I saw Chinatown for the second time tonight after 18 or so years. I also looked at the special features (missing from the old VHS version) and guess what: As if it wasn't enough that the soundtrack was certainly not as "very emotional", "original", "melodious"(!!), or as "very expressive" as the copy-paste, index-finger masterworks copiously extolled in this thread, it took Goldsmith the better part of 9 days to compose, as opposed to the 9 hours it must have taken Hans to wrap the whole of Inception using Project Sam Essentials. How far have we come...

 Who said that? 

Chinatown is one of the greatest and most perfect films ever made and the apotheosis of film noir and Goldsmith's score is a piece of absolute inspiration from the first note to the last.  It is also total perfection.  No one could ever write a better piece of film music than this score, which represents this great composer at the absolute height of his powers.  The trumpet solo in this film is simply unmatched by any other.  It is haunting and accompanies the intense psychological aspects of the film in an almost uncanny way. 

Simply a masterpiece... But did you know Goldsmith scored it in 9 days??!! He came in as a last minute replacement; what a professional! And it's not just the evocative trumpet solo, but also some very interesting piano effects that blended beautifully with the chamber ensemble, and other remarkable aspects that make this a classic score. Nine entranced days that spawned a justified Oscar nomination, and a tune that will still be relished long after the "epic" dust has settled; long after the pattern-mongers have returned to the D.J. caverns, where they belong...

Chinatown has just about everything. One of the few films I've kept on DVD and haven't sold on Ebay. That film belongs to Faye Dunnaway and not so much Jack Nicholson, even though his performance was one of his best. You couldn't make a film like that today. Why? Because producers aren't completely stupid. They know that a film like Chinatown would be today, a top down rather than a bottom up film. What do I mean by that? Simple. It's about the level of intellect that you're having to SELL to. An audience today needs certain elements to make it go to a picture house - and Chinatown just doesn't have that - you're talking about commercial numbers on seats. It would be regarded as a pro bono art film - a bit like Glengarry Glenross was at the time it came out. No money in it. Actors go out on scale etc.

There have been attempts over recent years to make films in the Chinatown mold. One that springs to mind is LA Confidential. With  a JG score too. But even then, while it's a very well made film it fails to make it onto the Chinatown plateau simply because of the level it needs to appeal to. Therefore it's 'intellectual' starting point is a little way down the scale.

Of course when you say "it's 'intellectual'" you mean "its 'intellectual'". Intellectual snobbery expressed with bad grammar is always amusing :)

Paul is exactly right about the subtlety of Chinatown, and how some people tried to do that but never made it.  Even Jack Nicholson tried to with the sequel "Two Jakes" which was incoherent.  Chinatown took the psychological aspect of film noir that always existed in great older films like "Somewhere in the Night" or  "Cornered" and combined it with the complex plotting of "The Big Sleep" but then went a step further with Roman Polanksi's tremendous visual genius which itself has always been allied with the psychological as in "Repulsion" and "The Tenant."  The tiniest visual details are used, such as Faye Dunaway touching at her eye early in the film and mentioning a "flaw in the iris" as eerie foreshadows of her own death.  The style of the film reminds one of "Don't Look Now" by Nicholas Roeg, a very different subject of the supernatural but similarly subtle and brilliant in its visual style.  That film had a great score as well by Pino Donnagio.

I didn't see Chinatown until film school at the university and I distinctly remember some other students who were screening the film with me start laughing during the scene when Jack was slapping Faye Dunaway around like a Ragedy Anne Doll.  Soon, however, the laughing turned to gasps of disbeliefe when the incest was revealed.  I thought It was kind of ashamed really because then and only then did Mr. Polanski have my classmates complete and undivided attention.

You notice you don't see too much of that in films today.  I mean big brawly men slapping women around.  There was a lot of that back in the films of the 30's 40's 50's up until about the 70's I guess.  Too much political correctness these days.  Not that I enjoy watching brawly men slapping women around on screen nor do I condone that type of behavior I'm just making an observation.

Anyway...

@dagmarpiano said:

Older film music has more craft and musicality than a lot of the modern (Zimmer!) stuff. But the modern stuff can sound more cool, and can be more supportive to the action by being more minimal and repetitive.

Which is better? Here's what I think. The older stuff is better to listen to and has more artistic merit. The modern stuff can work better on action films, but worse on films with any complexity, emotion and imagination.  And even then, this Zimmer-style minimalism is getting a bit tired anyway. Chris Bacon's Source Code had a real old school action score and I thought it sounded really fresh.

What do you think?

