mxncr12

I would doubt that it's underrated among film music buffs, but the scene in Chinatown where Jake Gittes is spying on Hollis Mulwray. General film audiences (and likely most film critics) have no idea how brilliant the cue is.

Only one word explains this: Chinatown.

Chinatown is arguably the ultimate example of the difference a film score makes in a film.

The film's setting is actually the L.A. of the 1930s, but no score has told a story better than Chinatown. With main title alone, with its distinctive brushed piano strings followed by a melancholy trumpet solo, you already have the main points of the story and its setting: the drought-parched landscape and the doomed romance of the film's two central characters in 1930s Los Angeles.

Whatever is considered to make a great score, Chinatown has those components; you could make this argument literally through each cue/scene and given the spare nature of the score, it would be very easy. This thread should probably die but I will say, the same points that were made in this thread to make the argument that Chinatown wasn't an influential score could be utilized to argue that the cinematography of classic film noir also wasn't influential given that virtually all the characteristics of the cinematography of the genre are derived from the decades earlier German Expressionist cinema.

These are good points but they don't apply to the scores to noir films. The Big Sleep, considered by many to be a quintessential film noir, is a swashbuckler of a score, unlike the brooding Double Indemnity, a film considered by others to be the quintessential noir film. In Chinatown, fatalism/foreboding are really the only sentiments induced by the score that evoke "noir" moods and only comprise two cues. It also demonstrates why Chinatown is easily the greatest score for a noir film: It's as eerie as The Third Man, as lush and romantic as Laura and with only two cues, as foreboding as the entirety of Double Indemnity. It's unlikely that a score for a noir film can match that versatility.

I guess that its common knowledge today, but jazz passages are present in non-film noir films of the 1940s such as The Uninvited (1944) and Green Dolphin Street (1947), in addition to the point you alluded to, that symphonic jazz was evident in non-film noir jazz scores such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and The Wild One (1953). So Chinatown is really a superlative synthesis of classical scoring practices and modernist techniques. Moreover and perhaps more interestingly, regarding "film noir stylings": "Descriptive accounts of the noir style tend to be highly generalized-highlighting sets of features which are by no means specific to film noir. It is doubtful that one could convincingly show that noir is actually characterized by a unified body of stylistics-rather...what is referred to as the noir style tends to be a more disparate series of stylistic markings which can be seen as noir when they occur in conjunction with sets of narrative and thematic conventions and narrational processes. In isolation or even when combined together [these elements] are not specific to the film noir, nor to the crime film, nor even to 1940s cinema." (p.19) -Krutnik, Frank In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity (2006)

I was primarily denoting the very different ways piano is used in the film score to convey very different ambiances, so that may or may not fit that criteria. Everybody, of course, has an opinion. Scores of people not only find it the best noir score, but one of the 10 greatest film scores of all time.

It's difficult to think of another score more synchronously intelligently conceived and as dynamic as Chinatown.

From that blog, I'm mostly familiar with Crumb's inside the piano innovations. In fact, one can very easily argue that not only is Chinatown the best use of piano in a film score, but that the use of piano is the real showcase of the score.

I don't think I was arguing that there weren't a number of crime films or some 1950s film noir that didn't use jazz. I think I acknowledged that. My contention was more along the lines that Chinatown had a presence of a strong bluesy melody that served as a foundation for the rest of musical material; the score combines a jazzy trumpet melody with avant-garde classical textures, which most of the score consists of; as you pointed out, that was largely influenced by Henry Cowell and George Crumb. I also read that some of the solo trumpet was influenced by Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto and André Jolivet's Trumpet Concertino. Certainly some of the strings of the main theme are influenced by Steiner and Korngold. In any event, here's what prompet my post: various articles from Film Score Monthly that referenced neo-noir scores since I did not concoct that notion about Chinatown being a trendsetting noir score: Chinatown http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/articles/2004/27_May---One_Hundred_Favorite_Themes_Part_Two.asp Body Heat http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/articles/2006/25_Jan---My_One_Hundred_Favorite_Film_Scores_Part_One.asp http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/articles/2003/26_Jun---Not_Even_Nominated_Part_Two.asp The Black Dahlia http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/articles/2006/08_Feb---This_Years_Movies_Part_One.asp http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/articles/2006/13_Sep---Early_Predictions_Part_One.asp Farewell, My Lovely http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/cds/detail.cfm/CDID/218/Farewell-My-Lovely-Monkey-Shines/

A better example would probably be a jazzy film score like Touch of Evil, which is from the film noir genre.

Then there is a difference in opinion as I'm not the only endorser of the aforementioned contention about Chinatown, but you still didn't disprove my point, although your assertion is kind of like saying Star Wars continues the natural progression of the scores from the Golden Age of Hollywood (part in sound, part in sentiment), and thus not in any way influencing other scores. The music from Big Sleep didn't do anything unconventional compared with other films/films noir of the 1940s. I mean, The great Pink Panther score has passages that feature jazz chord structures but I'm not sure it was much of an influence on Chinatown or if The Big Sleep was an influence on The Pink Panther. The Big Sleep contains a conventional symphonic orchestral main title from its era. While Body Heat continues the neo-noir scoring trend that utilizes a bluesey main title/motif as to evoke the film and its characters. How would you compare the two opening titles?

Don't know if you saw my earlier post but it featured a passage illustrated the clear divergences throughout the scores to The Big Sleep and Chinatown. https://books.google.com/books?id=1SKfBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&dq=chinatown+big+sleep+steiner&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwji9-uO04LOAhWDWSYKHW4dC5EQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=chinatown big sleep steiner&f=false My contention was that Chinatown started the neo-noir scoring trend by featuring a bluesy main title/motif that served as a melodic identification for the film and the characters that continued in Farewell, My Lovely, Taxi Driver, Body Heat, etc.

I think that Laura can be seen as an antecedent/echo/distant cousin of Chinatown. Here's a great passage that discusses the contrasting scores of Chinatown and The Big Sleep. https://books.google.com/books?id=1SKfBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&dq=chinatown+big+sleep+steiner&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjV1vHcy4LOAhWTdSYKHSthCTAQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=chinatown big sleep steiner&f=false As for The Omen, while that score wasn't really what I was interested in discussing at all, some say that the score was influential being the first to emloy a choir in an avant-garde style. http://www.filmtracks.com/titles/omen.html Whether that's true or not I do not know.