[Oblivion437]

Akira Kurosawa's Ran had one of the finest musical scores ever.

Citizen Kane had a good score, especially the scenes in the newspaper office.

2001: A Space Odyssey had one of the finest scores ever, including famous music by Gyorgi Ligetti, and the most famous Johann Strauss Waltz ever; On The Beautiful Blue Danube.

Every one of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy and Once Upon A Time In The West all had magnificent scores, including West's famous Harmonica introductory piece.

Ennio Morricone did all those scores, he also did the track for Salo: O Le 120 Giornata De Sodomi, but I haven't seen the film.

The last film Morricone did with Sergio Leone (Leone's last, and grandest film) was Once Upon A Time In America, and seeing the full-length cut of the film, I have to say, that was one of the most magnificent musical scores I've ever heard. Haunting, sad, morbid and practically magnifying the emotions on screen, and lending unbelievable weight to the mournful subtext of such a sad film.

One of my three favorites, in no particular standing.

Another is the striking, sleazy, deep, moody track over which most of the events in Taxi Driver occured. Bernard Herrmann finished that score the day he died, and the result is one of the most deep, incredibly effective deliveries, ever.

My last top choices, also in no particular standing, are the incredible scores for All the President's Men and The Parallax View. In All the President's Men, single play notes and two-note bits by a trumpet are the key to delivering incredible tension, in a very big way. The final play out of it over the credits is vaguely reminiscent of patriotic music, and it lends a very scary note to the end of the film. The Parallax View has a similarly patriot-sounding ending and opening tune, but it sounds almost...wretched...hateful even. Then there's the music playing during The Test, and anyone who's seen the film knows what I'm talking about. It's an incredibly bizarre and jarring track, moving at times to soft, energetic and terrifying, the whole scene moves to new heights by weight of still photos and music alone.

The last track, which I can't quite put in terms of how much I like, but I dearly love, is the incredible Organ-only track to Intolerance. It moves at times light and cheerful, at others dark and sordid, and others positively malevolent, it moves and flows perfectly with the action, and for a silent film of 1916 (the movie which showed us what movies could be, it was like D.W. Griffith said, "look, here, this is movies, you can make it too, and you can statements with it that will last forever," and we haven't ignored him) it proves all the more incredible.

EDIT:

I can't believe I forgot Vangelis' majestic score, composed in such a haunting, dark fashion, it made Blade Runner even darker, which is one hell of a feat to accomplish with good Tech Noir.

[ 06-08-2004, 09:01 PM: Message edited by: Oblivion437 ]