25 Best Jazz Motion Picture Scores

Last autumn I wrote a rather long piece on Jazz as film score, for Iranian Film Monthly, and also in that issue I made a list of my favorite 25 (or more precisely, 25 important) jazz soundtracks in history of cinema. Struggling with myself to omit some favortites and stick to the number of 25, I returned to the films, and also to the records. These films are my selection of jazz sound on big screen from 1950s (when they started to use jazzy compositions in films, thanks to people like Elmer Bernstein) to the contemporary cinema. There is no doubt that a great majority of titles come from late 1950s and early 1960s, when jazz was the soundtrack of modern world and radical changes, not only in cinema, but also in lifestyles. Late 1950s is a very important time for spreading the jazz sound in films, exactly the time when modern jazz found it way to European cinema, and especially French films.

David Meeker, author of Jazz on Screen, the ultimate encyclopedia of jazz and movies (which I owe him all the discographical details of this piece), points out that the cultural, sociological and technical histories of jazz and motion pictures have run in parallel, sometimes intersecting, lines ever since both forms emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, and he says "neither [of these art forms] found it easy to be accepted as a legitimate form of personal or artistic expression. The early days, spent at the very fringes of respectable society, were difficult in each case. Film grew up in vaudeville houses, traveling fairgrounds, and penny arcades, jazz in the lower depths of New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta. Few supposedly respectable people dared to be seen at screenings and performances in those first years. In the 1920s jazz and film both faced the tremendous challenge of the electric recording revolution. They slowly and painfully adapted themselves, eventually growing to freedom, maturity and respectability until finally they were acknowledged to be two of the most important and influential cultural forces in our civilization."

In this respect, and with a history of almost 80 years, there are many films to remember. There are some undiscovered territories in jazz motion picture score where one can find many great names working for forgotten directors and obscure films. I remember Gerry Mulligan's score for a very beautiful French film called Menace (directed by master of French neo-noir, Alain Corneau), and many simillar films and musics. No doubt, there are so many European films, good and bad, with jazz scores, or a jazzist cameo, and other forms of having jazz on celluloid, but I tried to mainly focus on American cinema. This attitude had some benefits (like making me able to see the connection between different periods of American film, and different styles of jazz), and of course, like any other limited criteria caused the loss of remembering some amazingly well arranged works by Johnny Dankworth in British films, or as I mentioned before, jazz score in French policier, and even a very curious case of Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), a jazz score from Japan, composed by Toshiro Mayuzumi.

During my writing I noticed that all history of jazz scores in cinema can be seen in two major poles: one, the tradition of modern big bands (Ellington, Bernstein, Mancini, Jones) and second, the format of quartet which John Lewis introduced in the soundtrack of film noir Odds Against Tomorrow. For instance, all Melville films, and some odd entries like When a Woman Ascends the Stairs directly come from that very tradition. The concept, instrumentation, the sound, arrangements, timing, counterpoint - everything which is used magnificently in Lewis's score, is repeated by many followers after him.

Here is 25 favorite, important, and great jazz film scores in history of cinema (click on the pictures to see the details and have the sample audio tracks)

25 Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959) Duke Ellington

24 Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) Henry Mancini
23 In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks, 1967) Quincy Jones
22 Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) Bernard Herrmann
21 Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) Elmer Bernstein/Chico Hamilton

20 Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1971) Eric Demarsan

19 Mickey One (Arthur Penn, 1965) Stan Getz/Eddie Sauter
18 Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, 1962) Krzysztof Komeda
17 À bout de souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1959) Martial Solal
16 The Last Tango In Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972) Gato Barbieri

15 Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 (Roger Vadim, 1959) Art Blakey & Barney Wilen
14 Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1958) Charles Mingus & Shafi Hadi
13 Farewell My Lovely (Dick Richards, 1975) David Shire
12 All Night Long (Basil Dearden, 1962) Philip Green
11 A Song Is Born (Howard Hawks, 1947) Emil Newman/Hugo Friedhofer

10 The Man With The Golden Arm (Otto Preminger, 1955) Elmer Bernstein
9 The Five Pennies (Melville Shavelson, 1959) Leith Stevens
8 The Benny Goodman Story (Valentine Davies, 1955) Henry Mancini/Benny Goodman
7 I Want to Live! (Robert Wise, 1958) Johnny Mandel
6 Round Midnight (Bertrand Tavernier, 1986) Herbie Hancock
 

5 Pete Kelly's Blues (Jack Webb, 1955) Ray Heindorf
4 Bird (Clint Eastwood, 1988) Lennie Niehaus
3 Alfie (Lewis Gilbert, 1965)  Sonny Rollins
2 Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959) John Lewis
1 Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Louis Malle, 1957) Miles Davis