There are iconic soundtracks that are killer compilations of existing songs – think Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting or The Big Chill. There are iconic soundtracks from enduring film musicals – think West Side Story, Little Shop of Horrors or Grease. There are iconic soundtracks made up of original songs by an artist who is on screen – think Help! by The Beatles, Purple Rain by Prince, or (come on, admit you love it) This Is…Spinal Tap.
And then there are iconic instrumental scores. This list is all about that last group. Here you'll find original music that so perfectly complements what is happening on screen that listening to just 10 seconds of it immediately conjures images of each movie.
So, turn down the lights, turn up the volume and let's go to the movies.
Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon
20. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Sure, Jonny Greenwood is a stellar guitarist in Radiohead. Paul Thomas Anderson, however, heard more than that when he hired Greenwood for his film about power, greed, faith and oil. What he got was an intense orchestral work that pushed the movie's themes, veering from grand, sweeping sections to frantic moments of sonic psychosis.
19. Inception (2010)
Spielberg's got John Williams; Christopher Nolan's got Hans Zimmer. The prolific German composer's titanic scores include Gladiator, Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Dark Knight and The Lion King, but his soundtrack to Inception packs all his best moves into one place, from moody and melancholy to chest-beating grandeur and eardrum-rattling thwump-thwump moments. Plus, that's Johnny Marr playing guitar!
18. The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, Robert Vaughn … a cast this big riding around the American west in a John Sturges epic demanded a soundtrack that matched the film's ambitions. Elmer Bernstein delivered and then some. The main theme has the entire orchestra galloping through a timeless, windblown melody that immediately evokes the word "Western".
17. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
The films of Peter Greenaway and the music of Michael Nyman are forever entwined. Greenaway's theatrical productions have an almost operatic feel and Nyman was exactly the musical foil he needed. His baroque score for this 1989 film keeps building and building, ramping up from a brooding, chugging feel to a kind of orchestral delirium.
16. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
David Lynch is a master of dread, horror and downright jaw-dropping strangeness. The film that followed his TV masterpiece Twin Peaks went wider and weirder, and composer Angelo Badalementi made the leap from small to big screen right along with him. Badalementi's combination of jazzy muted trumpet, gently brushed drums and suspended synth chords created just the sense of mystery that Lynch needed.
15. The Virgin Suicides (2000)
A very good soundtrack of the songs from this Sofia Coppola movie about a family of doomed teenage girls was also released, featuring '70s gems from Todd Rundgren, Heart and 10cc. But this melancholy score from chilled-out French duo Air somehow telegraphed both the blissful beauty and dark undercurrents of the film. It's like the sound of a fever dream.
14. Batman (1989)
Batman had become a joke in the '60s, albeit a good one, due to the campy, fun TV series. But when Tim Burton got his hands on the franchise, it was time to recast the caped crusader and make him darker and more troubled and conflicted. Enter composer Danny Elfman, who understood the new direction perfectly and obliged with a gothic score that soared like Gotham's skyscrapers and brooded like Bruce Wayne in the middle of an existential crisis.
Michael Keaton as Batman and Jack Nicholson as The Joker in the 1989 Batman.
13. Amelie (2001)
Composer Yann Tiersen tapped into the wide-eyed wonder and innocence Audrey Tautou brought to the charcoal-bobbed waitress who was the lead character in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film. The jaunty accordion and zesty arrangements complimented the storybook cobblestoned streets of Montmartre and the magical realism of this modern-day fairytale. And it all sounded so French that you could taste the baguettes. Tiersen will perform solo on the piano in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Sydney Festival (see box, right).
12. Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
How do you sell the idea of a plotless, dialogue-free, experimental documentary that uses planet Earth in slow motion and time lapse as its canvas? Well, getting Philip Glass to do the soundtrack sure helps. His brand of brooding minimalism and unhurried layering through repetition was an integral part of the film rather than merely an accompaniment and it became hugely influential.
11. Betty Blue (1986)
Gabriel Yared has composed scores for more popular films, including The English Patient, The Talented Mr.Ripley and Cold Mountain, but his atmospheric work for this French cult movie perfectly matched the vitality and deteriorating sanity of the title character. The recurring theme is hypnotic and haunting, whether played on harmonica or piano.
