All elements indefinitely contribute to a scene in a cinema to convey a particular idea. Music is an element amongst those that plays a significant role to enhance the narrative, the emotional impact and the overall quality of the scene. Musics, just like stories for cinemas, are created originally for that film or may be adapted from a popular album/single.
Even though such popular songs with lyrics are not part of the film score, they are a part of the soundtrack that includes dialogues and sound effects. A popular song well mixed into the soundtrack and well blended into the scene will really enhance the quality of the scene. In fact in my opinion, the use of popular songs makes the scene more realistic.
The main intention behind the usage of popular music is that it has already been registered with viewer. The cinema goer would already have heard the song earlier in radio or television. Even though that is an advantage, this might turn up as a disadvantage as well if the song is not perfectly selected according to scene in the cinema. People would have created images and visuals themselves when they heard that song on the radio or television earlier and they would not like it if the reuse of the song does not fit into the situation.
The use of popular songs in cinema dates back to the early 1930’s. William Wellman was a director who used popular songs in his movies. Martin Scorsese, the great realistic filmmaker, commented that at the end of the film ‘The Public enemy’ Wellman has played a record of a pleasant song expecting that his brother is arriving back. As the character opens the door he finds that his brother his dead and the pleasant song on the record keep on playing. This makes the scene more realistic.
Scorsese is another director who loves to popular music in his films. His ‘Good Fellas’, one of the best films that tells you the highs, lows and emotions of gangsters, has got lots of sequences where popular music has been used. If am to prepare a list of such usages in cinema, I am pretty sure that half of the list would be from Goodfellas. The use of the guitar piece from the song ‘Sunshine of your love’ shows the authority of the character Jimmy in the film. Jimmy decides to kill all other people in the gang and the music goes in and Jimmy, played by Robert Di Nero starts smoking. The use of ‘Late for the sky’ in Taxi Driver fits inside the realism of the film and well connects with the theme of the movie as well. This shows the greatness of the director.
The use of ‘This is the end’ in Apocalypse Now is one of the best among them. The lyric of the song sits well inside the theme of the film. It is very aptly used in the beginning of the film and in the final scene where Kurtz gets killed. The use of Peter Gabriel’s ‘In your eyes’ in ‘Say Anything’ is an example that sits well inside the scene and is mixed extremely realistically but does not go along fully with the theme of the movie.
The list of such usages popular music in films would go on and on. Every realistic director would have used a popular song at least once in his any of his films to emboss the theme of the films and/or show the realism. My dad never had the habit of watching a lot of films, not at least till what i do now, but he used to encourage me watch more of realistic stuff.
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