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Film Review: The Quiller Memorandum

The spy film genre has been thrilling cinema audiences for over a century now and with certain franchises still flourishing, it’s likely to continue to do so for a while yet. Way before “Bond, James Bond” saved us from SPECTRE’s first attempt at world domination and even before the “talkies” allowed fans to hear their favourite actors’ voices, tales of espionage and government agents captured our collective imagination.

Like most (perhaps all) film genres, this one has its roots in literary works of fiction and these date back to a time shortly before the First World War when writers such a G.T. Chesney and William Le Queux imagined French or Russian invaders attacking Britain. As the fortunes of Europe’s major powers began to shift and colonial rivalries grew, new alliances were formed as new threats loomed and soon Germany became the number one foe in these literary tales.

Films like Peril of the Fleet (1909) and Lieutenant Rose and the Stolen Code (1911) tell of foreign attempts to attack the British Navy, the country’s single greatest defence against invasion. It’s interesting to note that in all these films leading up to the outbreak of WWI, the foreign spies are never given a country of origin because the films’ distributors were reluctant to close the door on a large cinema-going market. But once war had been declared, the enemy was named.

The genre grew even more popular during the 1930s when tensions once again began to rise in Europe and directors such as Alfred Hitchcock had many a hit with titles such as The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935) and Secret Agent (1936).

For many, the popularity of spy films peaked in the 1960s when the Cold War had pushed the bar of tension between east and west to its greatest height. This is where the action-packed adventure movie carved out a niche for itself and began to break box office records. Fantastical and ludicrous the plots may have been but in terms of entertainment, they were dynamite.

But there were also less stylised – but no less stylish – films being made, grittier, more realistic and equally suspenseful. Films like The Ipcress File (1965) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) both adapted from gritty spy novels (Len Deighton and John le Carré respectively) were low on action but high on procedure and intrigue.

And so we come to The Quiller Memorandum from 1966 starring George Segal, Alec Guinness and Max von Sydow. A fine example of a grittier type of spy film this time set in West Berlin during the Cold War.

Quiller played by Segal is sent to Berlin by SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) to investigate the murders of two British agents by a mysterious neo-Nazi organisation. His controller there Pol (Guinness) warns him that a new generation of Nazis has emerged who are difficult to spot because they no longer wear uniforms. He orders Quiller to locate the organisation’s headquarters. With his only clues being three items found in the murdered British agent’s pockets, Quiller – clearly resourceful and laconic – sets out to do just that.

There is much shaking off of people following him and questioning people who may or may not have known the murdered agents – all simple investigative procedures – and yet the ever present threat in the perfectly photographed city (it was shot in Berlin) looms like an approaching storm. You feel as though Quiller’s every move is being watched by those he’s trying to investigate. The pacing is excellent and the tension builds nicely. And my God – it’s all so cool. Typical 60s cool but so subtly captured. The cars. The clothing. And John Barry’s superb soundtrack – surely nobody at this time was composing cooler film music.

Soon Quiller is captured by the neo-Nazi organisation and “persuaded” by means of a truth serum to tell their leader Oktober (von Sydow) the location of SIS HQ so that the bad guys can annihilate the good. Quiller may not be a musclebound tough guy but he’s nonetheless a tough nut to crack and he just about manages to deflect Oktober’s questioning so that Oktober, fed up with having his time wasted, orders him to be killed. But of course, he escapes his would be assassins and….no, that’s all I’ll say. Because it really is worth a look if you’re a fan of thoughtful spy dramas.

It was directed by Michael Anderson whose credits include The Dam Busters (1955) and Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and adapted by Harold Pinter from the 1965 novel The Berlin Memorandum by Elleston Trevor (under the pseudonym Adam Hall). It was nominated for three BAFTAs while Pinter was nominated for an Edgar Award but it failed to gain a win. But that really doesn’t matter.

