One Mo' Time: The Score for "The Departed"

{"Greatest Hits of Gold Coast Bluenote: "Music in Film"}

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(Revised and Reposted from August 2007)

Martin Scorcese on the set of The Departed

This past year, decades past due, film auteur Martin Scorsese walked off with almost all the hardware at last Oscars for his latest masterwork, The Departed.

With the exception of, as examples, the use of Jim Gordon's half of Layla and Ry Cooder's slide solo from Memo from Turner in the two-movement Goodfellas climax, the use of music, other than the score, in Goodfellas is an embryonic form of what is accomplished in The Departed.

The following is a non-spoiler soundtrack film teaser with notes:

Gimme Shelter churns -- Ooh, fire is sweeping, our very streets today -- as Mick Jagger and Merry Richards belt their vocals as Keith Richards' lead runs and power chords introduced Jack Nicholson's character Frank Costello.

Mr. French's character is unsheathed to strains of Duane Allmans' opening slide solo in One Way Out.

Billy tunes-up Providence button men - Nobody But Me by the original Isley Brothers --
... nobody, nobody, nobody.., .

When Frank Costello first meets Billy, Let It Loose is on the jukebox: Frank's "all dressed up to do you harm."

Patsy Cline's unsurpassable Sweet Dreams cover is on the stereo at Frank's apartment as French and Frank discuss Billy's reliability [blend from Patsy across Irish ditty into John Ono Lennon's Well, Well, Well.

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[Used in love scene between Billy and, radically transformed by Van Morrison's soaring live vocal, into a "sexual healing" song. First Verse is softly buried under a "find the rat' scene, then the dialogue fades and the song come up.]

Comfortably Numb (-- by Gilmour, Waters; originally from Pink Floyd's The Wall)

Hello? Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?
Come on, now, I hear you're feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain
Get you on your feet again. ...

[transition to Madeline and Billy in her old apartment as she packs]

... There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse ...

Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, The dream is gone.

... A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.

...When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand
This is not how I am ...

[music fades as teapot boils in kitchen; dialogue and love scene as song fades back in to soundtrack]

... There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, The dream is gone. [And] I have become comfortably numb.

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I'm Shipping Up To Boston - Dropkick Murphys

And when the deal is going down, truly, this song (in a more hard-edged arrangement than in the YouTube video hyperlink above) rolls and blasts -- traditional Irish music punk band. Who would've thought...it figures[?]

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The Departed, as in all aspects of it's construction takes lacing a soundtrack with great tunes to an new level in cinema.
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