10. Blade Runner (1982)
Ridley Scott's futuristic noir was a feast for the eyes, but it found a beating heart in Vangelis' music, in which pulsing, clanging rhythms combined with gliding, twinkling synthesizers to shadow Harrison Ford's journey as a replicant hunter on the tail of Rutger Hauer, the original paranoid android.
9. Shaft (1971)
What a theme – wah-wah guitar, hi-hat heavy beat, swirling orchestra and, of course, the deeper-than-Atlantis voice of Issac Hayes intoning immortal lines such as "Can you dig it?" and "Damn right!" The pioneering blaxploitation film about John Shaft, the man who no one understands but his woman, rode on Hayes' magical mix of simmering soul and jazzy orchestration.
8. 8½ (1963)
Fellini's classic film about the struggles of the creative process and the eternal search for the meaning life found its musical match in Nino Rota. The composer's score was bursting with life, at times sounding like the orchestra was on the back of a speeding truck with no brakes. Then he could dial it down to create twinkling pieces of starlit melancholy. Danny Elfman has admitted that his score for Pee-wee's Big Adventure was a wholesale homage to this soundtrack.
7. Chinatown (1974)
The Omen, Planet Of The Apes, Alien, Poltergeist, five Star Trek films – they're all soundtracked by one man. Jerry Goldsmith became the go-to guy for horror and sci-fi in the '70s and '80s and he was renowned for mixing ethnic instrumentation with electronics and traditional orchestras. He was hired to replace another composer on Roman Polanski's neo-noir classic Chinatown at the 11th hour and was famously given only 10 days to write and record. The result was an intriguing mix of Eastern music and jazz that still sounds fresh today.
6. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
The stutter of vibrato electric guitar and the police-siren wail of a trumpet have come to represent countless movies and TV shows about spies, espionage and intrigue. The big daddy of them all is the James Bond theme. The silhouette of a tuxedo-ed figure, a pistol and a martini are all you need to conjure up an entire franchise when this music is playing. John Barry's score for On Her Majesty's Secret Service also used swirling strings, bright horns and fizzy synthesizers to up the ante in all those car chases and death-defying moments.
5. Vertigo (1958)
Bernard Herrmann seemed to tap into Alfred Hitchcock's mind, finding the passions and fears at the heart of his characters and translating them into music. The shower scene from Psycho with the sound turned down is just not the same without his stabbing violins. But his masterpiece is Vertigo, the whirling strings and blaring horns echoing James Stewart's obsession with a woman and his descent into madness.
4. The Pink Panther (1963)
Is it possible to listen to Henry Mancini's famous theme without conjuring images of a bumbling Peter Sellers in a trenchcoat? Add layers of breathy sax and blaring brass over tip-toeing piano and a swishy beat, then stir, don't shake. The rest of the soundtrack is outfitted with noir-ish jazz delights that simmer, sparkle and sashay.
Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther.
3. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966)
That lonesome whistle, that vibrato electric guitar, those cracking whips, those massed choral voices – Ennio Morricone virtually invented the sound of the spaghetti western. His use of silence, spooky instrumentation and sudden blasts of volume are much imitated for good reason. He really knew how to evoke dust, guns, horses and Clint Eastwood's squint.
Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
2. Paris, Texas (1984)
You actually feel Ry Cooder's soundtrack as much as hear it. There's the twang of steel strings against guitar neck and the glide of a metal slide over the frets. He was trying to evoke the spirit of legendary bluesman Blind Willie Johnson – in the process he not only perfectly matched Wim Wender's story of physical and emotional distance between Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski, but he created an entire musical vocabulary for scenes involving deserted landscapes, desolate characters and a sense of existential doom.
Nastassja Kinski in Paris Texas.
1. Star Wars (1977)
The opening theme is a fanfare that sounds so iconic it could be a national anthem – or maybe an intergalactic anthem. John Williams hit it into hyperspace with an epic orchestral melody that pinned your ears back from the very start of this epic journey and didn't let go. His upbeat ragtime jazz in the Cantina Band section proved he had a sense of humour too. And with other iconic scores including Jaws, E.T., Raiders Of The Lost Ark and many more, Williams is pretty much emperor of out-of-this-world soundtracks.
Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford in the original Star Wars. Photo: Twentieth Century Fox