My only complaint, if I could call it that? How the hell is it that I’d never seen it before last week! I’m amazed that such a classy spy flick had escaped my radar all these years. George Segal is perfectly cast as the quietly confident American who ends up with more trouble than he hoped as is Alec Guinness’s rigidly unemotional Pol, (he of course would eventually go on to play another spymaster character, George Smiley). Max von Sydow is suitably menacing as are his henchmen and Senta Berger (the love interest, of course) is wonderfully enigmatic and oh so alluring.

A very nice and sadly underrated film that is quite likely closer to how it really was than the majority of spy films ever made.

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: Strangers on a Train

It may have come about as a result of an exhausting train journey I endured a few days ago or possibly because it’s Wimbledon fortnight – tennis being a daily headline at the moment. Maybe it happened because of both of these things or perhaps neither. However yesterday, Hitchcock’s 1951 thriller popped into my mind, vied for my attention and consequently prompted me to put pen to paper, so to speak.

Actually I’m surprised after looking back at the titles I’ve reviewed for this website over the past sixteen months that I’ve only reviewed one other Hitchcock film – North by Northwest. After all, I am a great admirer of his work. Maybe I’ve restrained myself on account of his films having been so extensively written about already but then, when one thinks of his best known films, Strangers on a Train often gets overlooked. And yet for me, it’s one of his finest efforts.

The plot is a simple one and I shall refrain from giving too much away for those who might not yet have seen it. It begins with a chance encounter between two men on a train. Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is a semi-famous tennis player (ergo the Wimbledon connection) with designs on a political career, a slut of a wife, Miriam (Laura Elliott) whom he’s hoping to divorce and a real dish of a girlfriend, Anne Morton (Ruth Roman) who just happens to be the daughter of a senator (Leo G. Carroll). The other man, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) is a smooth-talking weirdo with a worrying line in small talk. The two men chat over lunch in Bruno’s compartment and Bruno, who is aware of Guy’s private life via the gossip columns, explains his idea for the perfect murder. A simple criss-cross theory. Two complete strangers with nothing to connect them, swap the murders they would like to commit thereby absolving themselves of any motive and giving the police no clue as to the guilty parties. Bruno says that he’ll murder Guy’s unfaithful wife, leaving him free to marry Anne if Guy will murder Bruno’s overbearing father. Naturally enough, Guy makes a polite but hasty exit from the train compartment however, unfortunately for him, Bruno thinks a deal has been made.

Sometime later, Bruno follows Miriam and her two boyfriends to an amusement park and after a short boat ride, he strangles the life out of her in the darkness on the Isle of Love. Meanwhile Guy is on a train chatting to a drunk college professor who turns out to be an unreliable witness when, called by the police to corroborate Guy’s alibi claim, says he can’t remember their meeting. Guy is shocked and horrified that Bruno actually went ahead and murdered Miriam and is repeatedly harassed by Bruno and told that he now has no choice but to kill Bruno’s father. What ensues is a sublimely constructed thriller, perfectly paced, with just the right amount of humour (supplied in the main by Patricia Hitchcock who plays Anne’s younger sister Barbara) to make it still scary yet hugely entertaining.

Fade outs to black and swipes between scenes are replaced by a quick editing style and often cross-cutting between Guy and Bruno via their dialogue and movements, thereby seamlessly moving from scene to scene, the tempo never letting up. Strangers on a Train is a masterclass in how to build tension all the way to the finale and in true Hitchcock fashion, the climax takes place within a great visual location – this time aboard an out of control carousel spinning like a centrifuge. Implausible it may be with Guy’s legs flailing behind him like a sequence from The Simpsons but the skill behind the execution is evident in its greatness. With fighting and explosions and splintering wooden horses and screaming children it’s an incredible blend of close-ups, miniatures and background projections.

