Saturday, May 28, 2011

Film List - Great Movie Songs

Now, I was going to be lazy this month, and just give you a link to the list of The 100 Best Movie Songs compiled by the American Film Institute back in 2004.

But then I thought, no, my loyal readers deserve more than this. So, here's a quick supplementary 'Top 10' (er, 18) of what I think are some of the most conspicuous omissions from the AFI list. [It's nice to see some slightly more exotic selections making their way in - such as Gene Wilder's & Peter Boyle's Puttin' On The Ritz from Young Frankenstein and Bob Hope's Buttons & Bows from the great 1948 comedy western The Paleface. But there are some very odd choices in their Top 100, I think (songs from Philadelphia and Nashville??). Some of my picks below didn't even make it into the 'Top 400' longlist. There's no accounting for taste!]



Some of my favourite songs from the movies


Highway To The Danger Zone (Kenny Loggins) from Top Gun [1986]
A great favourite on the playlist down at my favourite bar. Cheesy, yes - but the '80s were all about the cheese. There was a lot of other good music in this, notably the two classics, Otis Redding's Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay and The Righteous Brothers' You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling - used to serenade Kelly McGillis in the bar, in one of the great failed cheesy pick-up attempts. (I don't think there's any problem about including non-original songs in this survey, since the AFI list includes, for example, The Righteous Brothers' Unchained Melody from 1990's Ghost, although that version was recorded in 1965 and the song itself is a decade older still.)


Eye of the Tiger (Survivor) from Rocky III [1982]
Again, all about the cheese! Not, on dispassionate appraisal, a particularly great song, and certainly not a very good film - yet, by some strange synergy, these two mediocrities combined to produce one of the most enduringly memorable film title songs of all time.


Bang! Bang! (Nancy Sinatra) from Kill Bill: Volume 1 [2003]
One of the most creepily appropriate pairings of a venerable 'classic' song with movie opening credits. Tarantino has included a lot of great music in his films - his use of the George Baker Selection's Little Green Bag for the famous slow-motion opening sequence of Reservoir Dogs might also be a contender - but I think this is the best of the lot, really rather haunting.


What's New, Pussycat? (Tom Jones) from What's New, Pussycat? [1965]
I loved this film as a kid - great to see Peter O'Toole having some fun in a light comic role for once, with fantastic support from lovely Romy Schneider and demented Peter Sellers as an Austrian psychoanalyst. And the song is classic Tom Jones.


You've Got A Friend In Me (Randy Newman) from Toy Story [1995]
Really - this was one of the most baffling omissions from the AFI list. Disney was heavily represented, but Pixar didn't get a look-in!


Money Makes The World Go Around (Liza Minelli and Joel Grey) from Cabaret [1972]
The AFI list included this musical's title song, but not the arguably even more memorable Money. Strange.


I Could Have Danced All Night (Marni Nixon) from My Fair Lady [1964]
Musicals are fairly heavily represented in the AFI's list.... but the greatest of all musicals doesn't get a look-in at all?! Something going wrong around here. (JES pointed out in a comment below that I Could Have Danced All Night is in fact included in the AFI's 'Top 100'; I somehow repeatedly overlooked it. As a more-than-worthy substitute from the same film, I pick Stanley Holloway's great singalong I'm Getting Married In The Morning.)


I Will Wait For You (Danielle Licari) from Les Parapluies de Cherbourg [1964]
And of course, nothing non-American gets considered for the AFI list, so Michel Legrand's plangent - sometimes perhaps rather too gratingly unforgettable - score for Jacques Demy's great tragic romance is another of the more egregious omissions.


I Wanna Be Like You (Louis Prima and Phil Harris) from The Jungle Book [1967]
This wasn't in the AFI list??!! The best Disney song ever! Although it's a very close competition with the same film's Bare Necessities....


