Take two of Hollywood’s biggest stars and one of its finest directors, plonk them on a lush tropical island surrounded by rocky outcrops and rolling waves and arm them with an interesting script. What is the likely outcome? A damn fine movie, that’s what. Certainly in this case, it is.

I’m always fascinated by a film with a minimal cast. The actors involved have an even greater weight of responsibility than usual in that there’s no one else for the audience to focus on. On the other hand, there are no other performers to point the finger at if the thing tanks. For the actors, it must be both terrifying and supremely massaging to their egos. “You mean I’m in virtually every shot? Yes! That’s just what my fans will want. Of course I’ve got the talent and the screen presence to pull it off. How dare you suggest otherwise!”

Fortunately, the talent in this 1957 John Huston classic is without question. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr – two gifted actors who apparently clicked immediately and went on to enjoy a lifelong friendship.

Mitchum plays US Marine, Corporal Allison who, after several days adrift in a rubber raft following a skirmish with the Japanese, finds himself washed up on an island in the South Pacific during the Second World War. A quick scout around reveals the island to be abandoned save for Sister Angela, a young nun played by Kerr, who has been there just a few days following a failed attempt to evacuate the priest already there. At first, Allison is relieved to be on the island where there is plenty of fish and fruit to eat and shelter from the tropical weather. He admits its not a bad place to wait out the war. But it isn’t long before a detachment of Japanese return to the island to set up a meteorological camp thereby forcing the Marine and the nun to hide out in a cave up in the surrounding hills.

There’s a wonderfully tense scene some time later when, sympathetic towards Sister Angela’s inability to eat the raw fish that he catches, Allison sneaks into the Japanese camp one night to steal something more palatable for her. It’s a beautifully shot and paced sequence by a master of cinematic storytelling – nothing fancy, nothing over the top, just measured excitement.

Meanwhile, the nights remind them that the war continues as flashes of naval gunfire light up the horizon. Then one day, the Japanese leave the island as quickly as they had come and the two celebrate their unexpected liberty.  Allison gets drunk on a bottle of sake left behind by a Japanese officer and foolishly declares his love for Sister Angela as well as denouncing her holy devotion as a waste of time. His natural urges rising to the surface, he can’t see why their “Garden of Paradise” situation doesn’t become fully instinctive – if you know what I mean. Sister Angela runs away from him and spends the night outside in a storm, becoming sick as a result. The following morning, Allison, full of repentance and shame, finds her with a fever at the same time the Japanese return to the island. Once again they are forced to seek refuge in the cave. Allison, feeling completely responsible for Sister Angela’s condition,  sneaks into the Japanese camp again to get blankets for her but he has to knife a solider to death when he is discovered. This alerts the detachment to an enemy presence and consequently, they begin a thorough search of the island.

To find out what happens next, I’ll encourage – nay recommend – you to watch the film yourself.

The two leads (and for ninety-five percent of the film you’ll see nobody else) are just perfectly cast and they own their time on screen. Between them, they’ve made many great movies and would go on to make two more together (The Sundowners and The Grass Is Greener – both in 1960). They’ve both given numerous wonderful performances as well over their careers and I don’t think either ever gave a better performance than they did here. Mitchum’s Marine is big and bruising, capable of dishing out death and yet kind and tender too; a simple man but a decent one; a product of a childhood he’d rather forget. Kerr’s nun is slightly naive but more uncertain, devout to her vows – of which the final one she has still to take – and yet teetering on the edge of uncertainty that she’s got what it takes to go all the way. Is she ready to forsake her womanhood for the greater calling? Both characters have chosen their paths and both have sworn oaths to tread them but will the time together on the island make a difference?

As if Mitchum or Kerr weren’t strong enough reasons to give this film a viewing, the director must surely tip the scales. From the moment John Huston sat behind the camera and gave us The Maltese Falcon in 1941, he revealed a certain brilliance and while Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison might not be his finest hour, it’s likely a film that many of his contemporaries would have wanted to helm.  It was adapted from Charles Shaw’s novel of the same name by Huston and John Lee Mahin, a prolific screenwriter who penned numerous classics between the 30s and the 60s, among them, Captains Courageous (1937) and Showboat (1951). The island of Trinidad and Tobago where the film was shot was photographed by Oswald Morris, a cinematographer who’s career would span six decades and include a long list of gems like Moby Dick (1956) and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). Naturally, the setting is stunning and one can only imagine the times had by all on location. Deborah Kerr and the writing team of Huston and Mahin were nominated for Academy Awards and there were a handful of other nominations throughout that season but the only win it garnered was for Kerr at the ’57 New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Shame that, because while Mitchum earned a BAFTA nomination, his performance generally seemed to have been overlooked. But then being the kind of guy he was, he probably didn’t give a damn anyway.

