Soundtrack Saturday

Since writing about Tom Waits a week ago I've listened to Rain Dogs more times than at any point since buying it in the late 80s. I've been dipping my toes into other Waits albums too and think I may continue down this route for some time. Rain Dogs also took me back to Jim Jarmusch and his 1986 film Down By Law, a film that had Waits in a starring role and came sandwiched between Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and Mystery Train (1989, already covered in this series). 

Down By Law is classic Jarmusch, written and directed by himself and shot in grainy black and white, the first he made with Wim Wenders' cinematographer Robby Muller. The film follows the story of three convicts who escape from a New Orleans jail- Waits, John Lurie (also on the soundtrack) and Roberto Benigni.

Waits' music and slow tracking shots of the city of New Orleans feature heavily. The films follows the jailbreak, discussions about the men's crimes, the interactions between the three convicts and their escape through the swamp to house in the forest occupied by Nicoletta Braschi. It's a neo- noir character study as much as an escape film. 

Tom Wait's song Jockey Full Of Bourbon plays repeatedly as the camera. The song was also on Rain Dogs. Marc Ribot's guitar twangs away, the clanking railway rhythm clatters away and waits mutters about being on the run with another man's wife and being on the corner in the pouring rain

Jockey Full Of Bourbon

As with Mystery Train John Lurie provides the incidental score but much of the film is music free, the naturalistic sound of voices and ambient noise very startling and close up. As in this famous scene...

Tango Til They're Sore, also from Rain Dogs, appears and a pair of early 60s hits, Irma Thomas' It's Raining and Roy Orbison's Crying (the lines said by Waits just before he is stopped by the police while driving). Irma Thomas playing on the jukebox soundtracks this scene, Banigni and Braschi dancing while Waits and Lurie sit at the table watching. Jarmusch uses of music as part of the plot rather than a permanent feature playing behind the action, something that marks Down By Law out very different to many other films both at the time and since.