Cinema is the ultimate visual medium,
a thousand pictures a minute, each worth a thousand words. But behind them is some music that's
doing almost as much talking. Easily our most requested movie list yet,
these are our picks for the top ten best original
scores of all time. (Music) So first question we ask ourselves
when we set out listening was, how does music contribute
to the telling of a story? And the first way we found
was in the mood-setting. Music is an incredibly effectively
way of not just communicating, but conveying emotion. It can be dread, as in The Omen. Or The Lion in Winter. Or sorrow, as in Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon. Or Schindler's List. (Music) Love, as in Titanic. (Music) Bliss, as in the Mission. And both hope and hopelessness,
as in Swiss Army Man (Music) But our favorite mood building score
goes to the power of jazz on film, which could be from
A Streetcar Named Desire or Taxi Driver. (Music) But for us, has gotta be the bleak,
brooding, disconnected music composed for Elevator to the Gallows by
the legendary Miles Davis. (Music) Elevator to the Gallows was an immensely
influential precursor to the French new wave, a trendsetter in instrumentation,
and a piece that was absolutely dripping with
a melancholy, lonely, alienated mood. And it was a jazz score in every sense of
the word, with all the preparation of two chords Davis liked sketched together in
a hotel room on a piano the night before, sitting down with four other session
musicians, watching the film live, and then improvising the entire score. It's simple, unplanned, barely structured. But apparently, when you strip all that
away and you're Miles, freaking Davis, all you're left with is pure,
unadulterated mood. (Music) After setting a mood we think scores
also set a tone, and while that might sound like we're just playing games
with the thesaurus, hear me out. Mood, in a score, purveys to us
the prevailing emotion of scene, how the characters in
that world are feeling, while the tone tells us how
we should feel about it. It's a point of view,
a perspective on the action. Compare Miles Davis's film noir score
to that of John Barry's Goldfinger. Both of them use jazz instrumentation
to convey a sense of danger. But where Miles positions us
genuinely inside that danger, Barry's score doesn't
take it seriously at all. That's tone. It's the small intimacy of
the assassination of Jessie James. It's the majesty and honor of Apollo 13. Or the sense of magic in The Natural. It's the Pirates of the Caribbean
laughing in the face of danger. Or the Thin Red line, interpreting more
tragically rather than heroically. However, the score that takes the tone
we love the most has to be Nina Rota's, in The Godfather. (Music) From its opening trumpet phrase,
Rota's score takes such a position on the Corleones, crooning with an oppressive
weight of tradition and power, even on the day of his daughter's wedding. You are practically forced to
take these people seriously. And even when the score's mood turns
lighter, as in its romantic moments, there's always a lingering
sense of gravity, because that's what this score
is above all else, grave power. But almost as a curse, a weight that
hangs over the family business. And Rota infuses the sound of
this weight in every note. (Music) Sometimes scores can hit us less
in the heart and more in the head, conjuring up an idea through music. Atonement does this by incorporating
typewriter sounds as percussion, to suggest that even the score is written. And High Noon uses the ticking of
strings to suggest the approaching hour. Arrival uses incomprehensible voices as
instruments to underline the struggles with communication. Where Close Encounters of the Third Kind
plays with the idea of music as communication. However, if there was a man known for effectively expressing ideas in musical
form, it's gotta be Hans Zimmer. Whether he's ticking away
the days in Interstellar. Or stretching a tune to
dream time in Inception. Or, for our favorite, basically writing a dissertation on
time in musical form for Dunkirk. (Music) Zimmer's score is so effective because it perfectly
captures the experience of gradual, unending suffocation, while still managing
to organize around a few very heady ideas. The pocket watch-like tickiness really
does incept the idea of time running out into our minds. And his use of an auditory illusion
called the Shepard scale to create a disorienting sense of endlessly
rising notes that never seems to actually change really does
suggest an ever tightening trap. But when he takes this Shepard's
scale in three different octaves and plays it in triplicate at three different
rates to symbolize the three different plot lines at three different time scales. And, do you know what? He lost us three threes back. It's the kind of thing that might be
a little too clever for its own good. It isn't clear to us whether anyone is
actually capable of grasping intellectual ideas in music of that complexity. But it's okay, because it still manages
to be an awesome, intelligent, and effective piece of composition. (Music) Beyond heart and the head, one of the most
impactful places a score can hit us is right in the gut, going for
the limbic system, or the lizard brain, or whatever you want to call it, bypassing
our defenses and hijacking our reactions. You find this in the shrillest of