 

Film Review: Detective Story

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – I truly love it when I stumble across an old movie I’ve never seen before that blows my socks off. A few days ago, this 1951 Kirk Douglas crime drama did just that. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Detective Story is based on the stage play of the same name by 1934 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner Sidney Kingsley and it’s directed by Roman Holiday and Ben-Hur legend, William Wyler.

By virtue of the story originally written for the stage, it’s a character study and in this case the character, or rather characters, are a squad room full of plain-clothed detectives at the 21st Precinct in New York City. The action takes place over the course of a working day and apart from a brief foray into the streets of the city, we remain confined within said squad room. We see the various detectives attending to their tasks – mundane police procedures included – as well as the various criminal elements that they apprehend that day. It’s all very gritty. But don’t misinterpret that as heavy going and oppressive, for it isn’t. Certainly not at the outset anyway. Yes, the tension builds to a dramatic climax, one that will take your breath away, but along the way there’s subtle humour and questions of morality too.

The main thrust of the plot involves, naturally enough, Kirk Douglas’s character – Detective James McLeod – and his wife Mary (Eleanor Parker) who just so happens to have a skeleton in her closet. McLeod is a tough, no-nonsense cop who sees the world he inhabits as black and white. You break the law, you pay the price. No leniency whatsoever. His current focus is on bringing down disgraced doctor Karl Schneider (George Macready) for having performed abortions on several women which subsequently lead to their deaths however, the more McLeod pursues the closer he gets to a truth that will turn his world upside down.

For the most part, this movie is a filmed stage play and as such there’s a degree of claustrophobia present in its viewing, perhaps even more so than if you were sitting in your theatre seat before the stage. Obviously, this sense of confinement is intentional because the film actually benefits from it. We are in a living, breathing squad room after all, and around us are all the individuals you’d expect to find there. Even when Lee Garmes’s camera lens pulls tight onto action in the foreground, the squad room’s heart still beats in the out-of-focus background. The company of actors, those playing the detectives and the criminals at least, are rarely off the set. It gives the whole thing an organic feel.

The acting – leads and support – is all round solid too. Douglas gives a towering performance as the cop who’s too unforgiving for his own good although oddly enough when it came to Oscar time, he was overlooked. Eleanor Parker got nominated, as did Lee Grant (in her big screen debut, no less) who plays a young shoplifter. There were also nominations for Best Director and Best Writing in the Screenplay category. Like Lee Grant, Joseph Wiseman, who plays a slightly unhinged burglar called Charley Gennini, was also performing for the first time in front of a movie camera. Wiseman would later go on to cinema immortality playing Dr. No, the first bad guy in a popular spy franchise. His performance here couldn’t be more different.

Like all good dramas, it’ll imprint traces of itself in your mind and you’ll be thinking about it long after the music has flourished and the credits have rolled.

 

 

Film Review: Separate Tables

I always derive great pleasure from watching a well-adapted film version of a stage play. I think it’s because fundamentally what makes a good story is its characters and a stage play is, in essence, nothing more than a study of its characters. Of course, there’s usually a plot of some kind that unfolds, twists and turns and events that occur to affect the behaviour of those in the tale and thereby expose more about them as people to us, the audience. For me, it always lays bare the artists’ talents in the writing and the performing departments because there’s no whizz-bang action and explosions to boggle our minds or death-defying stunts to draw our attention away from the human element of the tale. It really is basic storytelling, which some would argue is the purest kind.

