The Sound of the 50s English • Filmhuis Denhaag Filmhuis Denhaag

The Sound of the '50s

Spectacle, Cold War and Jazz

In the 1950s, more and more people had a television in their home – competition for the cinema. But Hollywood went into battle mode and enticed the public with grandiose musicals such as Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly 1952). In addition, spectacle films had to tempt viewers with something they didn’t have at home: CinemaScope’s widescreen format and 

Technicolour’s sparkling colours. These epics demanded scores with large orchestras and choirs, such as the glorious march in Ben Hur (William Wyler, 1959). 

Meanwhile tension brewed between the world’s superpowers America and Russia. When the Russians were the first to successfully go into space, Hollywood responded with a quintessential Cold War genre: science fiction. To create the accompanying music, a theremin was used – an electronic instrument with sounds that seemed to come directly from outer space. 


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With the soundtrack for A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan 1951), jazz made its debut at the cinema. But jazz was only considered suitable for films about violence, adultery and alcoholism. One of the few black composers of American film scores was Duke Ellington. He wrote a jazz-infused soundtrack for Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger 1959). 

Post-war cinema flourished outside of America too. In Italy director, Federico Fellini and composer Nino Rota embarked on a long-term collaboration. From France, the rousing music in Mon Oncle (Jacques 

Tati 1958) won the public’s hearts. And the bossa nova became popular thanks to the Brazilian film Orfeu Negro (Marcel Camus 1959).

Listen to the chill of the Cold War and the loneliness of jazz

Hear the threat of the Cold War, be overwhelmed by large orchestras from feature films, sing along in the rain, swoon at the violins from a melodrama & shed a tear at the loneliest trumpet sound ever.

Facts of Filmmusic

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer, known for his innovative designs for company logos and posters and opening sequences for films. Opening sequences were usually static designs that were independent of the film’s content. Bass tried to change this in the 1950s with designs that evoked the film’s atmosphere. The film The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) is about heroin addiction, which is why Saul Bass came up with a design of a stylised arm in black and white. This arm was then used in several different ways, such as the film poster and the record cover for the soundtrack. Among all the traditional posters with painted and photographed film scenes, Bass’s work stood out: it was a sensation. During his 40-year career, Bass worked for some of Hollywood’s most prominent filmmakers: Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese.

Le notti di Cabiria by Federico Fellini (1957)

When Nino Rota died in 1979, one Italian newspaper headline read in capital letters: ‘FELLINI’S COMPOSER DEAD’. An accurate characterisation, given that film director Federico Fellini and Nino Rota had worked together for 28 years. Fellini wrote of Rota: ‘There was immediately a complete, total harmony between us. He had a geometric imagination, a musical approach worthy of celestial spheres. He therefore had no need to see any images from my films. When I asked him about the melodies he had in mind for some scene or other, it became all too clear to me that he was in no way concerned with images. His world was internal, inside himself, and reality had no way of entering.’

Imitation of Life (1959)

In our times of Black Lives Matter, Imitation of Life (1959) takes on a renewed significance. Director Douglas Sirk shows how the daughter of a black housekeeper reacts to the discrimination she encounters. Helped by her light skin colour, she tries to conceal her origins. It is an important and urgent story, but not the story that you see on the record cover. Sirk tells the story from the perspective of two daughters of single mothers: one white; one black. The desire of both daughters for social recognition is so great that it stands in the way of their love for their mothers. Overdramatic? Definitely! Sirk was a master at creating glossy and exaggerated melodrama. Frank Skinner’s score with sultry violins, swooning wind sections and heavenly hallelujahs made the tears flow all the more easily.

Ascenseur pour l’Échafaud

Ascenseur pour l’Échafaud by Louis Malle (1958). Music by Miles Davis. Ascenseur pour l’échafaud is the story of two lovers whose murder plot gets out of hand. With his feature film debut, Louis Malle announced himself as France’s most dynamic young filmmaker. The film’s soundtrack was equally groundbreaking: the first film score by jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. The story goes that Miles Davis entirely improvised the score, but that isn’t exactly true: in the studio Davis gave his musicians the melodies that he had written in his hotel room. The plot of the film was then explained and the musicians played the sequences to accompany scenes from the film that were projected onto the wall. The end result made history. One jazz critic described the music as: ‘the loneliest trumpet sound you will ever hear… hear it and weep.’
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