OPEN POST: Manor Music Monday With Danger Girl Film-Noir Music!

Greetings, music sloots, and welcome to another edition of Music Manor Monday, today served with hair-raising peril and moody, heart-stopping music. By the way, have you noticed how DJ Li'l Scratch only appears in black-and-white? Sorry, there's no work around for this, no matter how colorful the setting you may find him in. As a hard-boiled creature of night and shadow, he will always look as if he's just stepped out of a film-noir crime-drama. Hissss!

 

I've always had a special place in my chilled heart for film-noir (and for John Garfield, the ultimate dumb-luck hunk). And yet it's not just the skewed camera angles, concealing shadows, tempting femme fatales or nefarious storylines that have pulled me in. The music adds to the fun, and most of it makes for great listening (even out of context). Take Elmer Bernstein's landmark, daddy-o jazz score for 1955's "Man With The Golden Arm," which is both rhythmic and menacing, a stunning innovation for its time.

You want to hear more, don't you? Then step right up, because "Crime Scene USA" is a hard to beat collection of tunes from classics like "Double Indemnity" and "Mildred Pierce," to name just two, by a Who's Who of composers, such as Alfred Newman, Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Elmer Bernstein and even Marvin Hamlisch. It's perfect for a rainy Sunday afternoon, but really, any day is a bad-girl good day for music like this.

I've always found film-noir soundtracks unique from other scores - and uniquely powerful - because they act as a sort of hooked-in psychological extension of the movies' flawed characters and their cynical narratives. Unlike traditional Hollywood music from the 1930s through the 50s - or scores that provide straightforward emotional cues; bouncy when happy, swamped with syrupy strings when sad and the like - film-noir music thrives on ambiguity and unstable harmonies. Even the orchestrations come into play, like those lonely, wailing trumpets or saxophones. 

"Crime Scene USA" is a terrific intro to film-noir music, though unfortunately, and mystifyingly, on both Spotify and YouTube, the composers are uncredited, which is its own kind of crime. 

One score I've always loved is for "The Letter," the 1940s film-noir shocker with Bette Davis (a remake of the 1929 original with Jeanne Eagels). The score is not only powerfully haunting, it's by none other than Max Steiner, who wasn't much known for film-noir, but instead for grand Hollywood epics like "Gone With The Wind" and "King Kong," and melodramas, such as "Now Voyager." 

While a brief suite from the movie is included in "Crime Scene USA," the complete score is impossible to find and long out of print. I hate that for you. I'd really love for you to hear it in its entirety. Oh, how I wish there was something I could do about that. Perhaps there is, but who knows?

What are you listening to this week? DJ Li'l Scratch wants to know.
Till next time...purr, bitches, purr! 🐾

Photo Credits: Paramount Pictures, Getty Images