Usually, a theatre audience will retain a certain detachment from the performance it watches, never really giving in to the world of make-believe on the stage, never completely forgetting that it is enjoying (or not) a group of performers. By contrast, the cinema audience gets drawn into the world on screen (assuming the director knows what he’s doing), the camera lens acting as its eye. Yes, we know the camera is mounted on a dolly which is being pushed by a Grip along a New York sidewalk but when it comes to watching the end product we forget this, we are there in the Big Apple jostling through the crowds on East 42nd Street and on into Grand Central Station. A scream comes from behind and the camera swivels around to investigate saving us in our seats the effort of looking over our shoulders. For all intents and purposes, we are the camera lens and we can get as close up and personal to the most intimate of moments between characters or we can stand on the edge of a bluff and behold the most spectacular of vistas below our feet. We’re not so much watching it as witnessing it. Think about it. It’s quite magical.

That’s why a well-filmed stage play can be so rewarding. There’s nothing to distract you from the humanity of the story. There’s no bustling sidewalks or majestic panoramas to enjoy. The entire story is expressed through dialogue and body language and little else. Yes, the camera (our eye) now has the freedom to move around the room, to close in on an object or a facial expression or some other detail but more often than not, there’s still a sense of confinement, of being indoors and away from the rest of the world. And in the case of Separate Tables this confinement is the ground floor of a small hotel in Bournemouth, a seaside resort on the south coast of England.

Based on two one-act plays by Terrence Rattigan (Table by the Window and Table Number Seven), Rattigan himself stitched them together and added a few characters to hide the seam. The film was directed by Delbert Mann who had, three years earlier in 1955, won the Academy Award for his romantic drama Marty, a film which also won Ernest Borgnine the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. No question that the guy clearly knew what he was doing then.

Separate Tables boasts an all-star cast with David Niven, Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster and Wendy Hiller – two of whom would go on to win Oscars for their performances.  Niven plays Major Pollock, a spiffing, moustachioed war veteran who happens to be hiding a shameful secret. Sibyl Railton-Bell (Deborah Kerr), is a meek and rather dour spinster suffocating under the firm control of her Victorian mother (Gladys Cooper) who also appears to be the hotel’s resident matriarch. The sober hotel owner Pat Cooper (Wendy Hiller) is in love with a long-term resident, the alcoholic John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster), who in turn gets a surprise visit from his ex-wife Ann Shankland (Rita Hayworth). The plot lines of these five individuals are woven together with a deft subtlety that is absolute poetry. Their characters start to evolve as soon as the film begins but it’s not until the sudden discovery of Major Pollock’s awful secret, a revelation that divides and illuminates at the same time, that we really get to see what these people are made of.

Niven’s performance is possibly one of the best of his distinguished career and garnered him his only Oscar. His Major Pollock is all bluff and twitter as he regales boorish tales of his time at Sandhurst Military Academy or during the North African campaign always with just a little too much zeal. It’s obvious from the get-go that he’s not all he seems and when his world does come crashing down, the contrast in his behaviour is extremely well-judged. Like-wise, Lancaster’s performance is spot on and the arrival of his ex-wife (Hayworth at first purring glamour and controlled serenity but then revealing pain and loneliness) claiming that they can’t live without each other gives him the opportunity to show how vulnerable and doomed his character is. Deborah Kerr, playing very much against type, is shy and awkward and again conveys a loneliness that seems to be very much prevalent in most of the characters here. Indeed, Major Pollock, having just been told by Sibyl that they know all about him and his secret, tells her that they are really much alike in as much as they are both afraid of life. She’s utterly reviled by Pollock’s guilt but totally devastated too because she was secretly in love with the old fellow. Finally, Wendy Hiller who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the proprietress does a great job of keeping a level-headed perspective on the gossip and bigotry that affects her guest as well as coming to terms with the fact that the man she loves still loves his ex-wife. She’s without doubt the most sane person under her roof. Without giving too much away, the final scene of this film is simply perfect – at first excruciating in its uncomfortableness but then extremely moving. Bottom line, a classic drama that’s all about great writing and stellar acting. Highly recommended.

 

 

Film Review: Grand Prix

The recent buzz surrounding Ron Howard’s new film “Rush” got me thinking about motorsport in movies and in particular, Formula One. Films with a sporting theme at their core are always a little iffy with audiences and often don’t mirror the success in box office receipts as the sports themselves do with fans however, there have been a few exceptions over the years. Boxing and baseball seem to be the safest bet in Hollywood for studio bosses and yet, considering F1’s global popularity it’s cinematic outings are somewhat rare.