Shout! (Otis Day & The Knights) from National Lampoon's Animal House [1978]
The best of many, many great '60s songs (Louie Louie, Let's Dance, Wonderful World) used by John Landis in his cult campus comedy, it forms the climax of one of the greatest party scenes ever committed to film. According to Wikipedia, 'Otis Day' was actually a performer called Lloyd Williams; I don't recall seeing him in anything else, and I can't find anything about him on IMDB or anywhere else on the Net - strange.


America - Fuck, Yeah! (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) from Team America: World Police [2004]
Another great favourite down at the bar! From the same film, the hilarious Montage and You Are Worthwhiff, Arec Bawrrin! are also in contention.... as are Blame Canada!, The Unclefucker Song and the brilliant What Would Brian Boitano Do? from the guys' 1999 classic South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.


Jockey Full Of Bourbon (Tom Waits) from Down By Law [1986]
This eccentric low-life comedy is probably Jim Jarmusch's most accessible work, and it is elevated to classic status by the exquisite opening sequence - accompanied by this great song from Waits's Rain Dogs album.


Ev'rybody Wants To Be A Cat (Scatman Crothers and Phil Harris) from The Aristocats [1970]
A pretty close second to the Jungle Book among the Disneys that most got under my skin when I was a child (and possibly the first one that I went to see in the cinema); I suspect this might be the song that turned me on to jazz - although it would be another 15 years before I started to discover much about the genre.


Be My Baby (The Ronettes) from Mean Streets [1973]
This song was also featured, I think, in 1987's trashy cult romantic hit Dirty Dancing, but it is Scorsese's use of it over the introductory sequence to his great early gangster pic that I particularly love.


These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You) (Jane Birkin and Jimmy Rowles) from These Foolish Things [1990]
This is a simple but - in the context of Tavernier's wonderfully understated film (aka Daddy Nostalgie) about father-daughter reconciliation and the acceptance of death - heartbreakingly poignant rendition of the jazz classic, and one which encapsulates the themes and the mood of the story more completely than any other movie song I can think of.


If I Only Had A Brain (Ray Bolger) from The Wizard Of Oz [1939]
Over The Rainbow - of course! - tops the AFI's list, and Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead! somehow sneaks in at No. 82; but the film's other great songs are overlooked (Ding-Dong! beats out We're Off To See The Wizard and If I Were The King Of The Forest??). The Scarecrow's rather poignant fantasy on the imagined advantages of an intellect is my personal 'best of the rest'. [I gather an early, rather slower version of the song was rediscovered a couple of years ago; there's supposed to be a link to it here, but I'm having difficulty getting it to play at the moment.]


When I See An Elephant Fly (Cliff Edwards and the Hall Johnson Choir) from Dumbo [1941]
Oh my god, this almost slipped my mind - definitely among the all-time top three or four Disney songs!


See What The Boys In The Back Room Will Have (Marlene Dietrich) from Destry Rides Again [1939]
A marvellous saloon singalong from one of my favourite Westerns.


Any other suggestions??

18 comments:

Gary said...

Great list.

I nominate Putting out Fire, David Bowie's theme song for the 80s remake of Cat People.

Froog said...

Oh, GOOD call, Gary!

I don't know how that one slipped my mind. I love Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar on that.

I don't generally approve of remaking the classics, but there were a lot of good things about that version (not just Natassja Kinski looking slinski!) - including probably the best original theme song of the decade. I don't think this was even in the AFI's Top 400 - how not??

JES said...

You just earned yourself a replacement pick -- "I Could Have Danced All Night" is indeed on the list, at #17. (At least, assuming Wikipedia's list is accurate; haven't checked the PDF.)

When I see lists like this I almost always wonder about the nomination/voting process -- the former, especially. De gustibus and all that, and voters for almost ANYTHING don't have to be qualified to have an opinion about breakfast, let alone music, comedy, etc. So the final selections are a complete crapshoot... But the lists put up for a vote are generally the product of "experts'" having put their heads together to be sure there were no omissions. So how did they overlook all these great choices of yours, plus who knows how many (and which) others?

