I was just thinking today about the score to "Ten Commandments." 

This is a truly nauseating film by Cecil B. Demille featuring Charleton Heston in a perm and Yul Brynner as an ancient Egyptian (no further comment needed), and yet it has an absolutely beautiful score by Elmer Bernstein.  The music is powerful, expressive, hugely varied in emotion, and expertly orchestrated.  Also, the original - recorded in the 1950s - was done in stereo sound by a fantastic studio orchestra.  it is disturbing to have such great music stuck to a bad movie. And yet it is shackled to an overblown, horrifically tacky potboiler of an "epic" that makes one want to puke.  

What are some other great pieces of music stuck onto crappy films?  One other I immediately think of is Bernard Herrmann's "Obsession."  This is music of genius as great as "Vertigo" but is stuck with a total ripoff of Hitchcock by Brian "I'll Screw Anything For Money" De Palma.

All this indicates that every film composer must become a filmmaker and MAKE HIS OWN FILMS!  Otherwise, no matter how brilliant a composer he is, he is in trouble...

It's hard to say what is a really bad film to a beautiful score (although William here came up with an almost unequivocal winner), myself I spontaneously came up a little while ago with an example list of memorable soundtracks from comparatively unmemorable films; but for this post, let's see what we can do:

"Airplane" and "Top Secret" (as a young boy and teenager - respectively, I laughed heartily) Zucker slapsticks - Maurice Jarre

"Bitter Moon" (it wouldn't fail that much if it wasn't trying that hard to be artsy - each to their own I suppose) - one of Vangelis' best

A host of Mel Brooks films (not all) - John Morris (wonderful, widely underestimated composer)

"Gremlins", "The Legend", "The Final Conflict" (one of his very best!) - Jerry Goldsmith (most Oscars for Best Music for Bad Films)

"On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (not even Savalas could save it, or for that matter) - John Barry

+ many many others BUT by far and away, for the cornerstone of qualitative disparity between film and its music for me (I know most of you will disagree as vehemently as I purport it)...

...And the winner is....

"E.T." (I hated it as a young teenager then, I hate it even more now. The quintessential exercise in kitsch, banality, and forced tear-jerking... Maybe if I were American I could relate more to it although other Europeans did. For me, had it been any other composer scoring it....) - John Williams.

Speaking of the Charlton Heston "Ten Commandments," I believe there was another Ten Commandments, with a score by Randy Edelman.  Never saw the film, but thought the score was a good example of orchestra and electronic instruments.  ET?  Sure it was manipulative, but the production values and novelty made it a little more tolerable.  Same thing with Titanic.  Bad dialog, but made up for, in my opinion, by the great production, editing, etc.  As for the score... hmm...  I liked it.  Along with Legends of the Fall and Braveheart, a good James Horner score, at least to my untrained ear.  I'm not that keen on what he does now.

Cheers,     Tom 

Fahrenheit 451

This is what disturbs me about film music.  Someone creates great music and it is forever shackled to a tacky piece of garbage.  What happens to the artistry of Goldsmith?  It is dragged through the mud. 

So every film composer has to just hope that the film will be o.k.?  And not destroy his work by association?  It is no way to work.

There are a lot of great films with non existent scores in them.

For example - Rear Window (1954)

Basic Instinct !

A lot of films over the last few years are such utter crap with exceptions every now and again. Very few good films are made these days because time and again they have to make money,  unless it's some sort of artistic thing like Glegarry Glenross or working for Robert Altman doing things like Gosford Park etc etc. You have to pander to the lowest common denominators in just about anything these days otherwise you kiss goodbye to 95% of any type of consumer - that's why there's no taste anymore. You can't make money with good taste.  Just look at the way people dress - for Christ Sake - do you think that someone who can't dress themselves properly are going to understand what constitutes a 'good film'?.

When you have these type of conversations you really need to split it into two sections - making money versus good taste that can only be brought about by a previously good education. Anyone can make money if that's their primary goal in life and lets nothing like good taste get in the way. The reason many overly intelligent people don't  make any money is because of just that - they let their intelligence and ergo, conscience get in the way. And that's why Hollywood in particular has no compunction in turning out crap most of the time. Let's face it - we've have 70 years of  f***k***war movies alone. So film music is really so unimportant nowadays because it's generic and sounds the same - that the answer really is in the question posed a the start of this thread.

On a positive note - I like the Swedish original of Wallander for tv (the English version is shit). Not especially original but somehow very relaxing. And the score (I have no idea who did it) is not in anyway overblown and works perfectly.

I agree about the various artists approach.  I don't care whether or not it works - I dislike the use of pop songs in films. It is  crude and simplistic to slap a song underneath a scene.  Any moron can do that.   It also reduces film music to absolutely the lowest conceivable level artistically.      

Audiences will support the art house films because there will always be a market for truly good films, despite what the MBAs from Harvard who now control the film industry think. 

Some other films that had absolutely no music were the later Bunuel films, Phantom of Liberty and Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie.  Those are brilliant films, and they did not suffer at all from no music.  If anything they were better because they had an irony and  starkness that any commentary from music would have ruined.  Also, Tarkovsky - who is now considered maybe the greatest of all filmmakers in history - had almost no music in his films.  Stalker had a little, but mostly he avoided it. 

The whole problem with film music is that it is always SAYING SOMETHING.  A scene should simple be allowed to exist for its own reality, without a composer telling you what to think or feel about it. 

You win, big! Do you know how many men - non musicians - envy you that good excuse you use to avoid those cretinous series (slow death of the soul). They instead have to "bond" with their mates on the couch during that absolute crap aimed 80% at women, when they almost never choose to sit through say a boxing match, a baseball game, etc. even though they are not on every single week-night for hours on end...