In my humble opinion, the film is worth watching for the Oscar nominated black and white cinematography alone. The gorgeous use of light and shadow is perhaps some of the finest of any Hitchcock film and it would see cinematographer Robert Burks begin a fourteen year run with the director and shooting every one of his remaining pictures with the exception of Psycho in 1960. The lighting is frequently dark and moody and choice camera angles and optical effects – so typical of Hitchcock’s style – add to the overall atmosphere of the film and keep the visuals interesting without ever going too far. There are several almost surreal shots from intriguing angles but perhaps the most famous shot of all (and one that is still studied in academic circles) is when Bruno strangles Miriam at the amusement park, the moment captured in the reflection of her glasses after they fall to the ground during her brief struggle. It’s simply cinematic perfection. Numerous other little blink-and-you’ll-miss-them gems are peppered throughout the film – Guy wiping lipstick off his face before meeting Anne’s father, Bruno’s shadow in the tunnel of love looming over his intended victim, Bruno again standing alone on the Jefferson Memorial, his dark figure an unwelcome stain on the white purity of the structure’s marble. It’s these subtleties, telling us the audience so much, that reveal the genius of the director.

The casting is spot on from the clean-cut figure of Guy Haines to Marion Lorne who plays Bruno’s befuddled mother (another character that adds a little comedy) but the performance of the movie and – one would argue – of his life, comes from Robert Walker. He’s just superb; charming, erudite, a bit of a dandy, but dark, deeply unbalanced, brooding. It was a role meant for him and I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing as good a job as he did. Sadly he died two months after the film’s release aged just 32 but his performance here will live on and be lauded for as long as people watch films.

Of course, all this visual brilliance starts with the written word and this came from a novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. In the end there would be numerous differences between novel and screenplay and Hitchcock had a bit of a hard time getting the script he wanted. Originally, he had hopes for a proven writer to lend the project some clout and was looking at people like John Steinbeck and Dashiell Hammett but they showed little interest. Raymond Chandler wrote a draft but fell foul of Hitchcock when the two couldn’t get along and so after a suggestion from Ben Hecht – who had already written Spellbound and Notorious for Hitchcock but was unavailable – he hired Hecht’s assistant Czenzi Ormonde. She was a fair haired beauty who had no formal screen credit but had recently published a collection of short stories which was well received by critics. At their first meeting, Hitchcock encouraged her to forget all about Highsmith’s book and proceeded to tell her the entire story himself. It clearly worked because the film has a crisp linearity from beginning to end and a leanness to every scene. There’s no wasted dialogue and not a single unnecessary frame.

Bottom line – a true classic.

Is Fido a communist? Thoughts on Andrew Currie’s unlikely hero in suburban America.

Irony with zombies
‘Fido’ is not strictly a zombie movie. Yes, its main premise is the story of a domesticated zombie, played by a strictly-grunting Billy Connoly, in a 1950s ‘perfect America’ universe where zombies are the ‘pets’ of mankind. The trick is to simply lock a collar around their necks to surpress their need to eat and create fenced off communities that protect them from the ‘Wild Zone’ where all the remaining un-domesticated zombies live. These communities are perfect in every way (it never rains apparently) and the families living in them look like they came right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The working 9-5 husband Bill (Dylan Baker), the stay-at-home wife and mother Helen (Carrie-Ann Moss) and the well-mannered skinny kid Timmy (Kesun Loder). Only in this movie, instead of a dog, the pet is a zombie called Fido who starts to wake up from his permanent state of apathy and develops a will of his own despite the collar’s technology. As parts of his humanity emerge, seen through his cravings for a cigarette and appreciation of a woman’s scent, he protects and cares for Timmy and his family, as the ugliness of this seemingly-perfect American community appears. Through an accidental malfunction of his collar, Fido attacks Ms. Henderson, the generic old lady that spies on her neighbours, and before we know it there is a containment problem as zombies spread and death multiply. The head of ZomCom security, Mr. Bottoms, a decorated veteran of the Zombie Wars, succeeds in stopping the contamination just in time but many people are dead and he needs to make an example out of Fido and little Timmy.
The charm of this movie is not just its vibrant palette of colours, its shiny settings or the classic 50s images, like the wife greeting her husband at the door with a three-olive martini while the ham is in the oven. The images of this blissful suburban life are now romantic flashbacks, back to a time where family values were at the core of the American Dream and husbands, mothers and children had specific roles to play, a far cry from some family images we see in the movies today (absentee fathers, drunk mothers, rebellious sons and daughters). There is almost a longing to see a James Dean look-a-like appear at a some point to shake that blinding white smile off everyone’s face and make them act human, because they are as ‘zombified’ as their pets. This is what this film is all about though. It is the zombie that teaches Timmy to stand up to his bullies, it is the zombie that ignites the spark of feminism in Helen, it is the zombie that makes Bill want to be a better father to his son and it is the zombie that transforms this generic, dull community into a lively and human mix of people that have to face their inner demons. Irony at its best and the definitive charm of this film.

