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I've listened to Monkey Shines a lot more than Farewell My Lovely. One of my favourite scores.
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Can anyone direct me to a early detective or noir score that 'Farewell, My Lovely' is referencing.
I know scores like this, Chinatown, and Body heat are harkening back to earlier scores, but I don't know what or when.
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To tell the truth, Chinatown really started the whole mistaken notion that all film noir scores feature sultry saxaphone/trumpet solos in every cue. Most of the classic noir pictures of the 40s and 50s rarely had a heavy jazz influence in the music. But nowadays, every throwback to/parody of classic noir films always feature raspy sax licks.
That is a great point. But did TV have any influence, Peter Gunn and such?
Lukas
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THE PHANTOM LADY, directed by Robert Siodmak, had practically no score except main and end title. (Hans Salter tells a very funny story about this film and THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF UNCLE HARRY in my Cinefantastique interview, currently reprinted in Tom Weaver's book, "I Talked With a Zombie.") But the story is in large part about the jazz club milieu, so there's an important scene in which jazz is the source music -- with Elisha Cook, Jr. miming the drummer -- and it's very much foreground, not background music.
There's a wonderful couple of CD's whose titles and performers at the moment escape me, playing recent noir themes and 40's classics in the sultry saxophone mode.
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Posted: |
Apr 21, 2010 - 7:23 AM
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By: |
Rozsaphile
(Member)
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To tell the truth, Chinatown really started the whole mistaken notion that all film noir scores feature sultry saxaphone/trumpet solos in every cue. Most of the classic noir pictures of the 40s and 50s rarely had a heavy jazz influence in the music. But nowadays, every throwback to/parody of classic noir films always feature raspy sax licks.
'Tis a curious thing indeed how today's popular perception of the classic forties private eye is colored with moody jazz music. Think "Guy Noir, Private Eye." In fact, I can't recall any such scoring in the classic noirs of the 1940s, as composed by Steiner, Deutsch, Rozsa, Salter, Waxman, Webb, et al. But the association certainly predates Chinatown. Lukas has mentioned sixties television shows. Did the French New Wave have something to do with this? I'm just now watching Le Doulos (1962), an obvious forties hommage that has a lot of slinky lounge jazz (vibraphones and the like). The subject was once raised at the Filmus-L list serve that Lukas is trying to archive. Somebody did point out a few jazz bits from the 1940s. But that style did not come to dominate until much later. It would be interesting to trace its evolution.
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Posted: |
Apr 21, 2010 - 9:03 AM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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To tell the truth, Chinatown really started the whole mistaken notion that all film noir scores feature sultry saxaphone/trumpet solos in every cue. Most of the classic noir pictures of the 40s and 50s rarely had a heavy jazz influence in the music. But nowadays, every throwback to/parody of classic noir films always feature raspy sax licks.
'Tis a curious thing indeed how today's popular perception of the classic forties private eye is colored with moody jazz music. Think "Guy Noir, Private Eye." In fact, I can't recall any such scoring in the classic noirs of the 1940s, as composed by Steiner, Deutsch, Rozsa, Salter, Waxman, Webb, et al. But the association certainly predates Chinatown. Lukas has mentioned sixties television shows. Did the French New Wave have something to do with this? I'm just now watching Le Doulos (1962), an obvious forties hommage that has a lot of slinky lounge jazz (vibraphones and the like). The subject was once raised at the Filmus-L list serve that Lukas is trying to archive. Somebody did point out a few jazz bits from the 1940s. But that style did not come to dominate until much later. It would be interesting to trace its evolution.
The Jazz/Noir association is discussed in this thread, for anyone who's interested:
http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=34493&forumID=1&archive=1
"Popular culture always portrays Film Noir as having a slow, smoky and Jazzy musical accompaniment, yet when watching 1940s Film Noirs, the music sounds totally the opposite, very loud, melodramatic and European. So when exactly did Jazz become associated with Film Noir? Was it a gradual "Americanization" seeing as many of the films were made in Hollywood by European directors and European composers who drew on their own classical backgrounds? And what was the first Noir to feature a Jazz-influenced score?"
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Did the French New Wave have something to do with this?
I believe that is strongly possible that they had an influence as well. They were, after all, very fascinated by American genre films and but often featured sultry, jazzy scores, such as Miles Davis' score to Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows (1958) or Marcel Solai's music for Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960). Given the indelible impression both films make, this could easily have linked jazz with noir in the minds of the proponents of the neo-noir.
It would be an interesting parallel to the effect the sound of the Italian Western had on the American form of the genre.
Jazz didn't really happen in film music until the early/mid 50s - brought to life by North and Bernstein, I suppose. But how about Raksin's The Big Combo from 1955? That's a film-noir classic with a fairly jazzy score too, featuring a soprano sax, I seem to remember.
That sounds like something I'd like to check out. Is the movie on DVD?
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To tell the truth, Chinatown really started the whole mistaken notion that all film noir scores feature sultry saxaphone/trumpet solos in every cue. Most of the classic noir pictures of the 40s and 50s rarely had a heavy jazz influence in the music. But nowadays, every throwback to/parody of classic noir films always feature raspy sax licks.
i have made the same point before (as have others).
all those painfully unfunny, unoriginal and innacurate 'maltese falconesque' parodies are
based on BODY HEAT & CHINATOWN
PETER GUNN and the like were usually much more uptempo; lacking the bluesy feel of the aforementioned
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Waxman had that bluesy feel on one of his scores- he might be the 'first' jazz guy
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