A tribute to my favourite movie composers of the 1960s

I was tempted to write something about that ghastly man Vince Cable – but it’s Christmas and the very thought of this revolting old blister, with his misanthropic Ebeneezer Scrooge face and his monstrous ego, is simply too depressing to contemplate. Instead, I’ll write about some creative people who have added immeasurably to our enjoyment of life: the composers of 1960s’ film scores.

Why the Sixties rather than previous generations? Well, because that’s the decade during which, as a 7-17 year old, I was first absolutely absorbed and mesmerized by movies. I knew if I was bored or excited, but didn’t venture much beyond that, critically – I was more like a puppy on a beach on a sunny, blowy day for whom everything was new and surprising  and immensely exciting. 

Also, the Sixties saw film music take centre stage for the first and only time.  Of course, there had been wonderful film music before then - and some pretty good stuff after - but it’s impossible to imagine the best Sixties films enjoying the same level of success without their music, in the same way as it would be impossible to imagine the Bond films succeeding so spectacularly without Sean Connery, or Sergio Leone Westerns doing half as well without Clint Eastwood. 

My four favourite  film composers of the decade  were Elmer Bernstein, John Barry, Ennio Morricone and Henry Mancini.

                   

Bernstein had already displayed his genius for movie music with the incomparable “Frankie Machine”, the theme for The Man with the Golden Arm in 1956, which starts with a pattern on the cymbals that became an instant cliché. (He produced a similarly dynamic, urban, jazzy sound for the TV series Johnny Staccato a few years later.) In 1960, Bernstein. composed what was probably the first movie theme that I hummed after seeing the picture - The Magnificent Seven, which, like “Frankie Machine”, displayed real percussive verve: this was music you could enjoy on its own without knowing anything about its filmic context. In 1961, he did the same trick for The Commancheros. The next year, he provided a beautiful, delicate, haunting score for To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1963, he came up with that football terrace favourite, The Great Escape.

              

Ennio Morricone announced himself to movie fans around  the globe with the release of Sergio Leone’s first three Spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More (my favourite, musically) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . if Bernstein had summed up a tradition with The Magnificent Seven, Morricone redefined the rules: yes, the drums still charge along like galloping horses, and there are still plenty of strummed acoustic guitars, but amplified Jews’ harps, twangy, Duane Eddy-style electric guitars, Wagnerian leit-motifs, human voices used as instruments, church bells, Pan Pipes and clackers? This was something else, and it melded with the scrubby Spanish landscapes, dreadful dubbing, unknown faces and lashings of callous ultraviolence to make the familiar strange and to breathe new life into what was already a dying genre. The music for last of the trilogy even became a No. 1 worldwide hit, but in a rather lumpy cover version.

                    

There’s little left to be said about John Barry. As with Leone’s Westerns, it’s quite impossible to imagine the Bond films without their sores. One minute Barry was doing the theme tune to Juke Box Jury and the Sunsilk TV adverts – the next, he was creating creating the sound that, for me at least, defines a decade.The blaring brass at the start of Goldfinger is the Sixties. (“The James Bond Theme” itself has echoes of the Fifties – no bad thing, of course - but those traces disappeared altogether withGoldfinger.) That brass section lends the  music and the films themselves a cruel, mysterious, glittering quality they retain to this day. 

As well as the Bond music – including the title hits – Barry was also responsible for The Ipcress File (which delivers a comparable 1960s frisson), “Born Free” (I have a distinct fondness for Matt Monro’s voice –“From Russia with Love” is also magnificent). Barry was, of course, a ground-breaking genius – I’ve always assumed that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service represents the first use of electronic instruments in a mainstream film score (please put me right if you know otherwise).

                        

Henry Mancini composed possibly my all-time favourite TV theme – Peter Gunn (although I much prefer Duane Eddy’s version). He then went on to write “Moon River” for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, “Lara’s Theme” for Doctor Zhivago, the score for the Pink Panther movies, the “Baby Elephant Walk”for Hatari, as well as  – and we’ll just have to forgive him for this (after all, it is Christmas) – “Love Story” (which I will not link to, as that would be an insult).

I’ll end by bidding a fond farewell to Blake Edwards, the director of thePink Panther movies, who died last week..