“Love is Strange” by Mickey & Sylvia from “Casino”
Time and again, Scorsese has enshrined iconic moments of American (criminal) masculinity in deeply cool combinations of image and track, but only rarely has he done the same for his female characters. This is arguably the only time he did so, as Sharon Stone‘s perfect, glittering Ginger gets the kind of gangster intro that is more usually accorded Robert de Niro, who is here rendered the dumbstruck, lovestruck onlooker. As Ginger flings those chips in the air and their eyes lock, the twangy call-and-response of the track sounds out, and we know Ace Rothstein is a goner to this very strange love.
“Come Rain Or Shine” by Ray Charles/Sandra Bernhard from “The King Of Comedy”
If “The King Of Comedy” has a theme tune, it’s probably the American Songbook standard “Come Rain Or Shine” —a track that’s been covered by no doubt hundreds of artists over the years, but appears early in this film via Ray Charles’ recording. Appearing over a freezeframe of Sandra Bernhard’s obsessive fan as she sits inside Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis)’s limo, it’s an excellently incongruous choice for an opening track, but it’s mostly set up for later, when Bernhard sings her own (pretty good) version on her candlelit “date” with a tied-up Langford. It’s both creepy and weirdly sweet, and made much better by Lewis’ weary reaction shots.
“Cavalleria Rusticana – Intermezzo” by Pietro Mascagni from “Raging Bull”
If several entries on this list feel like they define the essential feel of a Scorsese picture, this one perhaps goes even further, capturing the essence of cinema. It might be an overblown claim, but if we had to choose a single combination of music and image that summoned “cinema,” it might very well be a black and white Robert De Niro boxing in such graceful slo mo it looks like dancing, to the sweet strings of this beautiful and melancholic classical piece. Surely your heart sings a bit just thinking about it.
“Sunshine Of Your Love” by Cream from “Goodfellas”
Yet another “Goodfellas” pick, but how could we not include this one (or, indeed, any of the others)? It’s late on in the movie, and Jimmy is getting grief from Morrie (Chuck Low), to whom he owes money. Henry has urged him not to do anything rash, but as Morrie comes out of the bathroom bar, the unmistakable opening Jack Bruce lick from Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love” comes in. As De Niro puffs away, an inscrutable and possibly slightly deranged smile on his lips, the hippie anthem becomes something scary and we know something bad is about to happen. Though we still don’t expect an icepick in the back of the head.
“Be My Baby” by The Ronettes from “Mean Streets”
A hardboiled line of voiceover about sin and the streets is intoned. Harvey Keitel wakes as though from a nightmare. He paces around the dark room —a crucifix is on the wall and police sirens sound outside. And just as we understand the grit and pessimism that the film will largely deal in, the sugary, Phil Spector-y tambourine-heavy sounds of the Ronettes’ most famous track rings out. It wouldn’t make any sort of sense to put this track to this scene but for a purely cinematic imagination, and in retrospect it’s a statement of intent and our intro to Scorsese’s conception of cinema as not just pictures-and-sound, but the synthesis and collision of the two.
“The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals from “Casino”
Scorsese makes it look as easy as falling off a log, so it’s hard to grasp the sheer logistical difficulty of bringing together so many disparate elements to work as one cohesive whole. But this sequence from “Casino” is as good as a thesis: as Joe Pesci‘s nasal voiceover explains who’s who and why they’re getting whacked, we see hit after hit, even skipping to Costa Rica, while song weaves in and out, sometimes loud, usually when a lyric is particularly apropos, sometimes barely audible. The song is about a brothel, but to anyone who’s seen this sequence, the “House” is forever a casino.
