As my amazing double blogathon weekend continues, the following is my late — but I trust not too late — entry in Damian’s terrific Film Music Blogathon at Windmills of My Mind. Hmm. Kind of puts me in the mood for some Michel Legrand….

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Back in those long ago days of last week, when I didn’t realize that my I’d be doing two blogathon posts in one weekend and one of them was going to be massively long (again) and filled with painstaking selected screen captures (again), I thought I’d do some kind of detailed look at one or two of my favorite music sequences from a non-musical, probably starting with the Blue Danube sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Well, by the time midnight rolled around last night and I was still finishing up that other post, it became obvious that no lengthy meditations were going to happen. However, I did get me started thinking about the difference between underscoring and foreground music and where the lines blur. 2001 is actually a pretty good example.

I haven’t heard the famously discarded Alex North score, but it’s clear that traditional Hollywood underscoring, designed to underline emotions and set moods without distracting audiences from the story, would have resulted in a rather boring, scene. Kubrick’s choice of the 19th century Strauss waltz puts the music into a very different context, reminding us of the artificiality of what we’re seeking and opening us up to the beauty of a sort of dance sequence in which the main performers are space vehicles.

Three of my favorite film composers — Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, and especially Nino Rota — tend to blur those lines between the supposedly not to be noticed background music and the foregrounded music we’re all supposed to remember. They’re all capable of writing gorgeously memorable melodies for certain scenes that play a central role and are as prominent in the audience’s consciousness as what’s onscreen. It’s not music to enforce an emotion, but music that adds to a scene while having its own life.

This type of film music often indulges in a more pop sensibility. Some of Rota’s best known melodies are essentially lounge music and in some sequences, they almost overpower Fellini. Morricone’s score for Once Upon a Time in the West is even more dominant — it’s practically a wordless cantata or oratorio and you’re likely to leave the theater humming one of Morricone’s ravishing melodies.

Bernard Hermann, on the other hand, isn’t exactly known for his hum-friendly tunes, but he wrote two great popular songs for Citizen Kane — which, as far as I can tell from looking around online, don’t have official titles.

The lesser known melody is the brief “It Can’t Be Love” jazz number which starts as foreground, but quickly fades forelornly into the background. The more obvious use of popular music is the “Charlie Kane” tribute song, which begins as a choreographed dance number, and later becomes part of the background and acts as a reminder of Kane’s early career successes through the rest of the film. It’s then pointedly re-used under the end credits to remind us that the sad story we just saw is really just a big show, and its quite alright if we leave the theater thinking more about the ingenuity of Orson Welles and the great cast he’s assembled than the pathetic, wasted life of Charles Foster Kane. It’s a near perfect blending of background and foreground.

However, not all film composers and directors really understand the differences between the two types of scoring and when to use what. Even a major talent like Spike Lee tends to mix his music too high and distract from his own work too much of the time. And we’ve all seen movies where an excess of “overscoring” or “mickey mousing” ruins potentially powerful scenes with music that tries to force the audience to feel a certain way. It’s almost a cliche, but too few directors have the courage of a Sidney Lumet to make entire films without underscoring. If you’ve got Paddy Chayevsky as a writer and a rich, effects laden soundtrack, words and effects are all the music you need.

Which finally (sort of) brings me to Burt Bacharach, a wonderful composer who should probably not work in film except to contribute a great song or two. His orchestrations are as gorgeous and attention grabbing as pop music gets, but in movies they can be disastrous used anywhere other than a credits sequence or as source music.

As a stand-alone piece of music, Bacharach’s score for the 1967, multi-director Casino Royale is fun stuff — in fact, just once I’d like to see a spy spoof as silly and enjoyable as that score. In the context of the film, however, it makes a bad movie even worse. Bacharach’s music is a constant reminder that we’re supposed to have fun, fun, fun — it’s almost the equivalent of people randomly yelling “wooh!” in a bar to remind themselves of the good time they’re supposed to be having, only I don’t want to hurt Burt Bacharach.

It’s actually worse in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, because it’s an otherwise excellent film that, for me (and perhaps for me alone), is partially ruined by Bacharach’s perpetually inappropriate music — this time even the montage, not–quite-a-love theme doesn’t work. During the scene in which Butch takes Etta Place bicycling, a song like “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” might establish a semi-melancholy mood of semi-unrequited romance for some viewers. For me, that mood is already present on screen and doesn’t need that kind of help from the soundtrack. Worse, the song itself is so clearly of the late sixties Los Angeles lifestyle and mindset, it really serves only to remind us that movies are commercial properties which can be greatly enhanced by the use of a hit song — even better if the song wins an Oscar. And let’s not even discuss that self-consciously wacky follow-up music that goes with Butch’s bike stunts. (Is there such a thing as double mickey mousing?)

When it comes down to music in films, it’s all comes down to a matter of appropriateness more than anything else. Bacharach is classically trained, but when it comes to films it doesn’t seem to help much. Some composers from the pop music world, like the not-classically trained Danny Elfman (a pretty serious film fan) and Randy Newman (classically trained as a composer, but also the nephew and cousin of several great-to-competent film composers), have a pretty reliable and instinctive understanding of what works in a narrative film.

Burt Bacharach, on the other hand, understands what sounds good, but not what works in a dramatic context with a given film. And, to be fair, I’m not saying that understanding what works is easy to explain on anything but an intuitive level. Think of Bacharach and David’s rejected title song for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

John Ford was right to refuse to use it anywhere in the film. Even though Gene Pitney’s recording tries hard to sound Western with its use of a deliberately off-key fiddle, it’s too slick and too pop for pretty much any traditional western and it would have been a distraction or even campy in the context of the film. Yet, I love hearing Pitney’s recording of the song…and I even kinda sorta like it hearing hearing it underscore footage from the Harry Potter movies. (“The Kid Who Zapped Draco Malfoy”?) Context is everything.

On the other hand, no one needs to hear any song performed this way…Okay, I’ve changed my mind. Let Burt Bacharach score your film if you have to but, for God’s sake, don’t let Kevin Costner sing your theme song.

UPDATE: For more on “Mickey Mousing”, which I allude to above, and why sometimes “Mickey Mousing” is actually just the right thing to do, I refer you all to Peet Gelderblom’s blogathon post on the subject….both entertaining and informative.