highs and in the lowest of lows, in the experimental score,
like in, Under the Skin. (Music) Or Planet of the Apes (Music) Or The Andromeda Strain. (Music) And it's the driving force
behind the horror score. Every time you get your hackles up
from a dissonant stand of strings, this is the level that
music is working at. And when it is,
it probably owes a debt to Bernard Herman, whose music practically
hypnotizes you in Vertigo. It entrances you in Obsession. (Music) And in this slot, attacks you, in Psycho. (Sound)
This is what we all think of first when
we think of the music of Psycho. And it is certainly the most acute version
of Hermann's incredible stabbing effect, the one where we almost feel the strings,
even if we take away the picture. (Music) But Hermann has started in on us with
his musical violence from the beginning, subtler, but only just. His use of strings as percussion and
constant subtle dissonance is so effective, because it makes us
the targets of all the terror, instead of just the characters on screen. Watch the shower sequence as Hitchcock has
originally planned it, without any music, and you can feel how much more
detached the viewing experience is. >> Aah! >> But layer back in Herman's score, and
there's an irresistible immediacy that comes from the innate visceral power
of music that he managed to tap into. >> Aah! (Music) >> Taking a breather from musical
brutality, the best scores can also evoke a sense of being somewhere in space,
in time, in all its specificity. It can elaborate a corner of a room on
screen onto an entire world outside of it. It can be the western frontier
as in the Magnificent Seven. Or The Big Country. (Music) It can be space, as the in Gravity. (Music) Or Sunshine. It can even be an imaginary world,
like Middle Earth. (Music) Or Metropolis. However, it is in the genre of the epic
that this effect really shines, in War and Peace (Music) Around the World in 80 Days and
Lawrence of Arabia. (Music) But even better, we think it's
Miklos Rozsa's score for Ben-Hur. (Music) Blaring brass, and soaring strings,
and crashing drums, and a massive orchestra come together with the
pop of armies in the scope of an empire to build a score that feels miles wide and
taller still. Rozsa spent over a year composing over
three hours of music for the film and then conducting a one
hundred piece symphony for 72 hours in 12 sessions to this result. It was the longest film score ever made
in its time, and it contained multitudes, music for men, and crowds,
and nations, and gods, and a sense of scale, and scope, and
dynamic range enough to suggest them all. All adding up to a score that would go
on to practically define the genre of the epic. (Music) One of the most exciting ways a score can
function is by turning up the heat or intensity of whatever's already on screen, an effect that is probably at its best in
the action underscore, pounding drums and sizzling strings that act
as a musical multiplier. You can find what we think are some
of the best examples of this in films like Back to the Future, Raiders of
the lost ark, Mad max Fury Road, Suspiria, the Dark Knight,
and Conan the Barbarian. However, if there's am film that still
stands the test of time as one of the greatest, even after revolutionizing
the drama in the first place, it's Sergei Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky. (Music) This was Eisenstein's propagandic
attempt to curry Stalin's favor, and by doing so, ideally, avoid execution. Unfortunately for him, Russia signed a pact with
Germany shortly before its completion, which meant Alexander Nevsky, the film,
was shelved for political purposes. Prokofiev, however, quickly repurposed his
music into a contata that was performed often into great popularity. There was an immense sense of energy and
conflict within his composition that the music practically conjures
its own images of a battle. But a decade later, after a tiny little
Nazi invasion, let's say, recolored Soviet's sentiments towards the Germans,
the film was finally released, and picture and sound were finally shown together,
allowing the world to see the full effect of Prokofiev's score in lending all its
immense force onto Eisenstein's imagery. Full to the brim with swells,
crescendos, and turns, like a 1,000 men charging army of music. (Sound)
Music can do more than just intensify a conflict, it can almost become
the conduit of the conflict itself. When the drama seems to be playing
out through the music, above and beyond what's happening on screen. Consider the breakfast
sequence on Citizen Kane. Yes, the performances and
camera tell a story, but that entire story is also
told through just the music. Red Shoes incredible ballet is
a drama that is driven by the music. But there's probably no composer better
at music as drama than Ennio Morricone, especially in his work with Sergio Leone. In Once Upon a Time in America, (Music) And Once Upon a Time in the West. (Music) But come on, never any better than
in the Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. (Music) Without Morricone's music, most of Sergio
Leone's movies would be absurdly long shots of pretty landscapes and tough
looking cowboys walking really slowly and glancing at each other out
of the corner of their eyes. But with Morricone's unforgettable,
eternally dramatic music, they are fraught with the threat of
