Film Scores

The 1959 version of Ben Hur, directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston, is considered the last great film score in the tradition of the golden age. This is due to the idea behind the classical film score. According to the website Film Reference, in their article The Classical Hollywood Film Score, this film score is so called because it traditionally helps to tell the film’s story, engaging the audience in the world set up by the movie. It is subordinate to the narrative and created not to be louder than the dialogue. As exemplified in Ben Hur, the film score serves the narrative by sustaining it—bridging gaps that remain in the narrative, creating and sustaining mood, and helping place the audience in the geographic and historical time and space of the film and its various scene changes. One of the most noted parts of the film score, according to the website All Music, in the article entitled Ben-Hur, Film Score, is the naval battle scene. This particular scene exemplifies the classical film score as it helps to move the story along, but does not detract from the action or the dialogue. Due to the upholding of the classical film score tradition, mixed with amazing action and great dialogue, Ben Hur won several academy awards.

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, starring Anthony Perkins as the titular Norman Bates and Janet Leigh, who was not supposed to be murdered as the protagonist, broke new ground in just about every way. One of the most notable changes to cinema that was born out of this film was the music. Composed by Bernard Hermann, the limitations of the film’s budget made the film score shine in a different way. According to All Music, Psycho’s score was composed entirely of string instruments. This simplicity of Hermann’s strings perfectly complimented the starkness of the black and white film, and broke new ground because it stood alongside the film, but did not necessarily enhance it, like Ben Hur’s score did.

There were several types of popular music used in films between the late 1940s through the early 1970s. According to Piero Scaruffi, on his website A Brief History of Film Music, there are several movies that created their own style of popular music, by having songs composed specifically for that film that are meant to be played on the radio, the same as other regular pop songs. These movies include Red River in 1948, Big Sky and High Noon in 1952, and Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1957. Other themes, such as The Third Man in 1949, stood alone and could be re-played on the radio or in records because they were so popular.

The 1950s and 1960s saw the beginning of experimentation with the concept of what popular music was in a variety of films. Unchained in 1955 contained haunting melodies and gospel music. The Misfits in 1961 contained Mexican folk songs.

A famous form of popular music that found its way into a variety of films was jazz and ragtime. The first major score to have jazz based themes was Viva Zapata in 1952, and this seemed to be the kickoff of the use of jazz in films. Jazz began as an underground sensation, but slowly gained wider acceptance once used in films after Viva Zapata, as Point Blank in 1967 and the original film M.A.S.H. in 1970.

In 1969, Easy Rider, a film meant to exemplify the social protest of the jaded flower-power generation, scored a film around a popular song that is still played on the radio today: Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf. This song is a fantastic example of popular music in cinema because it captured the thoughts and feelings of a generation that did not see its dreams come to fruition. After Easy Rider showed the way toward experimentation for the 1970s, avant-garde music became popular within film scores, and can be seen as interesting examples in two different films: Straw Dogs in 1971 and the Mechanic in 1972.