Arguably the most famous racing movie to date is Steve McQueen’s “Le Mans” from 1971 and love it or loathe it, you have to concede that it is a bonafide racing spectacle. But it’s not F1. It’s an annual 24 hour endurance race. And if we discount Asif Kapadia’s excellent “Senna” that came out in 2010 on the basis that it’s a documentary rather than a dramatised biopic or adaptation, we have to go back to 1966 to find a film based on Formula One.

John Frankenheimer, who helmed “Grand Prix” began his directing career in television shows like “Playhouse 90” for CBS but after making the transition to movies he found critical and commercial acclaim in the early ’60s with a string of hits including “Birdman of Alcatraz”, “The Manchurian Candidate”, “Seven Days in May” and “The Train” – four cracking films that share nine Oscar nominations between them. “Grand Prix” was his most ambitious project to date and oddly enough, it would also be his first shot in colour. Which of course helped capture the splendour and spectacle that was (and still is, for some) Formula One.

The film boasts an international all-star cast headed by James Garner and Eva Marie Saint as well as virtually all the racing drivers you care to mention from the era. And what an era it was! With beautiful cars unspoiled by sponsorship logos and downforce addendum, circuits that were little more than country lanes in places with no corner markers or kerbing to aid the drivers, it was a great deal more exciting than the regulation-strangled sport of today is. But then it was also far more deadly and according to IMDB, five of the real-life drivers who participated in the film died in racing accidents in the next two years and another five in the following ten years. It’s no wonder things had to change.

The film puts us right down there on the starting grid from the get-go with a highly charged opening sequence designed by the legendary Saul Bass – the man who gave us perhaps some of the most iconic opening titles in the history of cinema (“The Man with the Golden Arm” and “North by Northwest” to name but two). We can almost smell the gasoline and the hot engines of the racing cars as the 70mm Super Panavision film captures close-up images of spark plugs being tightened by mechanics, rev counter needles flicking towards redlines, tyres, exhaust pipes, the expectant crowd waiting for the Monaco Grand Prix to start. All these images overlaid with the soundtrack of a race about to thrill us. It’s gobsmacking.

The same goes for all the racing sequences throughout the film as we behold several of the world’s greatest circuits in their earlier days, Spa and Monza (complete with the infamous banking section) being of particular interest for the way they have now changed. For F1 fans, especially those that find interest in its history, this movie is a must-see!

The plot away from the racing leans a little towards soap-opera melodrama but it injects a dose of glamour and gives the actors something else to do other than race. (Apparently James Garner was so competent behind the wheel that real F1 drivers Graham Hill and Jack Brabham told him he could have been a successful driver had he not gone into acting). The film follows the fates of four drivers through a fictionalised version of the 1966 season, their ups and downs and the women who love them and try to deal with this most dangerous of lifestyles. On the whole, the acting is faultless.

The main character of “Grand Prix” though is the racing itself and Frankenheimer, who had always been a bit experimental with camera angles, was adamant to never cheat his audience with back projections or speeded up film. With cameras mounted onto the racing cars, (sometimes even swivelling from an ahead shot of the track round to the driver!) and on a following or trailing Ford GT40 camera car driven by Phil Hill (the only American-born driver to win a F1 Drivers’ Championship) he really nails the action. Add this to real footage of the 1966 season and there’s very little else like it other than watching a current race. And if you’ve ever seen his 1998 thriller “Ronin”, you’ll remember the car chase and you’ll know how good Mr Frankenheimer is at capturing excitement via speeding cars. The film won 3 Oscars at the ’67 Academy Awards – Best Sound, Best Film Editing and Best Effects/ Sound Effects and it’s not hard to see why.

Ron Howard’s new film is rightly garnering the attention at the moment and it may even go some way to improving Formula One’s image in the United States however, it was undoubtably Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix” that laid the cornerstone 47 years ago. If you’ve never seen it and you love racing, I urge you to do so. It’s a rush!

Film Review: The Stranger

Isn’t YouTube a marvellous resource? As a video library to delve into for few moments of pleasure it’s practically a bottomless pit of entertainment. The choices of things to watch are virtually limitless. But it should come with a warning just to remind you that it’s all too easy to end up spending hours rather than minutes of your spare time engrossed as you segue from one upload to the next. The suggestions that pop up at the end of each video do a fine job of enticing continued viewing.

