In this T-Boy article, please consider it to be an invitation to join me on a personal journey in search of the source of many of the cinema’s most popular musical soundtracks. I’ve tried to make the categories specific, where the composer worked with the director before the film was shot, or used a pre-existing composition after the movie was in the can. Categories also include the innovation of using songs in films that have not been done before. I hope this makes sense once you see the line-up of film soundtracks on the list, where you’ll also notice that there are many others not included which would make the list too long – so here’s a few below:

But first, let’s begin with a quotation by French director, François Truffaut:

“It’s very difficult for a musician to make music for a film, because he is shown a film at a stage of the assembly where the lengths are false, the rhythm is not there. It seems as it is the film, but it is far from the final result. I think you really have to know the cinema and really love it so that you can see the film at that stage and imagine its intentions and its qualities. The musician is called at a time when the director is a little demoralized. We count a lot on him. We say all the time in the editing rooms: ‘It will work out with the music!’ In short, we wait for the musician as we wait for a sort of savior.” – François Truffaut

PSYCHO

Hitchcock and Herrmann

When Alfred Hitchcock, the master of everything, wrote his screenplay for 1960’s Psycho with composer Bernard Hermann at his side, every musical note was placed on his storyboard long before the film was shot. And by the time all the sketches were finished, which also indicated the exact placements of edits, camera angles and lighting, sound effects and more, Hitchcock would become bored before his camera even rolled because all the hard work had already been done before.

So, let’s look at the chilling shower scene in Psycho, where Hitchcock drew and Hermann scored such a precise storyboard, so precise that the audience actually thought that Anthony Perkins’ character’s knife had slashed Janet Leigh’s body.

Overall, Herrmann wrote the scores for seven Hitchcock films, from The Trouble with Harry (1955) to Marnie (1964), a period that included Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho. He was also credited as sound consultant on The Birds (1963), as there was no actual music in the film, only electronically made bird sounds, which succeeded in making some of us have a lifetime distaste for birds. This also applied to Psycho, too, where others were actually afraid to take a shower after seeing the film. Hitchcock coined a knew film term with The Birds, where a high-angle shot looking down on the subject, is now called a Bird’s-Eye Shot. The perspective makes the subject appear short and trivial, often illustrating a fatalistic doom.

It should be noted that Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Vertigo, topped the 2012 poll of the British film magazine, Sight & Sound’s, The 50 Greatest Films of All Time.

Later, many film directors would use new musical compositions by Herrmann, along with Hitchcockian images, which included Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and François Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black (1968). And also with Hitchcock emulater, Brian De Palma, in his film’s Sisters (1972) and Obsession (1976), in an attempt to capture the magic in which Herrmann and Hitchcock had created.

ALEXANDER NEVSKY

Eisenstein and Prokofiev

In 1938, composer Sergei Prokofiev and film director Sergei Eisenstein worked closely together throughout the production of the film, Alexander Nevsky. Sometimes Eisenstein would do a short episode and give it to Prokofiev to set to music and other times the composer would write a piece and Eisenstein would change the rhythm of the film’s action to suit the music. The climactic Battle on the Ice is spectacularly staged, which starts with a low rumbling of the chorus that depicts the troops riding toward each other. The Russian and Teutonic hymns are played again to represent the opposing forces. The pace quickens to a gallop and then to a cacophonous clash of cymbals, horns, and drums that conjure up the chaos of a medieval battle.

Eisenstein and Prokofiev’s matching of sound to action has made orchestral art music accessible to the general public and also established the use of compositional music as an important part of creating a masterpiece.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST

Leone and Morricone

Ennio Morricone was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, trumpeter and pianist who wrote music in a wide range of styles with more than 400 scores for cinema and television

His film scores for director Sergio Leone were regarded just an important as his images. The Spaghetti Western maestro incorporated Ennio Morricone’s musical scores, not just to be background music, but to define many of his characters in his films. In Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), each of the five main characters, played by Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards and Gabriele Ferzetti have their own theme song in the music score. After listening to one of Morricone’s film compositions, audiences felt as if they were blessed with a sense of heavenly euphoria. In fact, with Once Upon a Time in the West the choruses really did sound like angels singing.

Many important films directors also included Morricone’s film scores into their films, as did T-Boy favorites, Terence Malick in Days of Heaven (1978) and 1976’s Novecento (1900) by Bernardo Bertolucci.

Ennio Morricone also influenced many younger artists including Hans Zimmer, Metallica, Radiohead and the Dire Straits with fingerpicking guitarist virtuoso, Mark Knopfler, who was inspired to  compose and produce his own film score soundtracks, such as Scottish film director Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero (1983) and Comfort and Joy, as well as Cal (1984) and The Princes Bride (1987). And Knopfler was particularly taken by Leone and Morricone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, too, and created the Dire Straits – Once Upon A Time In The West (1979), which you can visit below.

THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD

Powell and Rozsa

Francis Ford Coppola once said that his favorite movie is the British film adaption of The Thief of Bagdad (1940) directed by Michael Powell, along with Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan. Michael Powell’s films were profound in in their technicolor imagery, in particular when his co-director was Emeric Pressburger, but they reached unsurpassed heights with the haunting movie music by famed composer Miklos Rozsa. The Thief of Bagdad is scored for full orchestra with extensive percussion (including gong, cowbells, glockenspiel, xylophone, jingle bells, harp, celesta, piano) and both mixed and children’s chorus as well as solo singers. Later, after a frequent revisit to the film, I was surprised upon reading, “There is no real melodic focus, for it is essentially a rhythmic piece, with the vocal parts providing a stabilizing centrum, and with lyrics such as ‘sweet fruit,’ and ‘melons’ sung in syllabic fashion. Unsung words are also noted, such as ‘Oh you nasty little wretches, Oh you dirty pack of thieves.'”

The overall effect of the piece is not really that of an ensemble number in a musical, where there is usually a strong statement of the song melody with refrain by the chorus, but rather a group recitative in an opera. Miklos Rozsa is best known for his nearly one hundred film scores, but nevertheless maintained a steadfast allegiance to absolute concert music throughout his career what he referred to as his, “double life.”

I VITELLONI, LA STRADA &

LE NOTTI DI CABIRIA

Fellini and Rota

Witnessing the images of Italian Maestro, Federico Fellini, could be an enthralling, hypnotic and mesmerizing event. But what made his images work was due to the brilliance of the musical compositions of another Italian Maestro, Nino Rota. In Fellini’s early work, the films they did together, included The White Sheik (1952), I vitelloni (1953), La Strada (1954), and Le notti di Cabiria (1957). At first Rota’s Le notti di Cabiria score sounded comedic, almost a bit cumbersome, like Chaplin’s earlier Mack Sennent Keystone Kops shorts, after music was later added. But then Rota’s music would transition into the heart wrenching quest of the road for the hope of better things to come. Yes, Fellini was Rota, and Rota was Fellini. And Fellini was highly influenced by Chaplin too; in particular, during his Neo-Realist period. With La Strada, translated in English as The Road, Fellini’ wife of 50-years, the remarkably talented, Giulietta Masina, really does go on the road, and plays Chaplin’s Little Tramp.

Both La Strada and Le notti di Cabiria won Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and were described as having been inspired by Masina’s humanity. Nino Rota scored nineteen films written by Fellini, and all of Fellini’s directorial features from 1952 to 1979, the year of Rota’s death at 67-years-old.

Rota wrote more than 150 scores for Italian and international productions at an average of three scores each year over a 46-year period. Among the films included, were Luchino Visconti’s Il Gattopardo, Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, (in particular, the Love Theme) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather Trilogy, which were often better known with casual movie goers than the films he did with Fellini. But, many of us will always remember Nino Rota best for his collaborations with Federico Fellini.

CHINATOWN

Polanski and Goldsmith

Composer Jerry Goldsmith’s musical score for Chinatown (1974,) considered by many critics as one of the cinema’s greatest neo-noirs, transforms movie goers back to a time and place that had no longer existed. At first Goldsmith’s Chinatown Love Theme sounded simple, played by a lone trumpet solo, yet somehow felt lush and romantic. Apparently, director Roman Polanski insisted that Jerry Goldsmith should be a last-minute replacement for Phillip Lambro, though not necessarily due to Goldsmith as a superior composer, but because he was one of the last Hollywood composers to have grown up in the film’s period setting, and was able to capture the mood of the not-so-innocent era. And, as a last-minute replacement, Goldsmith’s contract stated he was to submit his work in ten-days. Yet, Goldsmith delivered compositions which had emotional hooks, providing Chinatown with its own identity.

But how really simple is Jerry Goldsmith’s masterful score, which features a unique ensemble which features strings, four pianos, four harps, guiro, and solo trumpet, which the composer revealed he saw in his head while watching the movie for the first time. The latter instrument went on to define the film noir aspect with its hypnotic bluesy theme for Jack Nicholson’s private eye, and love theme for the mysterious Evelyn (Faye Dunaway). But the score to Chinatown has a darker, more avant-garde heart to it, where Goldsmith presents a series of unsettling cues for the movie’s thriller and mystery elements, remaining a stark contrast to his memorable opening theme. Consider when John Huston’s Noah Cross is introduced. We hear sound from the lowest registers with bells and harp joined by guiro to create dissonance and motion, while strings and eventually a trumpet resonates on an alternate theme. The Jake and Evelyn passage introduces a more contemporary 70’s sound with a beautiful reading of his main theme; here Goldsmith captures intimacy and anticipation with tremolo strings and a delicate piano motif. Later, Chinatown producer, Robert Evans, commented that Goldsmith single handily saved the picture.

JULES AND JIM, DAY FOR NIGHT &

THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR

Truffaut and Delerue

In a span of 24-years, between 1959 and 1983, composer Georges Delerue collaborated with François Truffaut on ten films, which included Jules and Jim (1962), where Jeanne Moreau stars as Catherine, as an alluring young woman whose enigmatic smile and passionate nature lure Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) into one of cinema’s most captivating love triangles. For many of us, it was the first time we heard the French expression, ménage à trois. In 1973, Truffaut directed Day for Night (La nuit américaine), a film that changed my life, which chronicles the troubled production of a film melodrama, and the various personal and professional challenges of the cast and crew. It stars Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Dani, Alexandra Stewart and the floppy-haired actor, Jean-Pierre Léaud, often signaled out as Truffaut’s son or alter ego, due to his appearances in six films and one short of the director’s 21 films. And also for his recurring performances as Atonine Doniel, from 1959’s Les quatre cents coups (the 400 Blows), based on Truffaut’s childhood, to the lighter 1979 comedy-drama, f L’amour en fuite (Love on the Run).

