Jazz at the movies – The End of the Golden Age
When Stella (Kim Hunter) comes down the stairs for reconciliation with Kowalski (Marlon Brando) she accepts the partner's pleas, his personality and to the tumultuous relationship they lead – until a new fight separate them. Stella goes down the stairs in a mixture of satisfaction and triumph. Her walk is swinging and insinuating. It is clear that reconciliation happens more by instinctive reasons than for any other. The soundtrack knows it and confirms that the carnal union is crucial to reconciliation. When viewed by the American censorship of the time, this sequence in Streetcar Named Desire (1951) troubled the authorities and had to be trimmed. Edition and music had to be reworked. In this specific sequence, the blues sensual swing had to be exchanged for a more romantic accompaniment. With Streetcar Named Desire, composer Alex North divided the history of film music. Concluded the Golden Age and started a new era with the inclusion of language in a jazz soundtrack.
The insertion of the jazz language for the soundtrack was the first major aesthetic revolution occurred in American film music. For its inclusion the musical possibilities widened considerably in a movie score. With jazz, the soundtracks were no longer a musical comfort or just involvement, as was with most symphonic scores. Jazz enabled a comment more abrasive and contemporary to cinema. Something that nineteenth-century Romanticism of symphony idiom would hardly achieved.
Strictly speaking Streetcar Named Desire is not openly jazzy. It inserts times and jazz instrumentation in a classical structure of composition for films. And jazz was already being slightly used on previous occasions as the sinuous saxophone A Place in the Sun (1950) by Franz Waxmax, or gershwinian opening of Panic in the Streets (1950) of Alfred Newman, or in Laura (1944) by David Raksin, which has many jazz passages.
More effectively for dramatic soundtrack meaning was The Man With the Golden Arm (1956) that propelled the use of jazz in film in audaciously way. In this work, Elmer Bernstein used what the genre had to rhythmic intensity and the dynamics of winds in an alarming result as never heard before. The despair Frank Machine (Frank Sinatra) in his return to addiction is marked in an unforgettable way by the sizzling touch of the soundtrack. Bernstein repeated this efficiency in Sweet Smell of Success (1957). In 1958 with the music for I Want To Live by Johnny Mandell also leave an important milestone in jazz history in films. Some compositions of this track as Nightmare Sequence and Stakeout is unparalleled in history and would only have equivalent in the cinema on the scores that Quincy Jones would make the next decade. Important also mention Anatomy of a Murder (1958) by Duke Ellington and the music of John Lewis (the Modern Jazz Quartet group) for the movie Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) as one of the more interesting exercises in expressive possibilities. Although not often mentioned, is one of the most inventive jazz scores of its period.
European cinema, specifically the French, also had a remarkable innovation on the jazz use as a soundtrack. Ascenseur Pour Lechafaud (1957) directed by Louis Malle, have famous score made by Miles Davis. It is a true icon of the sound period in association with the images. Jeanne Moreau wandering loosely at night by the avenues to the cool sound of the trumpet is a classic image of its era. The jazz music of Martial Solal somehow announced the new era in A Bout de Souffle (Breathless, 1960) in its references to American culture, gangster movies and, of course, to jazz. While Patricia (Jean Seberg) hears classical in her turntable, is jazz that vibrates the marginal life of Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo).
In Italy, Piero Umiliani did a nice jazz score for comedy I Soliti Ignoti (1958) and revolutionized the symphonic tradition and sound economy coming from neo-realism. Armando Trovaioli also was important in that time for his invariable upbeat music as Il Vedovo (1959). After years prohibited by Mussolini's dictatorship, the American jazz meant aesthetic and cultural revolution in its inclusion in the Italian film industry.
An important advance in history of jazz soundtracks would be given by Lalo Schifrin with the music of Les Felins (1963). In this score Schifrin explored the dynamics and intensity of rhythms and arrangements. The explosive (even intrusive) intensity of that track would be characterizing much of what was done later in film music.
Then the expressive possibilities were expanding through jazz inclusion and diverse musical curiosities would be seen as discreet music of John Dankworth for The Servant (1963), the stylization of Krzysztof Komeda in Cul de Sac (1967) and the "psychedelic jazz" of Johnny Mandel in Point Blank (1967).
In 1965, Quincy Jones would do the score for The Pawnbroker a merger possibility between the classical language and jazz. Jones had studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and The Pawnbroker was a valuable work for his skills. Much of what he did in that period came to define scores for film and TV. His music for In the In Heat of the Night (1967) was very important as a preview to Black Power cinema of the following years. Michel Legrand added elegance and detail on the music for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and Lalo Schifrin with Bullit (1968), inaugurated the new form of police film in which music and physical action would be inseparable. Dirty Harry (1971) would be the definitive model in this trajectory.
Further innovative experiences come in the work of trumpeter Don Ellis and Jerry Fielding. Ellis, with scores for French Connection (1971) and French Connection 2 (1974) added forefront procedures in writing and instrumental arrangements. With echo effects of unusual times, Ellis created a remarkable expressive accompaniment based on jazz elements.
Jerry Fielding also belongs into this category of innovators. He was one of the most radical and overlooked talents of composition for films. His remarkable scores are among the most original ever made for the cinema. Despite being a work of difficult labeling, Fielding´s music employed much of the jazz language to highlighted action sequences as in The Killer Elite (1975), The Enforcer (1976) and The Gautlet (1977). Herbie Hancock made notable use of the 70´s jazz-rock with his music for Death Wish (1974). Here the music sets precisely the "urban no man's land " in which the action takes place.
Concluding a jazz evolving trajectory in the cinema, can mentioned the work of Dave Grusin, with its elegance and tendency to pop on most occasions. With The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), Grusin experienced models that would be developed later in Sidney Pollack's films as The Yakuza (1975) and Three Days of Condor (1975). The music for Tootsie (1980) with his brilliant fusion of jazz and pop music seems to have concluded a process of transformation in the history of jazz in cinema then completing thirty years. Grusin return to explore the jazz in later works as The Firm (1990) and Random Hearts (1999), but then the film industry had other musical needs.