But aside from the cute videos of pets and babies and the millions of other “caught on camera” moments, YouTube is for me, a great film library. Thanks to a copyright lapse in many old classic films, there are a plethora of great movies available and just one click away. I found one such film this morning. The Stranger from 1946 starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Orson Welles (who also directed) is a superbly put together drama that, thanks to its style, is also a fine example of film noir. Robinson is always good to watch and with great support from Welles and Young, the hour and a half that this film runs for, simply flies by.

Edward G. Robinson plays Mr Wilson – a “detective, of sorts” for the United Nations War Crimes Commission – who is hunting down a Nazi fugitive called Franz Kindler (Orson Welles). Kindler, having carefully erased all evidence of his former life and assumed a new identity – Charles Rankin – is now a prep school teacher in small town U.S.A. On the day we meet him, he marries Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young) who happens to be the daughter of the local Supreme Court Justice. In short, he’s managed to transform himself from a Nazi war criminal into a pillar of an American community.

Wilson releases Kindler’s former right-hand man Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) from prison in the hope that he will lead him to Kindler which of course, he does. All the way to the pretty town of Harper, Connecticut. But he loses him before he makes contact with Kindler. When Meinike (now a religious convert) and Kindler do meet, he begs his former superior to repent and to confess his sins. However, Kindler, afraid of being exposed by his former associate, strangles him instead.

The story unravels in a gripping, almost claustrophobic way as the determined hound chases down the wily fox. Wilson is pretty sure Rankin and Kindler are one and the same but without having witnessed Meinike meeting with him, he had no proof. So it’s left to Father Time and Kindler’s own fear at being exposed, a fear that will force him to make a paranoiac mistake – to betray his true identity to his pursuers.

As a screenplay, it’s a wonderfully taut piece of writing (Oscar nominated too) with very good dialogue – particularly from the authoritative figure of Wilson. Edward G. Robinson plays this to perfection and he lends his character an intelligent doggedness that is simply believable. Welles is also excellent at conveying a man desperately trying to hide something while Loretta Young is convincing as the new wife who refuses to accept that she fell in love with the wrong man. The town is dotted with other great characters too, in particular, Mr Potter the town clerk and proprietor of the local store/diner. He’s a hoot whenever he’s on screen.

Apart from the opening few minutes, all of the action takes place in Harper – a pretty little town where “there’s nothing to be afraid of” as quoted by Mary Longstreet. For a fugitive, it seems an ideal refuge but of course, for a local it seems like the last place on earth where something like that would occur. Welles’s direction confines us within the town, never giving us any long shot vistas of space and scenery, helping to create the sense of suffocation that Kindler must be feeling as his past captures up with him and his world closes in. Welles’ camera moves beautifully too on cranes and dollies and there are a few reminders of his Citizen Kane brilliance with emotive use of light and shadow in some of the interior shots as well as a lovely reflection in a camera lens. The film builds beautifully to a highly charged climax of which the set piece brings to mind Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

Curiously, The Stranger was the only film made by Welles that had any impact at the box office upon its original release. Hard to believe considering how highly some of his work is now regarded. Coming out shortly after the Second World War perhaps its anti-Nazi theme and the fact that war criminal fugitives really did exist, caught the public’s imagination. It contains, supposedly for the first time in a feature film, actual footage of concentration camps and although what we see is brief, together with Edward G. Robinson’s dialogue, it’s enough to horrify.

Overall then, The Stranger is a great waste of an hour and a half.

Maestros of Film Music

If I were to ask you to name your top ten favourite movies of all time, how long would it take you to settle on a list? Would you find it as easy as 1,2,3, able even to put them in order of preference all the way up to 3,2,1? Or would it take hours of head-scratching, soul-searching and discussion, with DVDs and old videos being pulled out and watched over to remind yourself of how great or maybe not so great a film is? I was asked this recently and I must admit that I found the idea of naming my top ten favourite films absolutely impossible. I can name the titles of numerous films that would most certainly be included in the list but I couldn’t for a single moment begin to arrange them in any order of preference. Nor could I stop at ten. I’m guessing, but I think the number would be at least twice that and likely many more. For me, there are quite simply more than ten films worthy – for reasons aesthetic, technical, artistic or simply just plain entertaining – of standing on the shoulders of all the rest. Of course, if you want to see such a list the Internet has dozens of them. Dozens of top tens, top fifties and top one hundreds compiled by movie fans, critics and institutes alike, all with most probably a far greater knowledge of cinema than do I.