Now I'm wondering as well what, exactly, constitutes "Best." For instance, were Oscar-winning numbers automatically on at least the list of nominees? I have a feeling it's got nothing to do with songwriting mastery, wit, arrangement... more like a synonym for "Favorite" or "Best-Loved."

A couple of theme songs I thought of... The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly theme... also The Godfather's. And that "You Never Can Tell" was the only Pulp Fiction nominee is just wrong!

Rather disappointed to see nothing at all from the great concert films (The Last Waltz, Stop Making Sense, The Wall I guess, and of course Woodstock) -- although I suppose that would be stacking the deck a bit. Also apparently nothing from Kubrick's films. And they were lucky to have made up this list in 2004, before Across the Universe came out... But -- showing my age -- nothing from Hard Day's Night?!?

They had to be applying some arbitrary rules for nominations -- "no documentary films," or whatever.

[Nothing to do with the selections, but I'm regularly frustrated by loooong HTML- or PDF-based tables, because they're not easily sorted/selected from. In this list's case, I was almost as interested to see which films were represented -- or omitted -- as I was to see their ranking.]

Froog said...

Well, I think the emphasis here is on song, JES, so Sergio Leone instrumentals are not in the frame. And I think it's fair enough to exclude concert films and music documentaries, because there the songs are evocative of those particular performers rather than of the film per se.

However, I think there is room for debate as to whether you should distinguish songs that are purely part of the incidental music - such as Born To Be Wild in Easy Rider - from songs that are actually performed by a character in the film (and then there's perhaps a further distinction between films that are pure musicals, and films in which there are isolated musical interludes - like Diane Keaton's Seems Like Old Times in Annie Hall and Audrey Hepburn's Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Where a song is part of the incidental music, I think it needs to take a place of some prominence in the film, and to be heard almost in its entirety, rather than muted in the background or just brief scraps. What would you choose from Pulp Fiction, JES? There was a lot of great music in that, but most of it was instrumentals. I think You Never Can Tell was the only song they played a substantial part of (not all the way through, I don't think) and which took a central role in a key scene. Oh, I suppose Urge Overkill's cover of Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon would be the other contender.

I may be brewing more focused selections on great opening theme music and opening theme songs.

Froog said...

I entirely agree about the cumbersomeness and lack of searchability of such long lists. I don't know how on earth I missed that I Could Have Danced All Night was included. I must have scrolled up and down, scanning all the columns in turn, a dozen times at least. Once a 'blind spot' develops, it can be very stubborn!

I'm going to substitute I'm Getting Married In The Morning!

Froog said...

Another great favourite of mine that slipped my mind at the weekend was Helen Forrest singing It's Been A Long, Long Time with the Harry James Orchestra from Woody Allen's Hannah and her Sisters.

And the gestating post about opening credit songs is probably going to open with The Doors' The End in Apocalypse Now.

Froog said...

Oh, oh, oh... well, perhaps this only has such powerful resonances for a certain generation of Brit, but... Self-Preservation Society, the end credit theme song from The Italian Job.

JES said...

From Pulp Fiction I'd go with one of the surf-guitar pieces -- maybe "Surf Rider," the one that plays over the closing credits. It felt supremely in tune with the happy, jazzed-up frame of mind I was in when leaving the theater after seeing it the first time.

"You Never Can Tell," it seems, had sentimental value as the one which Travolta and Thurman danced to. But it's really not much of a song (well, to me, anyhow).

Melodically, and in arrangement, in My Fair Lady I think the loveliest number is one of the most minor: "Ascot Racing Day."

I was thinking last night about this post and trying to remember the Doris Day song which she sang as a key plot element in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, with Jimmy Stewart. "Que Sera, Sera." Seems to me she must have recorded/released it outside the context of the film, but I really don't know. Pleased to see it was on the list of 400, but it does seem sort of incidental (as you say).

JES said...

Oh, jeez -- are you familiar with the Steve Martin/Bernadette Peters Pennies from Heaven? Something like Moulin Rouge. Weird, gimmicky between-the-cracks genre of musicals-but-not-quite.

