The Top 10 Songs in Cinema

The Top 10 Songs in Cinema

By James Oliver

Music and movies are a beautiful combination, like Lennon & McCartney or ebony and ivory. Musicians draw inspiration from the cinema, while many a dull movie � and a great many better ones � has been enlivened by song.

What follows is a selection of some of the best. It's not definitive � hell, no � or even especially comprehensive: I've deliberately excluded musicals to keep it to a manageable length.

Arranged in (not quite) chronological order, it's a celebration of what happens when two great art-forms get it together.

Once you're done watching the songs, the full films are available to enjoy on DVD at the bottom of the page.

One - The Blue Angel (Falling in Love Again)
As wonderful as silent films were, they always did have a problem with music. When sound hit, it didn't take filmmakers long to realise the possibilities it offered.

Here's one the earliest examples, from 1930's The Blue Angel, and still one of the best, demonstrating exactly why Marlene Dietrich became a star.

Two - Casablanca (Le Marseillaise)
Ah... Casablanca. �You played it for her. Now Play it for me!� Hold on � this isn't As Time Goes By!

Indeed not. But nothing illustrates the power of song more eloquently than this stirring scene from everyone's favourite film.

Three - To Have and Have Not (Am I Blue?)
Howard Hawks loved stopping the plots of his films to squeeze in a little singing: here's a duet featuring Hoagy Carmichael and Lauren Bacall from To Have and Have Not.

Four - Help! (Hey! You've Got To Hide Your Love Away)
Oh come on! Do you really think we'd leave The Beatles out of a list like this? From Help!

Five - Beyond The Valley of the Dolls (In the Long Run)
Starring the fabulous Carrie Nations � the greatest girl group that ever there was � Beyond The Valley of the Dolls is a fearless expos� of the music business, conducted with the rigour and thoroughness you'd expect from a T+A merchant like Russ Meyer. Groovy tunes, though.

Six - The Harder They Come (The Harder They Come)
Referenced in The Guns of Brixton by The Clash ('You see he feels like Ivan/ Born under the Brixton sun'), The Harder They Come was Jamaica's first feature film. And since it was, in large part, financed by Chris Blackwell of Island Records, it's appropriate to should be about a wannabe musician.

This here is the title track. And it still sounds fantastic.

Seven - Joy Division - Control / 24 Hour Party People (She's Lost Control)
One of the curiosities of the last decade of British film is how the defiantly cult band Joy Division, inspired three movies. Since they're one of the greatest of bands, they deserve representation here.

But do we choose something from 24 Hour Party People? A performance from Control? Or maybe an extract from the eoponymous documentary (that's Joy Division, for the slow witted.)

Hmmm. Decisions, decisions. The best way is surely to present an original clip of Manchester's finest, complete with a short appearance from the real Anthony H Wilson, later incarnated by Steve Coogan.

Eight - Magnolia (Wise Up)
One of the most imaginative � and effective � use of song in recent years; from Magnolia.

Nine - Mulholland Dr. (Crying)
Once upon a time, this song was performed by Roy Orbison and called Crying. In the hands of David Lynch, it became something else entirely: perhaps the finest moment of his magnificent dream, Mulholland Dr.

Ten - What's Opera, Doc?
This has, admittedly, been a list reliant on popular music. Yet more refined forms of music deserve their recognition too.

So we proceed to our final entry, which provides a necessary counterbalance. It stands as perhaps the finest exposition of the art of opera that cinema has yet delivered, and perhaps the definitive rendering of the Ride of the Valkyries...

NB. We've limited ourselves to choosing from titles currently available in the UK

What did you think of the selection? Let us know below

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