Truffaut cast himself as the director within the film, in Day for Night, whose character is partially hearing impaired, due to his position in the French army’s artillery division during WW2. Truffaut was regarded to be kind and generous, and would often cast handicapped people into his films to remind audiences that they too exist, and show us and other disable people, that they have found a way to march through life as well. Dare I add, that I once sent him a spec script without ever having met him, and to my surprise, he read it and introduced me to the former Czechoslovakian film director Ivan Passer to direct. And this is one of the reasons why I write this article today, for Truffaut’s passion for cinema embodied us to love it just as much as he did, too.

The last collaboration between Truffaut and film composer, Georges Delerue, was The Woman Next Door (1981), where two ex-lovers, played by Gérard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant (Truffaut’s companion, who also appeared in his next and final film, Vivement dimanche! (Confidentially Yours). Delerue also composed film music for Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Renaiss and Bernardo Bertolucci. Truffaut/Delerue are regarded to be in the same pantheon of Fellini/Rota, Hitchcock/Hermann as well as the many pairs that T-Boy just coined in this article, above and below.

Pre-existing compositional music used in film

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Kubrick and Classical Music

Many of us fell out of our seats when Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) began with the bombastic opening theme from Richard Strauss’ classical tone poem, Also sprach Zarathustra. Strauss’ symphonic tone poem was popular among classical aficionados in 1968, but today its popularity has surged to such unfound heights, that it is frequently used in other films, TV shows and commercials where manufacturers sell everything from washing machines to trucks and perfume. Kubrick wanted 2001: A Space Odyssey to be a primarily nonverbal experience that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, where pre-existing music would play a vital role in evoking moods and emotions.

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey continues to be profound for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial recordings, in contrast to most feature films, which the images are generally accompanied by elaborate film scores or songs written specially for them by professional tunesmiths. Kubrick’s soundtrack also raised the profile of other classical composers and their compositions, which also includes, Johann Strauss II and his 1866 Blue Danube Waltz, where Kubrick made the poetry of motion with the association of the spinning motion of the satellites and the dancers of waltzes. And, there are also compositions by György Ligeti, who was almost completely unknown in 1968, with Atmosphères, which evokes a sense of timelessness where the listener is lost in a web of texture and tonality, Requiem For Soprano; Gayane Ballet Suite (Adagio), and Lux Aeterna; as well as Aram Khachaturian’s Adagio from third Gayane ballet suite.

And, who could not forget about HAL: The 9000 series computer – You know, the most reliable computer ever made. And, we are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error and No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information.

So, let’s close with HAL’s singing the 1892 song, Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two), written by songwriter Harry Dacre, at the moment when his logic fades to simplicity, and he regresses by 40 years. Which is also notable as the first song ever performed by a computer – specifically, the IBM 704.

The song takes HAL back to its childhood, and emphasizes that Dave, play by Keir Dullea, is killing that child just as much as he is dismantling a malfunctioning computer system. Adding to the overall themes and interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL’s callback to an earlier system command suggests that evolution may be just as possible for computers as it is for humans, given a sufficient level of sentience.

Film critics ponder about HAL

Andrew Sarris:

Film critic and father of American Auteurism, Andrew Sarris, initially panned Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but later changed his opinion after seeing it “under the influence,” which he later said was a contact high. Was Kubrick a visionary? Well, according to Sarris, he did tell us how boring space travel would really become.

“2001 now works for me as Kubrick’s parable of a future world toward which metaphysical dread and mordant amusement tiptoe side by side. Even on the first viewing, I admired all the stuff about HAL literally losing his mind. On second viewing, I was deeply moved by HAL as a metaphor of reason afflicted by the assaults of neurotic doubt. I have never seen the death of a mind rendered more profoundly or poetically than it is rendered by Kubrick in 2001.”

Robert Eggers:

US filmmaker and production designer, Robert Eggers, is best known for directing the horror films, The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), and the historical fiction epic, The Northman (2022). It was reported to T-Boy that Egger would direct a remake of FW Murnau’s 1922 German Expressionistic masterpiece, Nosferatu, also remade by Werner Herzog in 1978.

I had once thought that Murnau’s Nosferatu was the first horror movie, but later learned that director and magician, Georges Méliès, predated it in 1896 with Le Manoir du Diable. As Kubrick once took us on a trip to the moon in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Méliès did so too, but much earlier with his 1902 film, A Trip to the Moon, which took audiences on a trip into the world’s first science fiction film.