However, the idea of compiling a top ten list of something appealed to the pop-picker in me and so I continued to think of one that would be related somehow yet easier, nay possible to come up with. What I decided on came to me via my iPod and although it initially seemed fairly straightforward, as I scrolled through my music library and then began researching certain items that were on my wish list, so began the head-scratching, the soul-searching and the discussion. Nevertheless, finally after what I consider too long a time, I have compiled a list of my ten favourite film music composers. But please don’t think there’s any order of preference here.

I will kick off with the only one on my list that I happened to have shared a ceiling with because ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to see Elmer Bernstein perform at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Needless to say, it was a fabulous evening and I think I whistled The Great Escape tune all the way back home, probably to the annoyance of my fellow tube travellers. Bernstein (not to be confused with Leonard) is probably best known for his scores for The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, the latter of which undoubtably helped turn a fairly routine western into one of the most enjoyable films of the genre. His upbeat western themes, of which there are many, are a true joy but a quick look at his credits prove him to be an extremely versatile composer, capable of writing for any genre. He won an Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and would go on to be nominated a total of 14 times giving us along the way great scores like The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Age of Innocence.

Last year (2012), Hitchcock’s Vertigo replaced Citizen Kane at the top of the British Film Institute’s Greatest Films of All Time list. That’s somewhat significant when you consider that Orson Welles’ debut film had previously occupied the top spot for 50 years. What’s also of interest is that Bernard Hermann wrote the score for both movies. Hermann, who started off working in radio as a staff conductor, wrote some incredibly atmospheric pieces – The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and The Day the Earth Stood Still are about as atmospheric as you can get. He collaborated on many a Hitchcock picture and gave us the classic dramatic soundtracks to North by Northwest and Psycho. But there was much much more great music throughout his career too.  Mysterious Island, Cape Fear and On Dangerous Ground to name but three. He won an Oscar for The Devil and Daniel Webster in 1941and would go on to receive a total of 5 nominations.

Next up on my list of no particular order comes one of the most successful and influential film composers of all time, a man who, aside from Walt Disney, is unmatched in Academy Award nominations with a total of forty eight to date. Out of these he has garnered five wins. He has composed some of the most recognisable and whistleable music in film history including Star Wars, Superman and the Indiana Jones films. I refer, of course, to John Williams. Williams moved to Los Angeles and began writing film scores in the late ’50s but it wasn’t until he penned the music to Spielberg’s Jaws in 1974 that his career really took off. The ominous three-note motif that he composed was a stroke of genius and has since become synonymous with sharks. Many of his compositions employ a full orchestra and this gives his music a classical neoromantic style, making it very easy to pop in a CD and listen to. His grand symphonic score to Star Wars has become the highest grossing non-popular music recording of all time. His score for Jurassic Park is sublime as are those for Saving Private Ryan, Empire of the Sun and the Harry Potter films. His most recent work for Spielberg’s Lincoln shows that even after fifty years of composing film scores, he’s still got what it takes to give the world beautiful music.

Another John now, this time John Barry. Barry will probably be remembered as the man who gave musical accompaniment to the world’s coolest spy. Although the writing credit for the James Bond theme goes to Monty Norman, it was Barry’s arrangement that has made it one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of music the world has ever heard. He wrote the scores for eleven more 007 films throughout the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s and for my money, the Bond music was never better. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is, in my opinion, the high point of the series but all those that came before it have terrific soundtracks. He scored numerous other films throughout a fifty year career and picked up five Oscars (Born Free (best score and song), The Lion in Winter, Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves) out of seven nominations along the way. Zulu, The Ipcress File, Midnight Cowboy and Enigma are great examples of his film soundtracks. Early in his career, he had a number of hit singles with his band The John Barry Seven – Hit and Miss, Walk Don’t Run and Beat for Beatniks to name just three – and these tunes simply ooze with the style and coolness that was inherent on the streets and in the clubs of London in those swinging ’60s. He also penned some memorable TV themes, none more so than The Persuaders!