Froog said...

Ah yes, and I love Dick Dale's Misirlou from the opening credits of Pulp Fiction as well, but I think a 'song' here really needs lyrics, JES.

I have, but have never got around to watching the Martin/Peters Pennies From Heaven. You know it was (like the Robert Downey Jnr. version of The Singing Detective) a remake of what had originally been a six-part BBC1 TV series back in the late '70s or early '80s, starring Bob Hoskins (hard to imagine someone more unlike Steve Martin!)?

Which reminds me.... Nat King Cole's version of Mona Lisa is used in Neil Jordan's 1980s thriller of that name, starring Bob Hoskins. That should have been another contender.

Quite agree Que sera, sera ought to have been in the AFI List (and mine). I wonder if they had an unwritten rule that they would ignore Doris Day films, otherwise she'd take 10 or 15 of the available spots! Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps should have been in, as well.

I had thought the list would be restricted to songs written specifically for the movie in question - but the inclusion of Unchained Melody blew that idea away. And there might some awkward definitional problems: I suppose Mrs Robinson was commissioned for The Graduate, but what about Sound of Silence - was that just another recently composed song that the producers bought the rights to? Was Born To Be Wild written for Easy Rider? I don't know - and opinions on the point may differ.

JES said...

Coincidentally, the other night The Missus and I caught a showing of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at a point just before Paul Newman shows up on the bicycle. The Missus exclaimed, "I HATE this scene" -- and went on to clarify: she thinks that "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" is one of the dumbest musical interludes ever included in a non-musical film. Completely gratuitous.

Checking the criteria for selection at the bottom of the AFI page for the list, I see that it doesn't say explicitly that the songs had to include a vocal. It does say, though, "Music and lyrics featured in an American film that set a tone or mood, define character, advance plot and/or express the film's themes in a manner that elevates the moving image art form. Songs may have been written and/or recorded specifically for the film or previously written and/or recorded and selected by the filmmaker to achieve the above goals."

That "music AND lyrics" phrase I guess could be interpreted to mean a given song must be sung and not just played. Still, it is to grumble.

I think "Sounds of Silence" appeared on S&G's early Wednesday Morning 3 A.M. album, sounding -- arranged -- somewhat different from the version on the film soundtrack and the Bookends album.

My gosh there's a lot to talk about re: this list...!

Froog said...

Oh, oh, oh... Levi Stubbs singing Feed me, Seymour! from Little Shop Of Horrors. Or Steve Martin's Be A Dentist...

JES said...

I find this almost sinfully obsession-making. Like you, I keep thinking of "oh by the way" additions to the list...

In my first comment, I mentioned Kubrick's films -- before having read the "AMERICAN films" criterion. So, okay, I guess you could argue that Kubrick was a de facto Brit. But surely Dr. Strangelove should've been on the table (considering it made the AFI's "100 Years - 100 Laughs" list). Both "Johnny Comes Marching Home" (or "Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye," if you will) and "We'll Meet Again" are completely entangled in my mind with that film.

Froog said...

Ah, yes - or indeed Try A Little Tenderness, from the opening sequence.

Which then puts me in mind of The Commitments, which had a particularly good Chain of Fools.

Froog said...

And I just noticed I said 'Sergio Leone' in an earlier comment, when I should more properly have said Ennio Morricone, of course.

Froog said...

Dusty Springfield did a thing called Nothing Has Been Proved with The Pet Shop Boys for Michael Caton-Jones' film about the Profumo affair, Scandal. That also had a great 'tooling up' scene, with the two good-time girls, Joanne Whalley and Bridget Fonda, putting on their make-up to The Shadows' Apache - but an instrumental again. Great scene, though - I wonder if it's on YouTube.

Froog said...

Oh, oh, oh, there really ought to be something from The Rocky Horror Picture Show as well. 'The Time Warp', I suppose.

Froog said...

And 'The Banana Boat Song' from Beetlejuice, of course, with the wonderful Catherine O'Hara.