“HAL is the most human character in the film despite his perfect computing abilities. The genius of Kubrick is that he makes you sympathetic to HAL comparable to Frankenstein or The Hunchback of Notre Dame. HAL made a mistake, like all humans have done once. Yet, that mistake cost him his life. His final pleas before the Bowman character disconnects him are saddening and remorseful, connecting the viewer’s humanity to the most artificial character in the entire movie.”

A Hard Day’s Night

Lester and The Beatles

Director Richard Lesters’ A Hard Day’s Night is a 1964 musical comedy film starring the Liverpublian rock band, which many of us refer to as The Beatles. The narrative is written by Alan Owen which covers two typical madcap days in the life of the Beatles, where the Fab Four struggle to keep themselves and Paul McCartney’s mischievous grandfather in check while preparing for a live TV performance. The songs featured are written by Lennon and McCartney, which include the title song, taken for a nonsensical Ringoism. Also in the film is I Should Have Known Better, played in a railway storage car where Harrison met future bride, model and muse, Patti Boyd; If I Fell with Lennon at lead vocals in an attempt to heal Ringo’s hurt feelings; and McCartney’s vocal lament about his girlfriend and female actor, Jane Asher, famous for her performance in Jerzy Skolimowski’s stunning 1970 psychological masterpiece, Deep End. Jane’s brother is Peter, the other half of the duo, Peter and Gordon, famous as well for their hit single recording, A World Without Love, penned by McCartney, natch’.

I’m Happy Just to Dance with You is often mistaken as a composition by George Harrison due his taking the lead vocals. But he had a lot of help with John and Paul’s lyrics and harmonies. The film closes with abbreviated versions of Tell Me Why and She Loves You, where the lads conquer the TV stage, complete with screaming fans in the audience. Among the many highpoints is in the middle of the film when the Fab Four break out of the restrictive studio building and charge down the fire escape’s stairs to an open field where they would swing, jump and dance to the explosive, Can’t Buy Me Love. Did this sequence by Richard Lester, who was already famous for his The Running, Jumping & Standing Still (1959) short film, he made with Spike Millidan and Peter Sellers, give birth to MTV? All I can say is, let’s see it again.

It should be noted that in this film, Lester and Owen defined the persona of the four Beatles that many of us use today: John as witty, Paul as cute and choir boyish, George quiet, and Ringo sad and lonely. In The Beatles’ final song release, Now and Then, many us were surprised to see Lennon cutting-it-up, twisting the night away, playing the clown. But when we look at past footage, John really does play the clown, and loves being one.

Did someone really say that A Hard Day’s Night is best to be enjoyed when you’re young and a committed Beatlephile. Let’s remember that film critic, Andrew Sarris, once proclaimed, A Hard Day’s Night to be one of the four greatest musical films of all time.

Richard Lester followed up with the 1965 Beatle musical Help! As can be expected the songs were remarkable and often served as soundtracks in our own lives, but some found it to be bizarre when Lennon was asked to compose the title song for a musical-comedy-adventure, and he delivered a plea for others to Help me! during a rough passage in his life. The narrative of Help! played almost like a James Bond spoof, which didn’t work with moviegoers about an eastern cult and a pair of mad scientists, who are obsessed with obtaining a sacrificial ring sent to Ringo by a fan. Nevertheless, the soundtrack was released as the band’s fifth studio album, and proved to be another Beatle smashing success.

And let’s see what T-Boy’s own Emperor of Oldies has to say about it: My favorite Beatles album is “Help!” (the Capitol version) but that may be because I was slightly too young to experience “A Hard Day’s Night” in real time like I did with the “Help”! LP. One thing I noticed about the song performances in the “A Hard Day’s Night” film… they appear to have taken the audio from the LP tracks and slowed them down drastically…. always wondered why? It’s a great album however, with one clunker in my view… “When I Get Home.”

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Bogdanovich and Country Western Music

Set in 1950-51, Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 film, The Last Picture Show (1971) is about people who live in a small, dying north central Texas town that never really should have existed. It is a sad story where most of the students at the local high school will probably go nowhere in their lives and are aware of it. Bogdanovich’s images of the tired landscape of this piece of Texas tell us what we already know. But the music Bogdanovich uses in the soundtrack is profound, so profound that it was never done before. It consists as a compilation of popular Country & Western music, heard throughout the film from real sources in real time; music in car radios; on records in homes and on TV; in diners, pool halls and jukeboxes; and at dances and parties, perfectly setting the time period, and most importantly hearing what the characters hear, and, in a sense, defining who they are and who they’ll always be.

The movie begins with Hank Williams’ Country and Western song, Why Don’t You Love Me (Like You Used to Do) and follows with nine other Hank Williams’ songs, and also songs performed by Tony Bennett, Eddy Arnold, Frankie Laine, Pee Wee King, Hank Snow, Jo Stafford, Webb Pierce, Tony Bennett, Johnnie Ray, Lefty Frizzell, Eddie Fisher and Kay Starr.

As noted above, the soundtrack of The Last Picture Show is all source music from the early 1950s. At the time of the film’s release there were only two soundtrack LPs available, one from MGM records that included Hank Williams songs and one from Columbia with the selections from their catalog including Tony Bennett and Johnny Ray songs. The CD release from El Records is the first to collect all 28 cues from the movie. Several of these cuts are rare and difficult to find. So, kudos to El/Cherry Red Records in the UK for putting this collection together.