violence that could erupt at any second. Filled with scheming, and drama,
and tension, and conflict, they are the perfect link. But Leone is no dummy. He isn't being rescued from his
own doldrums by his composer here, but giving a virtuoso
the space to speak for him. From the adventurous,
to the romantic, to the utterly epic, here the music tells the tale. (Sound)
Then there are the times when music takes you beneath the drama,
where it focuses less on orchestrating the physical
action or carrying the obvious plot, but instead turns its attention to something
else that might otherwise go unseen. Where the music becomes
the narrator of the subtext and the voice of a character's inner world. Neil Young's score for Dead Man uses
a haunting solo guitar as a stand-in for the character, where The Social Network
is a pitch perfect evocation of childlike vulnerability
getting covered over by rage. Moonlight is a melancholy look
beneath an often tough exterior, (Music) Where Goldsmith's Patton employs
three different melodies for the different facets of the But if there's
a composer we think can orchestrate an interior unlike any other,
it's gotta be Johny Greenwood, who scores for
Phantom Thread and The Master. Expose delicious, hidden underbellies
to their characters, but no more and never better than in his
work on There Will Be Blood. (Music) Paul Thomas Anderson has an extensive
history of working with brilliant avant-garde composers to reveal
a deeper layer to his films, including earlier work from
Micheal Penn And Jon Brion. But none of it has reached
quite the level of beauty, innovation, and
sophistication as his work with Greenwood, who you may be more familiar with
as the lead guitarist of Radiohead. There Will Be Blood was only his second
score ever, but it cracked open the skull of classical film composition with
a bowling pen, upending the traditional sound entirely and allowing something new,
and subtle, and intimate to leak out. The dos-ease of the score,
its subtle tone of melancholy, and grief, and tumult understands an element
of Daniel Plainview's character that we'd all likely miss without it,
far more than the rest of the film and even Daniel himself would ever admit. (Music) Closing in at number two, there's one
incredibly important thing we haven't even talked about yet,
the ability to write an incredible theme. Of course, by theme we really mean
leitmotif, a recurring musical phrase or melody that is introduced at the same
time as an important person, place, thing, or idea. That can be replayed every time the
composer wants to evoke that associated element. Maybe with a variation to suggest
a change, faster, or slower, or in a different key or
with a different instrument. As for some of the best,
how about this one from Braveheart? (Music) Or this one from Godzilla? (Music) How about the original Batman theme? (Music) You probably recognized all
of these almost immediately. However, when someone says theme, there's no one we think of faster
than John freaking Williams. He's written absolute stunners for
Jurassic Park, for Jaws, for Harry Potter, (Music) Or for Superman. (Music) But come on,
you're already humming the damn tune. This one goes for Star Wars,
The Empire Strikes Back. (Music) George Lucas' desire to focus on
the familiar emotional elements in his sci-fi opera rather than
the otherworldly caused him to seek out a score that hearkened back to
early 20th century romanticism. Buoyant with adventure and saturated with With cultural
associations to modern legend. The result was Williams's
return to Strauss and Wagner, the operatic forebearers
of the late motif concept. And while A New Hope certainly
changed everything and debuted the main theme
which we all know best. Empire added onto it further still, striking the perfect balance
between density and development. It brought back Luke's Theme. (Music) The Rebel Fanfare (Music) The Force Theme. (Music) And Leia's Theme. (Music) While debuting Darth Vader's
Imperial March Theme, Yoda's Theme, (Music) The Han-Princess Theme. (Music) And on, and on, and on, and they're all about as good of an example
of the power of theme as you can get. Because if you're anything like us, each snippet of melody immediately brings
something very specific to your mind. And an entire suite of associated feelings
about that theme, because John Williams, a musical ninja, has hijacked our memory. When we first set out to come up with this
list, a friend asked us if there was any composer out there who
was a peer to Williams? And our response was, honestly,
we couldn't think of any. Some of his contemporaries, like
Goldsmith and Horner came first to mind, they're absolute geniuses in
their own different ways. But as far as the majestic sweep
of the huge romantic theme, we weren't sure anyone could compete. And after all our research we still think
he is ultimately peerless at what he does. But you'll notice he took up our
number two slot and we still have yet to crown a number one. And that's because we found two other
composers who aren't really his peers. Because while they've composed scores and
themes just as well as him, by about half a century,
they did it first. One is Max Steiner, probably the most
prolific composer who ever was. Author of such world class
compositions as those for King Kong and Gone with the Wind. (Music) And Casablanca.