We had a thread a year or so ago where we discussed crap movies that had good scores and the same composers came up all of the time.  It seemed as though Williams, Barry, Goldsmith, to name a few, take pride in their work and they respect the craft no matter what kind of film they were scoring. 

Most of those films we named on that thread were from about 20 or so years ago.  Today, crap movies have crap scores and some good movies have crap scores too.  I think it all boils down to training.  20 years ago most of the big name composers were classically trained, today, they are trained at the nearest dance club. (Boom! Chick! Boom Chick! Boom! Chick! Boom! Chick!) and from Youtube videos explaining how to side chain compress a bass beat.  For example, Today, we have Sound Designers who masquerade as composers and are hired to score films.  These guys load up samples, fiddle around with their DAW's and come up with all sorts of uninteresting masterpieces.  But if that's what the producer/director wants who am I to criticize?

I'm a younger guy and I can appreciate composers who think outside of the orchestral box every once in a while but even with composers like Vangelis and Goirgio Moroder, there was always an emphasis on the basics.  Perhaps we've just reached the end of creative film composing and it's come to somebody micing their cat drinking water,  then processing that sound through a DAW, sync it to a scene and there you go.  Do-it-yourself film scoring.        

Hi Jasen, you know I don't really mind someone micing their cat drinking water and subsequently manipulating the slurping on their computer; at least in this case it is them doing the work, and sometimes they get very interesting sonic results (ex. Omnisphere). Infinitely preferable to those absolute, definitive turds that comp other programmers' symphonic segments into "new" pieces, under the pretext of expediency - yeah, all of you just do it once by yourselves so we know you can actually do it, and then keep using the McDonald's composing software if you must. Don't forget the large serving of Taikos and choirs with that...

You know it's very funny that I mentioned Chinatown and the discussion turned into noir films, because Inception definitely qualifies as neo-noir, even with all the action sequences thrown-in. But it was as imponderable an expectation that video-game/MTV audiences could notice and appreciate that, as it was that Hans could score it appropriately.

Chinatown is a latter day noir film and is a testimony to Polanski as a director (and as a bit part player). If you want a visual feast and a very interesting score that goes with it - The Fearless Vampire Killers (dir. Polanski) is well worth watching. No - it's not a moronic modern day teen phuque-up load of vampire bollocks. It has great photography, is funny and has a certain gothic/comedic quality you just don't ever see anymore. Great casting too.

Fearless Vampire Killers has incredible images, like an insane dream one might have after viewing too many Hammer films.  I think he was maybe trying to do an homage to Hammer, somewhat like Tim Burton doing one with Sleepy Hollow.  Polanski is one of the greatest of all filmmakers for both the visual and psychological. 

For another example - have you seen "The Tenant" ?    That film is the most alarming and intimate portrait of schizophrenic experience - first person point of view.  Some of the images get into your brain in the worst way - like Roman (who plays the main part brilliantly) seeing his double across the sleazy apartment courtyard at night observing him with binoculars, the hallucinations at the end which include a bouncing ball that turns into a head, the ghost of a suicidal woman trying to turn him into herself, etc.    And of course - what a tremendous music score!  It is by Phillippe Sarde and has a similarly haunting, melancholy and eerie quality with great orchestrations including some really fine clarinet solos. 

@PaulR said:

Chinatown is a latter day noir film and is a testimony to Polanski as a director (and as a bit part player). If you want a visual feast and a very interesting score that goes with it - The Fearless Vampire Killers (dir. Polanski) is well worth watching. No - it's not a moronic modern day teen phuque-up load of vampire bollocks. It has great photography, is funny and has a certain gothic/comedic quality you just don't ever see anymore. Great casting too.

I was a lucky kid aged 9 who, in 1968, watched "The fearless vampire killers" at the movies, in september, during late holidays out of my city, just before coming back to school, which in Roma - those days - started in october. It was a little town's cinema where I spent nearly all my afternoons. I still remember that beautiful soundtrack, by Krzysztof Komeda (he also did the splendid music for "Rosemary's Baby" for Polanski, which I watched in the same cinema...). Obviously, I now own the CDs of them both.

Well, apart from these memories, once upon a time music for movies was composed with paper, pencil and a piano. Then orchestrated, when needed, very often by the author. And soundtracks were "intelligent" enough to engage, sometimes, just a single instrument. Do you remember the harmonica's solo in " C'era una volta il West" by Ennio? Or that very simply dry "Point Blank" opening/main/end title by Johnny Mandel? Or how about "Amarcord" by Nino Rota?