MARIE ANTOINETTE

(Sofia) Coppola and Teenage Angst

Sofia Coppola’s historical drama, Marie Antoinette (2006), is filmed in a stylistic display of sweeping monarchical images, while the movie’s soundtrack consists of punk and indie rock songs. Recently, there has been much discussion regarding the dialectical collision of sound and images, primarily due to Jonathon Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. Sofia Coppola does this as well, creating a unique film experience with eye candy for your eyes and something a little bit more darker for your ears.

The narrative of Marie Antoinette takes us on a journey into a world of despair about a 15-year-old Austrian Hapsburg archduchess, Maria Antonia, who is far too young to be the dauphine and then the queen of France. Her struggle is reflected in the 1970s and ’80’s contemporary music by the Gang of Four, the Strokes and New Order.

We first see Kirsten Dunst in the title role, wearing a decadent feathered headpiece, sticking her finger into a cake’s frosting while the Gang of Four’s Natural’s Not in It, is heard in the background. The Strokes’ What Ever Happened? plays as Marie longs for an extramarital affair that is finally over. And Ceremony by New Order dominates the scene of Antoinette’s 18th birthday party. What can be said, other than Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette soundtrack tells us that teenage lust, angst and loneliness continues throughout eternity.

Marie Antoiniette: A Historical Lover of Dogs

Marie Antoiniette’s disparity is illustrated in an early moment in the film, upon her arrival at the French border, when Marie’s new royal family ruthlessly grabs her childhood pet dog, a Pug named Mops, for the more appropriate French Poodle. Thankfully, there was a happy ending in real life, where they were reunited, apparently due to the intervention of new king, her husband, Louis XVI. Sofia Coppola’s film does not close with revealing Queen Marie Antoinette’s less-than happy ending with her beheading, but it is believed that she carried her pet Papillon with her to the guillotine.

Oddities & One Shots

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

Stigwood and the Bee Gees

Despite John Travolta’s pulsating dance moves on the disco floor, without South Australia’s producer, Robert Stigwood’s 1977’s Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, it would not be considered a Hollywood classic. Stigwood licensed a mostly fictional 1976 article about working class Italian-American men with menial labor some jobs, who would spend their entire paycheck for a Saturday night at a local Brooklyn discothèque. It seemed obvious that the young men were on a fast track to nowhere, but while drinking and dancing on the floor, it was clear that everyone had a chance to become a star.

Saturday Night Fever‘s soundtrack stayed on top of the Billboard charts for six months, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. Stigwood was the manager of the Bee Gees and commissioned the Brothers Gibb to contribute three of their songs: Stayin’ Alive, How Deep Is Your Love, and Night Fever – which all became number one hit songs. Yvonne Elliman’s version of If I Can’t Have You, which the Bee Gees also wrote, topped the charts, as well. Good or bad, Stigwood’s soundtrack has been ingrained into our consciousness and used so often that it’s regarded more than a cliché. Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees later commented that every time he turned on the radio a Saturday Night Fever song was playing, to the point where he would become ill.

THE 007 FRANCHISE

Barry and Bond

The narrative of 1964’s Goldfinger is typical of many of writer Ian Fleming’s plots: While investigating a gold magnate’s smuggling operation, James Bond uncovers a plot to contaminate the Fort Knox gold reserve. Guy Hamilton, an English film director, who directed 22 films from the 1950s to the 1980s, including four James Bond films, is noted in the credits as director. But, with no offense to Hamilton, this is a franchise movie, and does it really matter who directed it. So let’s give it to the duo producer team of Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, better make that Cubby Broccoli, who took exception when people assumed that his last name stemmed from a vegetable. Later, it was revealed that it really did, but his family replied it was the opposite, with broccoli name after the Broccoli family.

A viewing of Goldfinger will take you into a sinister world of suspense, intrigue and betrayal. And you’ll see in action: Sean Connery as MI6’s 007, the only real Bond; Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, who made the 1960’s seem so carefree and less PC; Harold Sakata’s Oddjob, the man with a sharp hat, who gave us a new name and new meaning to Head Over Heels; and finally, Gert Fröbe as Auric Goldfinger, who turns everything he touches into gold, though still not determined if his hands ever touched a former US president’s gold-plated bathroom toilet.

The soundtrack is the work of composer John Barry, who created a musical vocabulary that will forever be synonymous with 007. Barry is also famous for his first marriage to the deceased and equally iconic, Jane Birkin. While it was hard to choose between his Bond soundtracks, Barry perfected his sound with the bold and brassy theme for Goldfinger, performed by Shirley Bassey.

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL

Arkush/Dante and the Ramones

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is a 1979 musical comedy, co-directed by Allan Arkush and Joe Dante, billed as jukebox extravaganza. The title cut is a song performed by the rock band, the Ramones, who were an American punk rock band formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens in 1974. Known for helping establish the punk movement in the United States, the Ramones are often cited as the world’s first true punk band. Though initially achieving little commercial success, the band is seen today as highly influential in punk culture. All members adopted pseudonyms ending with the surname Ramone, although none were biologically related; they were inspired by Paul McCartney, who would check into hotels under the alias Paul Ramon.

