Lights--camera--music!

The film "American Hustle" received ten Academy Award nominations, but not one for best score. A mistake, because Danny Elfman's musical collage--from Duke Ellington to Steely Dan, Thelonious Monk and Gerry Mulligan to Donna Summer--is one of the best things about the film.

Elfman could have composed an original score--he has written some of television's best-known theme music--but chose instead to put together a musical backdrop using existing recordings. Perhaps the first to do this successfully was Jerry Fielding, for "L.A. Confidential," setting the period as ably as the art direction and set design.

For a long time film scores were dreary or unimaginative or overbearing or all three. Any number of 1940s weepers used part of "Daphnis et Chloe," and one is sorry Ravel wasn't around to demand royalties or sue. Then there were the ponderous scores Korngold wrote for Errol Flynn swashbucklers. For a time, movies had to have a lead song--think "To Each His Own" and "Till the End of Time."

Duke Ellington scored a couple of movies--"Anatomy of a Murder" and "Assault on a Queen"--but this wasn't his true metier. One of the first truly great scores was the one Leonard Bernstein wrote for "On the Waterfront" and another, which did win an Oscar--two, in fact--was Burt Bacharach's for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Gerry Mulligan pulled together a knockout jazz aggregation for "The Hot Rock," and Johnny Mandel has written all kinds of memorable movie music, for pictures from "The Americanization of Emily" to "MASH." And we can't forget David Raksin, who composed the still hauntingly beautiful themes for "Laura" and "The Bad and the Beautiful."

Off to look for a CD of Danny Elfman's "American Hustle" score. Music, maestro, please!