In 1964, little-known actor Michael Caine was being evicted — again — and needed a place to stay — again. His friend Sean Connery, starting out in similar circumstances, had reached the pinnacle of the acting world as James Bond. But here Caine was, unable to pay the rent.

In desperation, he temporarily moved in with his pal John Barry, the music composer for the Bond series. Barry was a regular patron of London’s tony clubs and discotheques, and so Caine fully expected to have some good times while staying over as a guest. What he got instead was being kept up night after night by a strange tune Barry was tinkering with: two blaring notes in the key of F major, followed by a trailing melody in D flat, repeated over and over like a villainous echo:

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Decades later, music critic Terry Walstrom would marvel at how this famous introduction “arrests the attention and stuns the ear,” with the unorthodox key transition being akin to “opening a carton of fat-free milk and pouring out a glass of vodka. Entirely without precedent.”

Unknowingly just a few months away from his own stardom courtesy of 1964’s Zulu (another film scored by Barry), Michael Caine lay in the dark listening to the haunting melody of “Goldfinger,” little guessing that the song would one day be judged one of the finest of the last fifty years, with its young composer becoming the greatest British purveyor of movie music in the twentieth century.

John Barry Prendergast was the great-grandson of famous bare-knuckled boxing champ Jack Sullivan, but no hint of “the sweet science” filtered down through the family tree to him. Born in 1933, his father owned a chain of cinemas and his mother was a concert pianist. Barry took piano lessons from the age of nine (with one teacher whacking his fingers with a ruler whenever he missed a key), and fell in love with movies while working in the projection booths of his Dad’s theaters. Soon he had every intention of becoming a classically trained film composer. (more…)

Tough choice between this and “Dr. Zhivago” (1965). Maurice Jarre won well-deserved Oscars for both (and “A Passage To India” in 1984). Other memorable, hummable, off-the-top-of-my-head favorites include “The Train” (1964), “The Professionals” (1966) and ”Witness” (1985).

When you mix sound for a film – score, effects, dialogue – not taking the audience out of the story is a very difficult part of the job and just one way to begin to appreciate the talent and craftsmanship required to do what Jarre did; to craft lush, large, and rousing scores that not only don’t distract, but enhance everything on such an emotional level you can’t imagine the film without it. You don’t hear great film scores, you feel them, and as the above clip proves, Jarre’s best work didn’t need anything to accomplish this — not even the film.    (more…)