jazz’s role in 1960s british new wave cinema- an interview：在60年代的英国新浪潮电影中扮演的角色--一次采访.Image.Marked.pdf

Jazz in 1960s British New Wave Cinema: An Interview with Sir John Dankworth Frank Griffith Journal of British Cinema and Television, Volume 3, Issue 2, Nov 2006. Sir John Dankworth, the eminent English composer, conductor, bandleader and jazz musician has written in many genres, including composing over 20 film scores. Of these, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), The Criminal (1960), The Servant (1963) and Darling (1965) in particular, played a major role in bringing about a new sound in British film during the 1960s.1 The first major jazz-influenced score was penned in 1955 by Elmer Bernstein, for Otto Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm. To the composer himself, the kind of music needed was obvious. As he put it: There is something very American and contemporary about all the characters and their problems. I wanted an element that could speak readily of hysteria and despair, an element that would localise these emotions to our country, to a large city if possible. Ergo – jazz (quoted in Prendergast 1977: 109). Also worthy of note is Johnny Mandel’s score for Robert Wise’s I Want to Live! (1958) which featured Gerry Mulligan, Pete Jolly, Bob Envoldsen and other fine LA jazz players. The distinct feature of that score was that it actually used improvisation and the jazz was linked into the movie. It was a dark story, based on the actual case of a woman framed for murder, and helped to establish the frequent association of jazz with crime and the urban. It was not surprising, then, that at the end of the 1950s, when a new wave of contemporary urban realism hit Britain, directors there too looked for modern sounds to match the mood and drama of their films. And what better music to underscore this reality than jazz, with its cachet as the music of the oppressed? When directors sought someone who could fulfil their need for this