great use of music in movies part 3

Diegetic or non-diegetic music, original music or not, anything goes here. Most of these are feature-length movies that are not Musicals, but some are, and there's at least one short cartoon here. Music is included here not just because of what it adds to the plot - sometimes the music is just a song I'd never heard or forgot about that I heard in a movie.

Mo' Better Blues (1990)

End wedding and montage - "A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane.

Manhattan (1979)

The opening, with "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin.

Blackboard Jungle (1955)

Opening credits, opening scene - "Rock Around the Clock," Bill Haley and the Comets.

Beau travail (1999)

The ending dance scene - "Rhythm of the Night," Corona.

Also, the opening credits dance club scene - "Simarik" performed by Tarkan.

Badlands (1973)

"Gassenhauer" by Carl Orff.

Zodiac (2007)

Donovan - "Hurdy Gurdy Man."

Morvern Callar (2002)

Morvern goes to work in the supermarket (after her husband's suicide on Christmas morning - listening to the mix tape he made for her) - “Some Velvet Morning,” Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra.

The Killing Fields (1984)

Final scene - “Imagine” by John Lennon.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

The Dude dreams - "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" by the First Edition.

Jesus is introduced in a bowling alley accompanied by a Flamenco guitar version of The Eagles' "Hotel California" performed by The Gipsy Kings.

Love Me Tonight (1932)

"Isn't it Romantic?" Maurice Chevalier sings the song to a customer in his tailor shop in Paris who leaves singing it and the song is heard and sung by one person after another until it makes its way by taxi, train, marching soldiers, and gypsy violinist to a mansion in the country where it is ultimately sung by Jeanette MacDonald, a princess on a balcony and Chevalier's future love interest in the movie.

The opening scene is also wonderful - We hear the sounds of a Parisian neighborhood as the day begins - a pick axe, snoring, sweeping, sawing, hammering, car horns, etc., and a woman playing a phonograph record - all merging into the morning "Song of Paris" until a waking Chevalier closes his window because it's too loud.

Simon of the Desert (1965)

Simon and the bleached-blonde devil woman sit in a nightclub in Hell as Los Rebeldes play "Radio-active Flesh," (el baile final!) and the Damned dance on the dance floor. (The real band is Los Sinners playing "Rebelde Radioactivo.")

Miller's Crossing (1990)

The assassination attempt on Leo with machine guns that never run out of bullets while “Danny Boy” sung by Frank Patterson, plays on a phonograph.

Psycho (1960)

The shower scene with Bernard Herrmann's perfect score.

Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)

Pee Wee stops angry bikers from killing him by dancing to "Tequila" by the Champs.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

End scene and credits - Yello - "Oh Yeah."

Garden State (2004)

In the first scene when an airplane is crashing we hear an Indian chant to Lord Ganesha, a traditional prayer used at the beginning of a work, followed by Coldplay's "Don't Panic" as we see exactly how Zach Braff's character does not live in a beautiful world.

Director Zach Braff said that the movie is a mix CD of music that was scoring his life when he wrote the screenplay. In one scene, Natalie Portman meets Braff in a waiting room. He asks what she's listening to. She gives him her headphones and tells him he should listen to "New Slang" by The Shins. The song appears later, too. The whole scene is basically a product placement for the song, but since I was one of the viewers hearing it for the first time, it worked for me.

The whole movie feels like this scene - enthusiastically trying to get us to listen to some good music, and the popularity of the soundtrack, and the Grammy award that it won, prove that Braff had very good taste in music.

Stormy Weather (1943)

His Orchestra plays and Cab Calloway sings "Jumpin Jive" as the Nicholas Brothers dance so well that it must have made Fred Astaire jealous.

Marat/Sade (1967)

After being subjected to the abstract philosophical and political babblings of De Sade and Jean Paul Marat, the other Insane asylum inmates get down to earth and sing a song that the rest of us can understand - "What's the Point of a Revolution without General Copulation?"

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

The Phillip Glass score is perfect.

Coco (I) (2017)

Remember Me. Disney schmaltz well done.

I Remember (1973)

Nino Rota's wonderful score.

Sexy Beast (2000)

Opening "Peaches," The Stranglers.

M*A*S*H (1970)

During the Last Supper scene as "Painless' Waldowski gets in a coffin and takes a black "suicide" pill, Ken Prymus sings "Suicide is Painless."

Nights of Cabiria (1957)

Final scene. In despair, abandoned and robbed of all her money by the gold digger she just married, Cabiria walks out of the woods alone to a country road where she meets a group of happy young people playing music and enjoying themselves. She smiles through her tears and looks directly at us.

Stop Making Sense (1984)

In this live concert film, David Byrne walks onto an empty stage, plays the rhythm track for Psychokiller on a boombox, strums a guitar and sings the song. For the next song he is joined by the bass player. Stage hands slowly bring in musical equipment, including a drum set. For the next song the drummer joins, then a guitar player comes for the following song. After nearly 20 minutes there is finally a full band with backup singers and stage decorations.

La Dolce Vita (1960)

Nino Rota's score, especially the Theme and the Finale.

The Big Gundown (1967)

The opening song "Run, Man, Run" composed by Ennio Morricone and sung by Maria Cristina Brancucci is a great opening to one of the best Spaghetti Westerns.

Also in Italian

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

It's impossible to imagine Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western "Man with No Name Trilogy" - Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, without the music of Ennio Morricone.

For a Few Dollars More (1965)

It's impossible to imagine Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western "Man with No Name Trilogy" - Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, without the music of Ennio Morricone.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

It's impossible to imagine Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western "Man with No Name Trilogy" - Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, without the music of Ennio Morricone.

10 (1979)

10 earned Oscar nominations for original song and score, but it's best known for promoting the popularity of Maurice Ravel's "Bolero" because of the scene in which Bo Derek tells Dudley Moore that Bolero is the most descriptive sex music ever written, puts it on the turntable, takes off all her clothes then gets into bed.

Taxi Driver (1976)

Bernard Hermann's Oscar-nominated score to this movie is excellent. My favorite is the schizophrenic opening title theme.

Also great is the Thank God for the rain/All the animals come out at night scene.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

One of the vehicles in boss Immortan Joe's warrior convoy is a large truck with several drummers pounding huge drums on the back and a guitar player standing in front of a wall of speakers on the front. He and the guitar are attached to bungee straps and he is continually bouncing around playing loud riffs and chords and shooting fire out of the guitar to provide the men with heavy metal martial inspiration.

Jaws (1975)

The Jaws theme is a classic example of the power of music to inspire terror.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Gene Wilder sings "Pure Imagination" as Willy Wonka introduces kids and their parents to his chocolate room.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

At a talent show for little girls, a 9 year-old girl gets on stage and does a crazy stripper dance to "Super Freak" by Rick James.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

There are many great uses of music in this movie. In one great scene, three escaped convicts and a guitar player drive out to a tiny radio station to sing and make some money. They sing "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" which becomes a huge hit.

In another scene, the three men hear singing and find three women washing their underwear on rocks in the middle of a creek and singing a lullaby that hypnotizes the men - "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" by Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, & Gillian Welch.

Once (I) (2007)

"Falling Slowly" sung by the actors Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova.

Sing Street (2016)

"Drive it Like You Stole It" performed by the star of the movie, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo.

Dead Man Walking (1995)

Opening credits - Eddie Vedder & Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - "The Face of Love."

End Credits - Bruce Springsteen "Dead Man Walkin'."

The Exorcist (1973)

"Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield.

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)

John Williams' scores tend to be too overbearing for my taste, but the Star Wars theme has become iconic. Nine movies later and counting it's still working.