Seeing and hearing A Field in England‘s Richard Glover sing “Baloo, My Boy” while in bedraggled character reminded me of the power often exerted by songs explicitly or implicitly germane to a movie’s narrative. They tend to have far greater resonance than songs added during post-production to build atmosphere, stoke emotions, or sell soundtrack albums, not that there aren’t stirring examples of extra-diegetic songs: Tex Ritter’s “The Ballad of High Noon”, “The Windmills of Your Mind” in the 1968 The Thomas Crown Affair, “I Wanna Be Adored” in Welcome to Sarajevo, and “Skyfall”, to name four at random.
The following songs, all sung by characters and/or extras, strike me as essential to the stories’ meanings. To test the theory that songs enhance drama, I omitted songs from musicals and comedies with musical numbers (calculated to entertain) and films about music industry folk (too easy), which means pop and rock got short shrift. There are a few numbers by cabaret and club entertainers. The choices are naturally subjective, though I was surprised to find that traditional songs figure so strongly: in fact, it was hard to leave out “The Nut-Brown Maid” from I Know Where I’m Going! and “Men of Harlech” from Zulu, both dramatically crucial. So (to paraphrase Alan Freeman) here’s the countdown, movie lovers. All right? Stay bright.
20. “Buffalo Gals” in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Walking home in borrowed clothes after being drenched at the 1925 prom, George (James Stewart) and Mary (Donna Reed) celebrate falling in love by joyfully warbling John Hodges’ 1844 minstrel song. But when he ignores the record of it she plays for him in her house during a lull in their courtship, she smashes it. Mary is never so feisty again. It’s tempting (but wrong) to think that splendid tantrum inspired Malcolm McLaren’s hip-hop version.
19. “Jerusalem” in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
The progressive governor of the rural Midlands borstal in Tony Richardson’s British new wave film has his charges sing the Hubert Barry hymn during assembly (pictured above), not realizing that institutionalization mocks the spirit of Blake’s visonary words. It’s quoted ironically at the end as the rebel Colin (Tom Courtenay) gets back to work in the machine shop having trounced authority.
18. “Hey You” in The Squid and the Whale (2005)
At a Brooklyn high-school talent show in Noah Baumbach’s family tragicomedy, 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) performs with perfect deadpan an unplugged version of the Pink Floyd song from The Wall – a plea for unity in the face of alienation – and claims it as his own. Like shoplifting, it’s an unconscious cry for attention that results in the school calling in the parents whose selfish and erratic behavior has sabotaged Walt’s capacity for moderacy.
17. “Who Were We” in Holy Motors (2012)
“Who were we when we were who we were?” Kylie Minogue’s trench-coated torcher sings to her long-lost lover (fellow shapeshifter Denis Lavant) as she channels the ghost of Jean Seberg in Leos Carax’s cineastic fever dream. Carax probably had his long-gone love affair with first-choice actress Juliette Binoche in mind, but newly blooded art-house star Kylie makes the melancholy number her own.
16. “Stuck in the Middle With You” in Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) puts Stealers Wheel’s 1972 hit on a music player and does a shuffling dance to it in front of the tied-up and beaten Officer Nash (Kirk Baltz), prior to cutting off one of his ears (pictured below). He then douses him with petrol as the beat goes on. Quentin Tarantino picked up on the Dylanesque paranoia in Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan’s song, applying its aversion to music industry suits to the cop’s terror of his tormentor. With typical counterintuitivity, Tarantino understood that the scene needed to be cool to work.
15. “So, We’ll Go No More a-Roving” in The Master (2012)
Archly prancing and leering, 1950s cult leader and chartlatan Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) becomes a satyr as he sings the folk staple derived from Lord Byron’s poem (circa 1817), which originated in a Scottish song. Though the lyrics are about desisting from constant lovemaking to preserve health, Hoffman’s bawdy performance touts in front of his female followers, young and old, his willingness to exploit his power. It’s presumably his randy acolyte, the traumatised Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), who mentally undresses the women, including Dodd’s pregnant wife (Amy Adams).
14. “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” in Rio Grande (1950)
John Ford’s son-in-law Ken Curtis was a twerp as the singing cowboy whose “Skip to My Lou” taunts Vera Miles with her lover’s absence in The Searchers (1956). He was a soulful light tenor with the Sons of the Pioneers group, however, and when in Rio Grande he and the US Cavalry’s Regimental Singers serenade the estranged wife (Maureen O’Hara) of their commanding officer (John Wayne) with a yearning version of the sentimental Irish ballad, the couple recall the days of their bliss. “Kathleen, I’ll take you home,” Wayne sadly says.
13.”(I Am a) Man of Constant Sorrow” in O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)
In the Coen Brothers’ comedy, set in 1937 Mississippi, the chain-gang escapees played by George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson chance upon a radio station run by a blind man. Passing themselves off as a group called the Soggy Bottom Boys, they record, with much mugging, a rousing version of the farewell song first cut by the partially blind Kentucky fiddler Dick Burnett around 1913 (it may have originated in 1880s Ireland). A twanging, infectious piece of Americana, it makes a more serious statement about the plight of the Depression’s dispossessed – freighthoppers, hobos, those forced into crime – than the movie containing it. The actors lipsynched to Dan Tyminski’s folky update, on which his lead vocals were backed by Harley Allen and Pat Enright. As it did in the movie, the song became a hit, winning a Grammy and a Country Music Award.
12. “My Rifle, My Pony and Me” in Rio Bravo (1959)
Director Howard Hawks’s enjoyment of courageous male professionals doing a tough job well and uncomplainingly extended to their downtime. John Wayne’s sheriff is holed up in a Texas jailhouse with his deputies: the recovering drunk (Dean Martin), the kid (Ricky Nelson), and the old coot (Walter Brennan). Martin and Nelson, who strums along, duet on a relaxed ditty (pictured below) about an off-duty cowboy dreaming of seeing his girl; Brennan accompanies them on a harmonica and Wayne grins in appreciation. It’s a bonding ritual, the “three good companions” of the song’s title represent each of these men’s comrades in arms. The Dimitri Tiomkin tune came from the theme to Hawks’s great cattle-drive epic Red River (1948), the only other film in which he paired Wayne and Brennan.
11. “Put the Blame on Mame” in Gilda (1946)
Doris Fisher and Allan Roberts didn’t spare the oomph when they wrote “Mame” specifically for Charles Vidor’s perverse film noir. As she trills it and struts and undulates with satirical panache in a Buenos Aires casino, the insouciant Gilda (Rita Hayworth, voice-dubbed by Anita Kert Ellis) threatens a striptease, advertising her supposed looseness, to inspire jealousy in the man she loves (Glenn Ford). The misogynistic lyrics, which blame the sexually active protagonist for historical natural catastrophes and a fictional shooting, have become a red flag for feminist critics. Yet Gilda’s spectacular assertion of her femme fatale allure wrests back the power.