When I was a kid in wool knickers and a collarless shirt, hitching rides on the trolley and selling “papes” with my fellow newsies… wait a minute, why is Morlock Jeff’s life flashing before my eyes?  That was weird.

Anyway, when I was a kid, a child of the 70s during the trouble-free days of the Nixon administration, I spent a lot of my idle youth in my local movie house, The Danielson Cinema.  This being The Good Old Days (as we called them even then), the Powers That Be didn’t run commercials or word scrambles or lame movie trivia quizzes on the screen before and between movies, no.  They kept the curtains closed, the screen dark, and they played movie music.  Movie music at the movies.  And before people had cellphones or iPhones or Blackberries and had to text each other every thought and feeling or watch movies before the movie, people actually sat in their seats, doing nothing… and listening.  How did we ever lose that?  Anyway… my point isn’t to gas on about what inconsiderate, overstimulated dicks we’ve become in the last 10 years but to talk about movie music, in particular the cine-tunes that got me started on a life-long love affair with movie soundtracks.  Two themes I used to hear again and again on the PA system of The Dan (I never really called it that but now I wish I had – that would have been so cool, “I’m off to The Dan! …  If you need me, you’ll find me at The Dan!” I would have said that to my parents, too, if I’d thought of it back then- oh, well, another opportunity lost) were the theme to THE MOLLY MAGUIRES (1970) and a bit of music from PATTON (1970).  I think those two pieces of music were, if you will, the spark that started my fire…

I saw PATTON back in the day – I arrived late and came in on the opening speech and that American flag that seemed wider than the world itself – but it took me years to catch up with THE MOLLY MAGUIRES and not knowing where this particular bit of music came from haunted me.  This version of Henry Mancini’s main title sounds softer than what I remember hearing as a child but that could be the years talking.  Still, even with this sort of easy listening arrangement you can appreciate the lyricism embedded in the composition, which is at odds with the misery and violence of the story.

This piece of music from PATTON, composed by Jerry Goldsmith, repeats a theme heard throughout the movie.  It’s a march and boy does it make you want to.  I’m not a warmonger and olive drab makes me look chalky but when I hear this tune I want to stamp my boots in the mud and take a small Italian town or build a dry support bridge or eat lunch off a metal tray or I don’t even know what.  Though he was never one of my favorite composers, Jerry Goldsmith’s name was one of the first I learned and I will always owe him a debt of gratitude.  Thanks, Jerry!

At a complete 180 from the pomp and parade of Jerry Goldsmith’s music is this haunting main title for Dario Argento’s first film, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1969).  The composer is the Italian maestro Ennio Morricone, who turned 81 the other day.  I first saw this film on late night TV when I was still in high school.  Back then I didn’t know Jack Bone about the school of posh Italian psycho-thrillers known as “gialli” – at that time they were still being cranked out of the Italian film industry with the frequency of sweet sausages – but I immediately warmed, rube though I was, to the sensuousness, the mystery and the transcendent beauty of this musical accompaniment to some very ugly business involving knives and scissors and objet d’arts so heavy they’d kill you if they fell on you.

You know, I guess I tend to take the theme to John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978) for granted.  This might be because, unlike a lot of the music in my collection, it’s never been particularly hard to find.  You hear it all the time, especially come October, and my love of the more offbeat, the more elusive stuff tends to keep this theme at arm’s length… and yet I often find myself whistling this.  The other day I got to sit in on an interview with John Carpenter by Mick Garris for a new TV series on fearnet.com called Post Mortem.  As Mick raved about this particular music to its composer, grinning like a 15 year-old kid describing a stag reel to a 10 year-old kid, I had to smile and nod along because this piece takes me there, too.  Back to the day.  Back to the season.  Back to unconditional fear.  It’s infectious, this piece; simple, almost minimalist, and it gets under your skin.

Mind you, the above clip is the entire ending of Jacques Demy’s THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1963), so if the movie is in your Netflix queue or you do plan to see the whole thing sooner than later you may want to skip this bit entirely.  If you can, however, hang, then skip ahead to 5:30 and prepare to have your heart broken.  Michele Legrand’s theme recurs throughout the film, the story of young lovers who ultimately part and learn to make their own happiness with other people.  This motif is repeated for the coda, set during a Christmas snowfall, and Legrand brings it home with operatic ferocity, complete with a Hallelujah Choir bringing up the rear.  This music jerks a tear out of my eye even when it’s just me whistling the damn thing in the ethnic foods aisle of Ralphs.

Ennio Morricone was also the composer for this beguiling theme from Sergio Corbucci’s offbeat, snowbound spaghetti western THE GRAND SILENCE (aka THE GREAT SILENCE, 1971).  Now, Morricone wrote a lot of great movie music and his work for Sergio Leone certainly speaks for itself.  A lot of movie fans would rate his orchestrations for A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) or ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968) or DUCK, YOU SUCKER! (1971) ahead of THE GRAND SILENCE but the to-the-bone simplicity and mournful elegance of this piece puts it ahead of the pack for me.

Skip to 4:35 of the above clip from Franco Zeffirelli’s ROMEO AND JULIET (1968) to hear the music I’d like to discuss next.  If you don’t skip ahead and just watch this clip from the beginning you’ll have the ending of the movie spoiled for you.  Mind you,  as written by William Shakespeare, you know going into the thing that Romeo and Juliet both die.  Shakespeare says that on the first page.  So, really, you should just know that.  And if you don’t, if you’re going to be all cross and all like “Thanks for the spoiler, Movie Moron,”… I mean, come on, the story’s 400 years old, the movie is 40 years old – what were you waiting for?  Anyway, at 4:35, as the bodies of Romeo and Juliet are born off – because they’re dead – Nino Rota’s score kicks in for the achingly sad final frames.  My sister had this soundtrack album when she was a teenager and I either got my own copy at some point or inherited hers, I don’t remember, but Rota’s score – one of the few he didn’t write for Fellini – has always stayed with me and hearing it again now takes me back to those wonderful days of finding out about music made for the movies – where it came from, who wrote it and where it could take you.