Zombies spread the life
When Mr. Bottoms, the illustrious war hero, declares that there is a containment problem within his perfect community, it is as if the film screams at you ‘Sound familiar?’. A decorated Zombie War veteran, risen to politics, protecting a town from a dangerous pandemic that kills people and turns them into heartless, emotionless eating machines? A pandemic whose source, Fido, seems to make women stand up to their husbands (‘Get it yourself dear’ ) and children rebel against their parents wishes. This film brings back memories of old Cold-War science fiction films like ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, ‘The Thing from Another World’ and ‘It Came From Outer Space’ where such contamination scenarios do occur but their consequences are different. Instead of breathing life into a community, the threat tries to destroy all humanity it finds and replace it with pale copies of people, devoid of all emotion and free will. But this was 60 years ago, since then the Cold War has ended and the threat does not come from space but from the all-American home, from the people in power. They talk of perfection, control and safety, attainable only through the use of a gun and isolation.
Fido does not talk, does not actually control anything but through an accidental ‘dinner’, he sets off a sequence of events that show the rotten state of the American family core. However it is not beyond salvation. The solution? Human contact, conversation, sentiment and understanding, something that the status quo forbids in order to contain the zombie virus. In this world, if your mother turns into a zombie, well then she is easy to kill if you don’t love her. If your neighbour tries to eat you, you forget that he gave you 10 extra dollars for mowing his lawn and you chop off his head. Easy, simple and emotionally detached. Mr. Bottoms is a fervent believer in this ethos and is the representation of how America should live in this post-Zombie War world, looking more and more like communist-hunter Joe McCarthy who imprisoned and persecuted any citizen deemed to challenge American values and show left-wing sympathies in the 1950s. Timmy and Fido are challenging the status quo and draw in more people in their movement, until finally the whole town is contaminated. But this illness does not bring the community to an end, in fact it makes the viewer connect with the characters, love them, admire them and cheer for them, because they found their true voice and a lifestyle that makes them truly happy instead of acting like actors in a 50s toothpaste commercial. Helping Fido and Timmy in their quest is Mr. Theopolis (played by the brilliant Tim Blake Nelson), the only human adult in the film that sees through this technicolor sham and does not quite fit in. The cares for his zombie, Tammy, despite her nature and keeps her beside him as a partner, not just a servant. Their relationship is frowned upon by the rest of the town, showing that every community has their black sheep. However Theopolis and Tammy are the perfect example of what the community should in fact aspire to be.

Lenin, Guevara, Trotski and Fido
Communism in American cinema, as with its current politics, will never belong on the good side of popular culture. The so-called ‘Third World War’ between America and Soviet Russia lasted from the end of the Second World War, till the collapse of the Soviet block in 1989 under Republican hero Ronald ‘Second coming of Christ’ Reagan. But unofficially, Hollywood never liked ‘lefties’ and probably never will. They will always be portrayed as either eccentric, remnants of the losing side, or just mad but Fido seems to be neither. The similarities between this film and the ones mentioned above is undeniable but the formula is reversed. As the bodysnatchers suck the life out of Americans, Fido retrieves it for them even though he is undead. Is Hollywood changing its mind about Communism? Wishful thinking there I’m afraid since this battle will go on in cinema and American politics for as long as uneducated right-wingers scream on Fox News that healthcare is socialism. No, this is not about communism in the end. It’s about family, it’s about loving your neighbour and it’s about breaking the wall of silence that our society today lives in.
The people in the town are seemingly fenced off from the rest of world, they hardly talk to each other unless it is to improve their social standing, the kids learn how to shoot to kill without a second thought (a nice critique on gun-laws there) and the best accomplishment one could hope for when they die, is to have their heads cut off and to be buried in the cold ground and stay there. All fitting metaphors of the crippling isolation modern society is going through. Emotional detachment, lack of empathy and individualism are all stigmas in today’s world, mostly due to technology, fear, lack of trust and digital networking. All these hinder human contact and increase the chance of living a solitary life while being constantly surrounded by people. In this film, Fido is our saviour. He will accompany you outside to play in the park, he will help you wash you dad’s car in the driveway while you mum makes lemonade, he will help you get the girl, he will save you from bullies, he will want you to be a decent human being to your family and friends. Fido has all the traits of a Hollywood 1950s communist but in fact he is not a revolutionary, he is not a messiah.
He is what we used to be, imperfect in a lot of ways but alive, smoking, drinking, running and biting.