The Rock ‘n’ Roll High School theme song opens with an extended drum beat, with lead singer Joey Ramone eventually singing the opening line, “Rock, Rock, Rock, Rock, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.” And why did we include it: Let’s just say, Because it feels so goddamn good. – Attributed to Sam Peckinpah in his film, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, a 1974 Mexican-American Neo-Western.

Stay tuned for The Film Soundtracks in Our Lives, Part II: The relationship between auteur, François Truffaut and orchestral composer, Maurice Jaubert. In fact, you can see it now at https://travelingboy.com/travel/the-film-soundtracks-in-our-lives-part-ii/.

The post The Film Soundtracks in Our Lives appeared first on Traveling Archive.

“…to tell his whole story in the past tense would bore him a great deal
as well as sadden him a little.” – Lost Horizon

“We only sell tea to go,” says the woman at Ten Fu Tea in the Aberdeen Centre shopping mall in Richmond, British Columbia.

Motionless and disappointed, I contemplate leaving but something tells me to stay. Outside in the mall, the low-frequency roar of a water fountain complements the higher-pitched Chinese instruments—erhu and pipa—that I hear emanating from the canned system. Inside Ten Fu, as I start to nose around, I see a wide variety of loose leaf pu’erh, oolong, and black tea. Tiny $150 cast-iron pots occupy the shelves like royalty. Statues, gifts and figurines abound. I order pu’erh in a paper cup, hoping its earthy muse-like tendencies will harmonize the eastern and western spheres of myself.

Asian and Asian Canadians make up about 60 to 70 percent of Richmond’s population, much of which is Hong Kong Chinese. Parts of Richmond remind me of Hong Kong, but without the density and without the skyscrapers. Hundreds of Asian restaurants, eateries, tea shops and hole-in-the-wall joints populate the landscape. Eccentric old side-streets bisect lengthy Los Angeles-style thoroughfares.

Everywhere I roam, Asian-themed shopping centers seem to emerge over and over again. Some are new and shiny, while others evoke more grungy atmospherics. Aberdeen Centre is one of the newer ones. On a previous Richmond visit, in 2004, I got to see the mall when construction was still underway. Now it’s a shiny, angular and well-illuminated place thanks to multicolored glass paneling on the top floor.

All in all, Richmond is a righteous town in which to explore one’s lost eastern half through the muse of tea. I don’t mean “lost” in a negative sense. To paraphrase Ikkyu, the heroic drunken Zen monk of yore: If I don’t have a destination, then I can’t possibly get lost.

The senior-aged woman inside Ten Fu looks horrified by yours truly when I walk in. Maybe she’s not accustomed to a Zappa-looking freak with a Moleskine notebook ordering a dark pu’erh, claiming it connects him to the earth in some strange quasi-yogic psychobabble.

There’s no place for me to camp out with a pot, but somehow she can tell I’m a serious tea drinker, so she fills a plastic steeper with pu’erh leaves and lets me hang out and stare at all the multicolored tins of tea and Buddhist figurines. After a few minutes of my lazy browsing, she motions for me to park myself at a ceremonial mahogany table near the back, where I take a cup of the tea. A laughing Buddha statue sits in front of me, with large auburn mala beads hanging around his neck.

She slides me a bowl of pumpkin seed candy, fantastic mega-sugary stuff, and then moves away to help other customers, all Chinese. I assume I’ve won her over. She no longer looks horrified.

I can only guess what’s happening. Since a majority of westerners roll in and order something like the stock Jasmine tea in a box—the generic uncreative stuff—maybe she assumes I’m a different kind of customer, that is, one who at least knows pu’erh, one who has a preference. As my wannabe Zappa-turned-Kerouac self sits there scribbling in my notebook and scarfing the pumpkin seed candy, there’s nothing for her, or me, to be confused about. By now, the pu’erh has elicited serenity of the utmost sort.

Dharma and the Mysterious Third Ingredient

Directly across Cambie Street from Aberdeen Centre, the Vancouver International Buddhist Progress Society occupies the sixth floor of the Radisson Hotel building—the only such scenario on earth. There’s a temple, a bookstore, classrooms, a jewelry and souvenir store, plus a tea shop. Upon my arrival, I’m the only one in the tea shop. Everything seems the same beige color: the tables, chairs, walls, everything. Soft piano jazz emanates from the speakers above me.

An older Chinese lady toils away behind the counter and looks utterly horrified when I walk up. I guess I still don’t look like a tea drinker. She hands me a laminated menu and I scan the offerings. Pointing to ginger longan tea, I say, “This one.” She speaks no English, but she acquiesces and motions for me to sit anywhere in the shop, which is still empty.

I slither into a table at the front corner as she gets on the phone to call someone. I understand no Chinese, but I can tell she’s phoning for help. Within a minute, a young woman comes over from the temple area down the hall and informs me that the tea shop doesn’t take cash. I have to get a meal ticket. And my pot of tea is seven dollars. No problem, I say, getting up.

