The first feature-length film with recorded sound was 1927’s The Jazz Singer. Its release prompted a subtle but key cultural shift by demonstrating that music could not only be seamlessly integrated into film as a way to express character and action, but that there were some styles of music (jazz in this case, though with vaudeville star Al Jolson in the lead, this was jazz in name only) hip enough to build a whole film around. It took the Great Depression and World War II to define the character of the hipster in cinema as an outsider, someone who kept their distance from society while interacting with it. Often a private detective or a musician—or even just a woman trying to carve out their independence in a patriarchal, capitalist society—the classic hipster struggled for justice and morality, often through their sheer existence and endurance. They were hip because they knew what society didn’t, possessed values society didn’t share, and they could live like it.
Alongside the development of the hipster character came a golden age of film and TV soundtracks, music that represented hipness in mainstream culture. For decades, that meant jazz and the dozens of fantastic, classically hip soundtracks from the era testify to that fact. Jazz eventually became an institutional mainstay in the 1980s, and so the idea of hip outsider music has fragmented, yet to once again coalesce around any single style. Perhaps that’s the way things will be from now on, but there’s plenty of classically hip soundtracks on Bandcamp, from the ‘50s up through recent years, from classic jazz ones to offshoots of classical composition, rock, and even funk.
Here’s a selection of some of the wonders in cinematic sound.
Various Artists
Jazz on Film…Film Noir
Compact Disc (CD)
The first name in classic, hip soundtrack music is the UK label Moochin’ About. They’ve released around a dozen multi-disc collections of soundtrack music from the ‘50s and ‘60s that epitomizes how jazz was used to represent everything from hip outsider status to romance to danger in both the movies and TV shows. This set has complete scores composed and played by Duke Ellington, John Lewis, Henry Mancini, and others, and the collaborative score from Elmer Bernstein and Chico Hamilton for the stylishly sleazy Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
Various Artists
Jazz on Film…TV Crime Jazz!
Compact Disc (CD)
Before prestige TV, there was hip TV: shows that represented the law and society on one side and the outlaws on the other. The latter included private detectives, who in fiction are more concerned about justice than what society says is legal. Some of these shows are well known and spawned famous and enduring music, like the theme from Peter Gunn (1958–61). Then there’s Johnny Staccato (1959–60), a crime drama with the young John Cassavetes as a jazz pianist/private detective. It almost seems like something from The Simpsons, but it was real, featured leading jazz musicians, and had another great score from Elmer Bernstein.
Various Artist
Jazz on Film…The New Wave
Compact Disc (CD)
Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960) opens with the blast of Martial Solal’s superb big band score and its unforgettable main theme. It’s impossible to imagine French New Wave cinema without jazz, and this collection (and subsequent volumes) reaches beyond soundtracks to present some of the finest modern jazz from the middle of the last century. The peak is Miles Davis’s soundtrack for Ascenseur pour L’echafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) (1958), Louis Malle’s moody crime drama starring Jeanne Moreau. Completely improvised in the studio while watching a screening of the movie, Miles is joined by a small group that includes the great Kenny Clarke on drums and the evocative saxophonist Barney Wilen. One of the finest soundtracks of all time, and one of Miles’s greatest albums.
Various Artist
Beat, Square & Cool
The Beatniks were the original mass culture hipsters, outsiders who came of age during the explosion of the post-WWII commercial media era. This set includes André Previn’s score for the film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s The Subterraneans (1960), Charles Mingus’s music for Cassavetes’s important independent film Shadows (1958), and the score written by jazz pianist and composer Freddie Redd for The Connection (1961), a stage play later filmed by Shirley Clarke—and possibly the finest hard bop jazz album ever made. And there’s also Leith Stevens’s soundtrack for The Wild One (1953), a movie that seems tame now but that in 1953 was an outrageous portrayal of outlaw biker gangs, featuring Marlon Brando as the iconic Johnny Strabler. When asked, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against,” he replies, “Whaddya got?”
Tindersticks
Stars at Noon
The English alternative rock band Tindersticks have been making soundtracks for the movies of Claire Denis since Trouble Every Day in 2001. The most recent is for her 2022 adaptation of Denis Johnson’s Stars at Noon. This atmospheric romantic thriller is about a journalist trying to find her way out of a Central American country in the middle of political upheaval. Understated, stylish, and gritty, the music conjures the sound of someone at the precipice, keeping a cool façade in the middle of growing danger.
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone Crime: Thriller Movie Soundtracks
The great Morricone is most famous for his soundtracks to Sergio Leone’s trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns, but he also wrote a huge amount of music for Italian thrillers and giallo movies, many of which have barely been seen outside of Italy. His brilliance with melody and instrumentation produced a sound that in itself became a character-defining trademark—just a few seconds, and the listener could tell that this was someone outside the law, whether cowboy, criminal, or cop.
Jonny Greenwood
The Power of the Dog (Soundtrack from the Netflix Film)
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has been honing his craft as a film composer since Bodysong in 2003, and his 2007 score for There Will be Blood was nominated for a Grammy. A lot of his music is oriented around outsider characters; this is doubly true for Jane Campion’s 2021 The Power of the Dog, where Greenwood’s themes provide context for the character of Phil Burbank, both a social and sexual outcast. The haunting sound here might be that of fate itself.
Isaac Hayes
Shaft (Music From the Soundtrack)
If the music for the important, breakthrough blaxploitation crime thriller Shaft (1971) had just been a standard set of orchestral themes and cues, it would still be notable as representing ideas of a parallel culture within mainstream, white Hollywood. But in the hands of Isaac Hayes, the album is not just one of the great movie soundtracks, but also one of the great funk records of all time. From Wah Wah Watson’s guitar, to Hayes asking “Can you dig it?,” this is an icon of hipness.