"Epos" - hence "epic" - was a word (once dense in significance) I had to cope with during my ancient Greek (along with Latin) lessons at school, aged 13 and much later, including University. Nowadays, everybody can "post" an "epic mockup" (!)... Obviously, nobody is more twat than HZ, so everybody is entitled to trifle with a few lousy "ostinati" and other "grain drying on the stalk" put together in a low frequencies' soup, that to-day spells "Modern Soundtrack". I'd love to say more, but it is not my intention to bother you any further. 

@Miki Mart said:

nobody is more twat than HZ, so everybody is entitled to trifle with a few lousy "ostinati" and other "grain drying on the stalk" put together in a low frequencies' soup, that to-day spells "Modern Soundtrack". I'd love to say more, but it is not my intention to bother you any further. 

No, please bother me further.  I like it.  That's a good point about solo instruments.  How often do you hear that today?  In order to have "class" a gigantic orchestra must be used, constantly, with strings smeared all over block chords like excrement in a child's playroom.

Great points Miki Mart and great references. It's easy to forget the talented composers that made their living primarily on TV like Mandel, and especially Rose (my favourite). As far as Ennio, Johnny and Nino are concerned, these were guys that did not have access to symphonic forces a lot of the time back then, but were still able due to sheer talent to articulate so much with so little (the Man with the Harmonica example). When finally they were offered the 80-piece bands, they showed what they could elicit from them as well (incidentally Chinatown also features an ad-hoc chamber ensemble).

If deaf people cannot agree that older instrumental/orchestral film-music was infinitely better than today's offerings in every respect, perhaps they can concede that it was infinitely more varied.

@Errikos said:

As far as Ennio, Johnny and Nino are concerned, these were guys that did not have access to symphonic forces a lot of the time back then, but were still able due to sheer talent to articulate so much with so little

This is something that makes me think about how limitations are very inspiring to creativity.  Jean Renoir said that if he had no limitations, he wouldn't know where to begin.  And yet everyone always tries to obtain no limitations.  Perhaps in the future, when people have no limitations, they will just sit and think, "Yep, I could do that.  No reason to, really.  But I could."  

Anyway, I also was thinking of some great scores of the past that had severe limitations on what was available, and this resulted in better scores than what you would hear from the most gigantic, unlimited ensemble possible.  For example - Jerry Goldsmith on "Thriller" and the "Twilight Zone" - he used chamber scoring, and created classics that are better than almost anything he did later, except of course for Star Trek, which was where he was allowed anything he could dream up , and created a vast, majestic masterpiece.  Or  Roy Webb, on the Val Lewton series of films from the 40s.  He could use only small string ensemble, four brass, one percussion and five woodwinds.  So he had the woodwinds double different instruments, and used various chamber scoring effects to create some of the best music done in Hollywood movies at that time. 

Anyway, it is important to use limitations, as they are often the mother of invention!

@William said:

Anyway, it is important to use limitations, as they are often the mother of invention!

And by 'limitations' of course we are referring to limited resources; not limited imagination and/or limited integrity.

All of you D.J.s and co(m)py-pasters out there... Do you hear this loud enough?!!

Garritan have "proudly" released their Instant Orchestra - for instant composters I guess, no percolation of material is necessary... Claims:

"Everything is pretty much orchestrated for you and ready to go...", "The library does not assume ANY prior knowledge of scoring music or orchestrating"(!!!!!) "A giant step in creativity"(!!!!!!)

And just as the chimpanzees were hopping and salivating... "Just add Imagination!". Oooooooohhhh, must they?..... Who do you think you're talking to?...

With this and other such marvels of contemporary creative apparatus, I put it to you; how can Modern Film Music not be better than the decaying, analogue, talent-based music of the past?...

@William said:

That is disturbing.  It is nothing but commercial pandering.  Talk about "taking the low road"!  

BTW Errikos, I admire how you have as your logo a philosophical statement against 99% of modern film music.  Not to mention your deliberate typo "Composters."  I congratulate you on your Extreme Curmudgeonliness. 

Indeed, soon enough the words musician and discernment will have lost whatever meaning they had left. 

By the way, why don't you also don an appropriate signature here Bill?

Do we realy need that type of talk on this site ?

@jsmit72 said:

Do we realy need that type of talk on this site ?

Well, yeah, actually we do.  It kind of keeps things in perspective don't you think?  Why don't you come and join in our "Reindeer Games" there Smitty.

Say William, I think if our humble moderator were to subtract two posts for every post you delete you'd be at like negative 5,000 posts right about now. 

BTW, Happy New Year all![<:o)][B][D]bb

@jsmit72 said:

Do we realy need that type of talk on this site ?

I think the question should be "Does film-music really need composeurs that cannot put one musical note after another without using software?"

@jasen: Happy new year to you too mate [8]