Quotes from Famous Directors about the Role of Music in Films

Woody Allen (Annie Hall, Manhattan) "Too broad a question. Let's just say it covers a multitude of sins."

Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Demonlover) "Usually I'm happy when the score doesn't spoil the film. Redundant music can absolutely put to pieces the work of actors.”

Patrice Chéreau (La Reine Margot, Intimacy) "A film without music is one-legged. And I would prefer not to make cinema rather than return to an age without cinematic music."

Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, The Conversation) "Music is a big factor in helping the illusion of the film come to life. The same way music brings back different periods of our lives."

Roger Corman (The Little Shop of Horrors, The Trip) "Music best enhances a film when it evokes and modulates a specific emotional response in the audience to the unfolding story without the audience being aware of it. In Hollywood today, however, this can be difficult to achieve because very often music has to compete with louder and louder sound effects. As a consequence, there is a tendency for the music to oversimplify and overstate its themes. The manipulation of emotion in the audience has probably become cruder, generally speaking."

Alex Cox "I don't think it does anymore, music is overused and someone should do a film without any music at all."

Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) "The best soundtrack music by-passes your mind and goes straight to your soul. It sort of trips something in your brain, you know you're being transported."

Lewis Gilbert (Reach for the Sky, Alfie, Educating Rita) "Film music is another weapon in the armoury of the director. The score should inevitably have a strong theme which reflects the mood of the film either in a leading character or the action of the film. Thus any form of music from symphonies through pop to synthesiser can be used. Music is more powerful when it is used sparingly and should never be used when it is thought to enhance a poorly written or badly played scene. This is something to be avoided. Sometimes natural sounds are more effective than music."

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Abouna) "For me, music is very important. I think about it when I write the script. It's a part of the movie...so, we have to use it very carefully, as part of the story, and not only in a artificial way...Music must bring something more, something that you can't express only by images and words. It must let us feel the rhythm that the characters have inside themselves."

Arthur Hiller (Silver Streak, Love Story) "Music enhances a film by joining the other creative juices helping, indeed sometimes making the audience not only see the film but feel the film with their emotions. I'm always indebted to my composers and to the other creative juices that pour into the pot,"

Dennis Hopper (Hot Spot, Colors) "Colors (1988) was the first time rap music got major exposure, and was on the charts. This soundtrack sold over a million copies, first rap to go gold."

Norman Jewison (The Thomas Crown Affair, Moonstruck) "The marriage of the moving image and music is perhaps the most powerful visual communication we have. You can take almost any edited visual film sequence and change the emotion and feelings engendered by the use of music.”

Bruce La Bruce (A Case for the Closet, Skin Gang) "Music for movies can serve to reinforce the tone of a scene, or it can work contrapuntally and at apparent odds with the visuals. Kubrick was always the master at using odd or unexpected music which might not at first seem to support the scene, as when he used Singin' in the Rain to accompany a brutal beating in A Clockwork Orange (1971). His infamous use of classical music in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was famous for giving hippies who dropped acid to watch the movie in the sixties a bad trip because, according to them, the music didn't match the visuals. Obviously Kubrick was doing something right."

Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny, The Whole Nine Yards)
"Music is used to create or enhance a feeling that would not otherwise be present in a scene or sequence, or would not be sufficient without it. Music can help create tension and suspense. However, if there is sufficient suspense already, using music is overkill.”

John McNaughton "Music best enhances a film by focusing emotion. It can enhance in other more mechanical ways such as setting pace or creating tension but it is the emotional quality of music which best enhances a film. Music can reach an audience emotionally beyond the ability of picture and sound. As an example I think of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976). A yellow cab drives down a street in Times Square; we see the driver, people on the street. Now add the jazz melody composed by Bernard Herrmann and played by Tom Scott on the alto saxophone and the scene is transformed. The music gives the scene emotional focus, it tells us what to feel."

Alan Parker (Birdy, Evita) "When music and images gel they can take the audience's brains to another plane emotionally and dramatically. Bad film music intrudes without complimenting the action. A great score gets under your skin, triggers your subconscious, enhances the drama and helps drive the emotional power train of the movie."

Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Gangs of New York)
"Music and cinema fit together naturally. Because there's a kind of intrinsic musicality to the way moving images work when they're put together. It's been said that cinema and music are very close as art forms, and I think that's true.”

Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, Buena Vista Social Club) "By not changing the meaning of the imagery, but just filling them with air, and longing, and time. Music can really "ground" a film, but only if it is not overwhelming the visuals."

**All quotes taken from the same source:

British Film Institute. “The Best Music in Film.” Sight and Sound: The International Film

Magazine Sept 2004. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Chaffey Coll. Lib.,

Rancho Cucamonga, CA. 16 Jul. 2008.