Is Chinatown Jerry Goldsmith's most influential score?

[mxncr12 4]

On 8/15/2016 at 9:19 AM, Thor said:

 

There isn't anything new in that quote, though -- it basically summarizes the established definitions of what it is, i.e. a style rather than a genre -- applied to various proper genres. Sci fi in BLADE RUNNER, old-school gangster/detective genre like CHINATOWN or L.A. CONFIDENTIAL or contemporary thrillers like THE NEON DEMON. Some of it has to do with the audiovisual expression (chiarroscuro lighting, smoke, shadow plays etc.) and some of it has to do with narrative components (femme fatale, troubled protagonist, the fatal 'hamartia' etc.).

 

The esteemed David Bordwell even suggests it is neither genre NOR style:

We inherit a category constructed ex post facto out of a perceived resemblance between continental crime melodramas and a few Hollywood productions. As a result, ‘film noir’ has functioned not to define a coherent genre or style but to locate in several American films a challenge to dominant values (Bordwell et al. 1985: 74)

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.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Versatility a great score does not make. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Chinatown is good, but its no Rambo: First Blood Part II

[Disco Stu 15,495]

"Why can't this tiresome thread just be left to die?"

"Forget it, Stu. It's JWFan."

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

I'm actually seeing Chinatown in the cinema next month

[mxncr12 4]

 

10 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

Versatility a great score does not make. 

 

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.

 

3 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

"Why can't this tiresome thread just be left to die?"

"Forget it, Stu. It's JWFan."

 

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.