After walking over to the temple area, I see a few ladies behind a check-in table, wearing what look like red flight attendant uniforms. I give them the cash and they issue me a small laminated ticket. The temple is closed off at the moment, so nothing’s going on. I migrate back into the tea shop and give the woman my ticket. She apologizes in Chinese for the trouble, managing the word, ‘sorry’ in the middle somewhere.

The tea arrives ten minutes later. A see-through glass pot reveals strange unidentifiable meaty-looking mélange in the infuser. Turns out it’s ginger, longan and something else I can’t identify. In fact, it’s hard to tell the ginger from the longan.

The tea is amazing. A sweet fruit-like symphony of taste seems to sand down the edges of the ginger notes. Gorgeous. Sad to say, I feel ashamed to admit I don’t know what a longan is. I should.

I ask the woman about the ingredients and she can’t answer. But she manages to say, ‘ginger,’ ‘longan’ and one other ingredient, in Chinese. For that third ingredient, she apparently only knows the Chinese word. After looking at the pulpy experiment enshrouded inside the tea infuser, I am obsessed to learn about this third ingredient. Some kind of fruit, but I can’t tell.

The woman can sense my intrigue, so she dashes out of the shop and returns a moment later with the janitor, a short elderly Chinese man wearing shop overalls. He had been pushing a wheeled garbage can down the hall.

“Do you need help?” He asks.

“I just want to know what’s in this,” I reply, pointing to the infuser. All three of us then laugh. Ginger, longan and some other Chinese thing? I ask.

“I don’t know how to say that in English,” the janitor says.

I ask the janitor to write it down in Chinese, which he graciously does. I then blast it all over Facebook so my Chinese friends can translate. Turns out it’s a dried red date, or something similar.

The mysterious third ingredient. I probably could have figured it out, but I just like saying that phrase: “The mysterious third ingredient.” It has a ring to it. I can’t tell if I’m in a Graham Greene story or a cold war-era John Le Carre novel. But I am serene in the mystery.

When I get up to leave 45 minutes later, I am still the only one in the shop. The woman says thank you in English. I attempt to say xie xie but fail miserably.

Go West, My Wayward Son

If Richmond constitutes an intrinsic place to salvage the lost Eastern half of myself, then Victoria just across the water on Vancouver Island presents an opportunity to salvage the lost Western half. And when those two eventually meet and fuse together, the result is Shangri-la, as we will see.

For starters, I’m at the end of the tea bar at Silk Road Tea, just outside Victoria’s Chinatown, looking at a wall of oolong, black, white, green and herbal teas. Tourists enter the shop straight off the bus seemingly every five seconds. Gifts and tea supplies occupy shelves everywhere. As I spend an hour with a pot of earthly-dark brown pu’erh, I scope out numerous designer tea steepers, infusers, mugs, timers, strainers and displays of exotic glassware, ceramic and cast-iron tea sets. The tourists and nuclear families seem startled and horrified at some loudmouth like me sitting at the end of a tea bar, carrying on about tea as the muse of creativity, fusing the mental with the physical.

The barista dude is an expert. He waxes poetic on all things tea, not just for me, but to anyone who comes in. The pu’erh is connecting me to the earth, so his commentary is refreshing. Not very many people walk in and order pu’erh, he tells me. They usually want the floral stuff.

In my best sober Jack Kerouac English, I say to the barista dude: “You know, I just need to find some esoteric Chinese place with lizards crawling across the fibrous wooden floor, tons of ginseng root hanging on twine, fucked up herbs in every tin cylinder, and a cast iron pot of earthy pu’erh, blacker than the ace of spades, bark-tasting, the kind that shatters the space-time continuum and reconnects me to Tang Dynasty hermits. And then the solitude will be enhanced even more. Know any places like that around here?”

He can’t recommend any, but he appears sympathetic. In any event, Silk Road is unique among tea shops. Each tea has a title and a subtitle. Alchemist’s Brew is “Tea of Transformation.” Herbal Chai is “Cosmic Consciousness.” Sublime is the “Monk’s Elixir.” That last one calms me down, considerably so.

Love and Wisdom

Victoria’s Chinatown is not that big, just a few blocks, but it’s the oldest one in Canada. After leaving Silk Road, I go through the Gates of Harmonious Interest right to Venus Sophia where I find the Prince of Darkness. That is not hyperbole. That’s exactly what unfolds.

The Gates of Harmonious Interest are 40-feet high. The structure is a landmark built in Victoria’s sister city, Suzhou, and presented to Victoria in 1981, partly to memorialize the 61 Chinese-Canadians who fought and died in World War Two. The monument symbolizes a combination of opposites, yin and yang, or to be more precise—unity in duality. Male and female lions grace each side of the entrance. Singh means lion, so I feel at home. Just down this particular street, Fisgard, I discover the goddesses of love and wisdom.

Venus Sophia is a tea shop and vegetarian eatery filled with eclectic furniture, paintings, vintage bicycles on the walls, Indian travel books and tea supplies. A golden pu’erh beckons me and I slide into a corner table after ordering a pot.