Film Review: Breathless (À Bout de Souffle)

Very few films can lay claim to being called innovative; after all, film-making is fundamentally a craft and a craft is basically an activity that involves making something with one’s hands. There are a number of well-trodden steps to follow in order to attain the end result in much the same way as there is when making a cake. First you do this, then this and then this and so on. In essence, the camera captures the shots and then the screen shows the result but of course, there can be an entire directory of additional technical processes in between, not to mention all that comes before the camera is even taken off the truck.

But each one of these processes is a craft unto itself and the individuals involved are all skilled technicians of their own particular field whether that’s to do with the actor’s wardrobe, the make-up they wear, the design of the sets, the editing, the special effects, the coordination of stunts, the lighting, or the cinematography (the list can go on), but they all have steps to follow; steps that define their job, their reason for being involved.

However, film-making is also an art; a medium for expression and an outlet for creativity. Part of that creativity could be defined as bending the rules, of thinking outside the box, of trying something new. This is innovation.

One film that can definitely be labelled innovative and still sleep soundly at night is Breathless, or if you prefer the French title – À Bout de Souffle. Released in 1960 to both critical and box office success, it quite simply rewrote the rule book, certainly for editing style. Its use of jump-cuts was totally radical for the time and to watch it now, amazes and horrifies in equal measure. Some of the editing is in-your-face noticeable and looks positively amateurish, jarring even – as though the film stock snapped and was poorly spliced back together – and yet it adds a nuance of freshness and intensity to the film that wouldn’t be there if the editing was smooth. Love it or loathe it, it was a stroke of genius. It was also filmed entirely on a hand-held camera (tracking shots were courtesy of a wheelchair or a postal cart with the camera hidden and the lens poking through a hole because no permission was given from French officials) and with virtually no additional lighting – made possible by using a specific type of film stock that needed to be painstakingly modified.

It was director Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature length film and was one of the earliest examples of the French New Wave of cinema or Nouvelle Vague and it would go on to become one of the most influential films of that era. The young Godard was very critical of mainstream cinema, saying it “emphasised craft over innovation” and many of his films challenged the well-established conventions of traditional Hollywood as well as that of French cinema. Together with his group of contemporaries that included Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut (who both wrote the foundations of Breathless), he set about shaking up the establishment and the way it was perceived that films could be made. He has influenced numerous directors like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, John Woo and Bernardo Bertolucci and is often ranked by critics as one of the greatest directors of all time.

The plot of Breathless revolves around a petty criminal named Michel Poiccard (played sublimely by the then soon-to-be-famous Jean-Paul Belmondo), who fancies himself as a sort of Humphrey Bogart tough guy stereotype. He steals a car in Marseille and then shoots the policeman who has pursued him out into the country. Now a penniless fugitive, he flees to Paris and hides out with an American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), a student and aspiring journalist who sells newspapers along the Champs Élysées to earn her living. He spends his time attempting to seduce her while trying to call in a loan from a local hood so that he can fund their escape to Italy. The police soon make the link between her and her boyfriend and when questioned by them, Patricia learns that Michel is on the run for murder. She eventually betrays him and yada yada yada. Watch it and you’ll find out what happens. Oh and an added bonus – Paris has never looked cooler!

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.