(Music) And about 300 others. And the second, is Erich Wolfgang
Korngold, who compared to Steiner and his 100s, scored only 19 films. But each one is literally one of the best
pieces of film music we've ever heard. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. (Music) Captain Blood.
(Music) The Prince and the Pauper. (Music) God, the Adventures of Robin Hood. (Music) To prove a point,
does this theme that Korngold composed for Kings Row in 1942 sound
at all familiar to you? (Music) None of this is to take away at
all from William's brilliance. The man is clearly a genius
at what he does, but he is a genius atop the genius Korngold,
it's hard for us to pick a favorite. But gun to our heads, the one that makes
us want to jump out of our chairs and take to adventure fastest,
is probably his score for The Sea Hawk. (Music) A child prodigy,
Austrian exile of the Nazis, and musical descendent of Wagner and Strauss. Korngold was a clear forebearer to John
Williams from whom he's clearly inherited so much. In a decade where stock music was almost
just as common as original composition. Korngold's work was really and truly
the high water mark for film scoring. He laid them out like opera librettos. Even referred to them as operas
without singing, filled with themes, each more magnificent than the last. And The Sea Hawk's score builds its moods,
takes a clear tone, suggests ideas about
swashbuckling in the seas. Plays with our hearts and minds and guts,
evokes a romantic setting like no other. Intensifies the action,
underlines drama and even contributes to the subtext of one of Errol Flynn's
most complicated characters yet. All while wrapping this in some
of the most entertaining and memorable music we've ever heard made for
movies. Which is why we think it's one of the best
original film scores of all time. >> So there you have it, check out all
the music from this episode in the Spotify playlist linked in the video description. Let us know what you think in the comments
below it and be sure to subscribe for more Cinefix Movie Lists.
I love this Cinefix lists. They don’t approach them as “here is the definitive list, and if you disagree you’re wrong” but more like, “here’s 10 great examples of different styles of one category and 30 more recommendations to go along with it.” I always appreciate it, even if I disagree
I love Cinefix, this is another fantastic video from them. Top marks.
One of my favourite pieces of music in a movie is Nick Cave's "Song For Bob" from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
I always upvote cinefix
Top 10 Film Scores of All Time. The Good the Bad and the Ugly in thumbnail. This list is off to a good start.
Good list but Howard Shore's LOTR score definitely deserves more than a passing mention.
Man this is some great content. It's really unfortunate this is only sitting at 16 upvotes after two hours. This channel knows their shit and consistently puts out the best top 10 lists (imo) on youtube.
Good list, but personally i think nr 2 should have been lotr/howard shore. John williams deserves a place in the list, maybe nr 1, but i think lotr is a better/the best example in the category of leitmotif compared to star wars (leitmotiv =|= theme)
1 - Theme pt 2 - The Sea Hawk
2 - Theme pt 1 - The Empire Strikes Back
3 - Subtext - There Will Be Blood
4 - Tension - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
5 - Conflict - Alexander Nevsky
6 - Scope - Ben Hur
7 - Psychological Manipulation - Psycho
8 - An Idea - Dunkirk
9 - Tone - The Godfather
10 - Mood - Elevator to the Gallows
Missing from the list:
Scale - The Lord of the Rings
Futility - Blade Runner: 2049
Violent hopelessness - Requiem for a Dream
Honor - Gladiator
Majesty - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The something's changed jingle from BTTF is my favorite