Ennio Morricone, like the preceding four composers here, has a certain style. And this style is no more apparent than in his scores for the spaghetti westerns for which he is most famous. In 1964 director Sergio Leone set out to make a different kind of western and when he hired Morricone to write the score, they created an accompanying soundtrack that was equally different from the orchestral standards of the genre that had come before. Making use of the then new Fender electric guitar, jew’s harps and trumpets they basically came up with a whole new twangy sound for a western movie soundtrack. And what a sound it was. As instantly recognisable after just a few bars as the James Bond theme and equally as evocative. His music adds another dimension to these films and is arguably a character of its own. Without their soundtracks, these films simply would not be the same. And like Elmer Bernstein, Morricone’s versatility ensured that he wasn’t restricted to just cowboy films. His long list of credits include, the comedies La Cage aux Folles and Bulworth, John Carpenter’s excellent 1982 chiller flick The Thing, the Schwarzenegger fantasy movie Red Sonja, The Untouchables starring Kevin Costner and Robert De Niro and Clint Eastwood’s In the Line of Fire. Aside from the spaghetti westerns, perhaps his best known work is the soundtrack for The Mission, a 1986 film by Roland Joffé about the experiences of a Jesuit missionary in South America during the 18th Century. It is considered to be a perfect example of what music can do for a film and has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Surprisingly, Morricone has never won an Academy Award but he has been nominated a total of five times.

Another composer who enjoyed a long and successful career was Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith began scoring radio shows in the early 1950s and this quickly progressed to television shows such as The Twilight Zone and later, the theme to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. His first feature film was a western in 1957 called Black Patch. More TV and film scores followed but it wasn’t until he scored the classic 1962 western Lonely Are the Brave that he began to receive widespread recognition. Throughout the decade his career flourished with critically acclaimed achievements like A Patch of Blue and The Sand Pebbles both of which garnered him Oscar nominations. Another nomination together with enormous critical attention came for his controversial soundtrack to The Planet of the Apes in ’68, a score which saw him using innovative techniques to get the ape-like sounds he wanted. The Omen in ’76 saw him win his only Oscar out of a total of 18 nominations and before his death in 2004, he would go on to give us some of the most stirring and memorable film music ever. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is perhaps his most recognised work and following its success, he would go on to score four more films for the franchise (my personal favourite score being First Contact) as well as the themes to the TV series The Next Generation and Voyager. Other highlights include the wonderfully eerie Alien, the spooky Poltergeist and the cool jazzy L.A. Confidential.

Long considered to be one of the giants of Hollywood movie music, Dimitri Tiomkin was musically trained in Russia and made his performing debut in the early ’20s as a pianist playing with the Berlin Philharmonic. He moved to Hollywood in 1929 but it wasn’t until ’37 that his score for Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon helped him achieve any sort of recognition. The next ten years saw him work with Capra on films including Mr Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life. Over the course of his career, he wrote music for some of the most popular and spectacular films ever including The Guns of Navarone, The Alamo, The Fall of the Roman Empire and Land of the Pharaohs. He scored four Hitchcock films including Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder and numerous westerns, the genre with which he perhaps became most associated. His first was Duel in the Sun in 1946 and his most well-known was High Noon 1952, a film which received seven Oscar nominations and won four, two of which were for Tiomkin – Best Original Music and Best Song. This was the first time a composer had received two awards for the same movie. He won twice more for The High and the Mighty in ’54 and The Old Man and the Sea in ’58. In total he would be nominated twenty two times. Other highlights include Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The War Wagon, Town Without Pity and Giant. Tiomkin also penned memorable themes to TV shows such as Rawhide and Gunslinger.

In complete contrast to the classic style of Tiomkin comes Lalo Schifrin, an Argentine pianist at heart with jazz running through his veins. He is perhaps best known for his theme to the Mission: Impossible TV show and several of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies. These are excellent examples of his often edgy, frequently pumping and sometimes cool jazzy soundtracks but there are so many more scores worth attention. Schifrin moved to Hollywood in 1963 and was offered his first film project by MGM in the form of an African adventure called Rhino! That year he re-arranged Jerry Goldsmith’s original theme to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. into something far more jazzy and ended up winning the 1965 Emmy award for Best TV Theme. His credits encompass virtually every genre and include some of the coolest tunes associated with film. Notable soundtracks are Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Enter The Dragon and Rush Hour. Classic TV themes penned by him include Starsky and Hutch and Planet of the Apes. He’s yet to win an Oscar but he’s been nominated six times to date.

