Has music ever been used in film more powerfully than this?

[Nick Armstrong]

The spine-tingling, blood-curdling use of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" in "Cabaret" to dramatise the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co

The progress of the music, and the associated images, is simply brilliant, I think, and strikes far more deeply than mere dialogue could have done.

Anyone got any other favourite film sequences where music is used with comparable power ?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i think here Caliban

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It is a superb sequence, Cali, and took my breath away when I first saw the film (I don't think the number's in the stage show?) in the mid -'70s.

On the AA thread, mercia reminded me of Scorsese's use of the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana to accompany the slow-motion film of Robert De Niro getting beaten in the boxing ring in Raging Bull: an inspired mis-matching of violence and sentimentality that really drills itself into the memory. Brrrr!

[Nick Armstrong]

Yes both very good, though for some reason The Mission doesn't do it for me... However, the Scorsese number certainly shivers my timbers.

Another instance for me is that mesmerising long tracking shot of the beach at Dunkirk in "Atonement", towards the end of which, Angelo Badalamenti's (Oscar-winning) score weaves its way around the soldiers' choir singing "Oh Lord and Father...", a haunting re-harmonisation... (bit like Gavin Bryars with "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet..." )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5dqmUgu0SI

[vinteuil]

... the opening chorus of Bach's St John Passion [ "Herr, unser Herrscher, dessen Ruhm in allen Landen herrlich ist!" ] in Tarkovsky's 'Mirror' [ 'Зеркало' ]

[Thropplenoggin]

Strauss's 'Thus Sprach Zarathustra' in Kubrick's 2001 - a Spacy Odyssey, thrice.

[eighthobstruction]

All music through out HIGH NOON....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MooNISe8aM

[Richard Tarleton]

For some reason this has always stuck in my mind - here over a montage of clips, but in the film when they were driving through that desert landscape....I love MF's lived-in voice

[vinteuil]

... and of course the Morricone in the Sergio Leone spag bol westerns...

[Serial_Apologist]

Strauss's 'Thus Sprach Zarathustra' in Kubrick's 2001 - a Spacy Odyssey, thrice.

Oh but the use of Ligeti's music in that film was so much more influential, I think, though from what I understand the composer was not too happy - I know of several people for whom this was their gateway into modern classical music.

[EdgeleyRob]

... and of course the Morricone in the Sergio Leone spag bol westerns...

Brilliant

How about

[vinteuil]

... and the oneiric Bernard Hermann score for Hitchcock's Vertigo!

[umslopogaas]

I think I recall reading that Ligeti was not unhappy at having his music used in '2001', he was unhappy because he didnt get paid the royalties that were due to him.

Not perhaps my favourite music, but Bernard Hermann's slashing chords accompanying the murder of Janet Leigh in the shower in 'Psycho' and pretty unforgettable.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Another killer number from Cabaret, for me at any rate, is 'If you could see her through my eyes', the song with the monkey by the vile compere. I won't quote the killer punchline here but you'll surely remember it if you've seen the film...

The LP soundtrack of Cabaret was my first retirement present (at age 19 or so, c1973), when I finished my student summer vac job in WHS, High St, Winchester. I had played it rather a lot in the record department over the previous 6 or 8 weeks - not sure how many copies this sold, or how many customers it drove out of the store

[DublinJimbo]

I have a long-abiding memory of September from Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs featuring in The Year of Living Dangerously and being just right for the scene it was used in. I was so affected that I stayed on for the credits to find out what recording had been used, desperately moving my head from side to side to maintain a view of the screen as people in front got up to leave and blocked my view. It turned out to be Kiri Te Kanawa, with Georg Solti conducting.