Victoria is definitively British, but from the view of my western half, this place, Venus Sophia, this soothing little sanctuary in Chinatown, this gorgeously oddball tea shop, puts me on a course toward finally harmonizing the inner polarities. For a moment, I feel a sense of belonging. No more of this Nehru-style, “mixture of East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere,” stuff.

Venus Sophia even sells Oso Negro coffee from not too far away. A blend called Prince of Darkness stares right at me from the shelf. Unfortunately, a complimentary blend, Princess of Darkness, is sold out. There’s none left. Somehow, I find this to be symbolic of my whole journey, in some strange Jungian, animus-and-anima sense.

Kipling’s Empress Muse

The Canadian capital of high tea, Victoria’s Fairmont Empress, was the first property to establish the concept of British-style high tea society anywhere in North America. I also learn, via some impossible cosmic transmission of tea sommelier knowledge, that Rudyard Kipling considered this hotel to be his muse. He drank tea here about the time it first opened, in 1908.

In fact, Kipling visited Vancouver Island a few times. Fortunately or unfortunately, he didn’t have to deal with convoys of tour buses all day long, or incessant amounts of whale watching rubberneckers from across the planet, but he raved about the island in various letters and other writings. He praised Victoria as a fine Devon-style country land where retired civil folk from the good old British Empire could sit around and productively loaf. Photos of Kipling, among various royal family members, highlight quite a few walls, in and about the property.

The tea room, a mammoth space, (for a tea room, that is), serves 500,000 cups of tea each year. I am grateful for the Devil’s Chocolate and Pistachio Battenberg, the Rose Petal Shortbread, and the Cognac Port Pâte on Sun-dreid Tomato Bread, all while I consume the Empress special blend of Assam, Kenyan black, Kenyan green, Sri Lankan Dimbula and Keemun. The special blend is a copper-colored symphony of notes and flavors, although my orchestration chops are long gone, so I can’t describe the different ranges of the instruments and how they complement each other in this fabulous blend of tea.

Since I am the only Zappa-looking dude in the whole place, which is filled with tourists and nuclear families, I sense a tad of uncomfortable stares, especially from the old blue-hairs. But I am dressed at least as good as most of them, oddly enough.

The Muse as Connection Machine in Shangri-la

Finally, the two halves meet and I feel integrated. Two lion-like statues on West Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver are my signals, my signposts, declaring that I have found Shangri-la. Everything comes into perspective, here, amid towering skyscrapers, glass, foliage, dismal skies, shopping, lattes, high finance, urban parks, plus outdoorsy-jacket-and-shorts-wearing cyclists in the pouring rain, and all the things that characterize Vancouver, one of my favorite cities on earth. And the Shangri-la Hotel is now the city’s tallest building.

Throughout the hotel, certain rooms and spaces are named after characters and scenarios from Lost Horizon, the book that gave us the word, Shangri-la. The hotel brand started in Singapore, the lion city, hence the two lions out in front. Again, my surname means lion so everything comes into perspective.

The Shangri-la brand already fuses east and west, even if it seems dumb and cliché to say it that way. Heck, these days, Vancouver feels just as much a part of Asia as it is a part of North America, really. Which is why I love it so much.

In Shangri-la, I feel more at home here than anywhere. No more disenfranchised Nehru stuff. I am serene, at least during the afternoon tea. As a result, I don’t even have to look for an excuse anymore. Everything about the Shangri-la, including the tea service, fuses native with exotic, intimacy with distance, east with west, yin with yang, serenity with chaos. That is the whole idea, from top to bottom, inside and out, around and between. I think the ancient alchemists were right when it comes to merging opposites and transcending duality. One becomes a more integrated person, as a result.

In the Shangri-la, Xi Shi is the bar where the tea service is presented. I am grateful to experience the Szechuan Peppercorn Creme Brulee, the Mango Cream with Sago and Pomelo, plus a Black Sesame Macaron atop a tiered platter next to my Single Estate Oolong from the Fujian province of China.

As I take in the last drop, realizing that each and every sip of tea is indeed a journey, like the aphorism goes, I notice the in-house guitar player is playing and singing a serene jazzy version of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.” Way down past the lobby, I can just barely see the traffic outside on Georgia Street, but I hear none of it. I feel very, very Zen inside this place. There is no need to explore this land any further. I am done.

I end up leaving the hotel, and British Columbia, with my own hardback copy of Lost Horizon, a special version published by Shangri-la hotels, for which I am yet again very grateful. A piece of velum lies inside the front cover, regaling me with a quick history of the entire Shangri-la brand. I’ve read parts of the book before, but this copy is unique.

With the Single Estate Oolong still warming my system, I skip to my favorite passage in the book, where the belligerent Christian missionary woman is completely baffled by the monk’s life:

“What do the lamas do?” she continued.

“They devote themselves, madam, to contemplation and to the pursuit of wisdom.”

“But that isn’t doing anything.”

“Then, madam, they do nothing.”

“I thought as much.” She found the occasion to sum up. “Well, Mr. Chang, it’s a pleasure being shown all these things, I’m sure, but you won’t convince me that a place like this does any real good. I prefer something more practical.”

“Perhaps you would like to take tea?”

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