Another composer who knew how to write “cool” was Henry Mancini. Some of his best known works include The Pink Panther theme, Moon River and Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the score to Victor Victoria. His career as a musician began in 1946 when he became a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra. Six years later he joined Universal Pictures music department where he contributed to dozens of films including The Glenn Miller Story starring James Stewart. This gave him his first Oscar nomination. In ’58 his thirty-five year collaboration with Blake Edwards began when he scored the TV series Peter Gunn. Breakfast at Tiffany’s followed as did The Pink Panther and it’s sequels, The Great Race and Victor Victoria to name just a few of their pairings. He worked with numerous Hollywood directors throughout his career and along the way gave us such scores as those for Hatari! which includes the chirpy and well-known Baby Elephant Walk, The Molly Maguires, Charade, The Glass Menagerie and Santa Claus: The Movie. In Oscar terms he was nominated eighteen times and won four.

One of the first composers to ever write musical scores for movies was Max Steiner, an Austrian-born music prodigy who was trained by Johannes Brahms and Robert Fuchs. He conducted his first operetta at age twelve and became a full-time professional conductor/composer at fifteen. Steiner is referred to as “the father of film music” and is widely considered one of the greatest film score composers in the history of cinema. He composed over three hundred scores for RKO and Warner Brothers throughout his career and was nominated for an Oscar twenty four times, winning three for The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942), and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides these, his more popular scores include King Kong (1933), Casablanca (1942) and his most famous work and arguably the greatest film score ever recorded Gone with the Wind (1939). From Austria, the young Steiner toured to England, then to New York for a fifteen year stint on Broadway as musical director or conductor before accepting an offer from RKO to move to Hollywood. His first screen credit as orchestrator came on a musical called Dixiana in 1930. His breakthrough came three years later with King Kong. Actor and musician Oscar Levant later called the film “a symphony accompanied by a movie”. After a move from RKO to Warner Bros. Steiner was sought after by the leading directors of the day. Other notable scores include The Searchers, They Died with Their Boots On, The Big Sleep and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Marvin Hamlisch wasn’t the first composer to take the musical reigns of the 007 franchise from John Barry. George Martin was that man. George ‘The Fifth Beatle’ Martin composed the score and the title song for Live and Let Die and while the latter is arguably one of the best of the series, the former is not quite up to the standard set by Barry. Marvin Hamlisch contribution to the franchise was The Spy Who Loved Me and again one can argue that the title song he co-wrote with Carole Bayer Sager – Nobody Does It Better – is a strong entry in the series but the rest of the soundtrack is below Barry’s high standard. Having said that, it’s by no means the weakest in the franchise’s history. Hamlisch’s first job was as a rehearsal pianist for Barbra Streisand’s Funny Girl. His first film score was for the 1968 Burt Lancaster movie The Swimmer. He followed this with a number of comedies including two Woody Allen films but it wasn’t until 1973 that things got interesting for him. That was the year he wrote the title song and score for The Way We Were as well as adapting Scott Joplin’s ragtime music for the movie The Sting and he would walk away from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on the following Oscar night with three gold statuettes in his grip. The Way We Were is beautiful romantic music and The Sting is a fun collection of Joplin’s classic rags sewn together and embellished by Hamlisch’s wonderful orchestrations. He would go on to receive a total of twelve Oscar nominations with three wins. Other fine works include Sophie’s Choice, A Chorus Line and The Informant! a 2009 Matt Damon film directed by Steven Soderbergh.

And now, I hesitate to continue because, as those of you who are still awake will have observed, I have already surpassed my allowance for this list of my ten favourite composers. And yet I still have more to share, more names that should be in that top ten. You see how awful I am at these lists! Oh well, maybe next time I’ll share with you my thoughts on Maurice Jarre’s exquisite scores to Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India all of which he won an Oscar for, and Ron Goodwin’s excellent wartime music for Where Eagles Dare, 633 Squadron and Battle of Britain as well as Yann Tiersen’s gorgeous score to Amélie.  But until then, if you get a chance, pop in a soundtrack CD and listen to the music that our film composers have written. Sit back and enjoy their hard work unaccompanied by the sights and sound effects of a movie and allow yourself the pleasure to hear their talent in all its pure, undiluted form.