Of all the many components that go into making a successful, memorable film, the soundtrack is one of the most overlooked. Except for notable exceptions where the music is the film (West Side Story, The Sound of Music) or films in which the music and songs stand apart from the action (The Wizard of Oz, Cabaret or any one of several recent animated releases from Disney), the soundtrack is usually the subtle element that adds an undeniable tone and feeling to the proceedings.

(A quick test: How many of you settled in even more comfortably to watch The Crying Game as you listened to Percy Sledge belt out “When a Man Loves a Woman” during the opening credits? Just wondering.)

Well, Time-Warner has just formed a new record label, Discovery. To mark its debut, Discovery has released a fabulous collection of ten sensuous ballads from an equal number of great films. The disc, Body Heat: Jazz at the Movies, never tries too hard and it delivers, as promised, music that smolders by candlelight.

First up is the title track from the wonderful contemporary film noir Body Heat, by writer/director Lawrence Kasdan. As the first notes start to float, you begin to remember the dead-on performances by William Hurt and then-newcomer Kathleen Turner. This film featured brilliant secondary performances by Ted Danson, Mickey Rourke (perhaps his best role) and Richard Crenna. The alto sax played by Kim Richmond suggests the steam heat of a southern night and the sweaty, obsessive love between a widow wanna-be and a none-too-bright lawyer.

The second track is “Katya (The Love Theme),” Jerry Goldsmith’s score from The Russia House, directed by Fred Schepisi. Probably the weakest film of the ten selections, but the hypnotic love theme is great and is one of several jazz motifs woven through the film.

Katya is followed by “Betty and Zorg/Chili Con Carne” taken from the turbulent and graphically erotic 1976 release Betty Blue, directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix. This is a beautifully shot film dealing with the love affair between a disenchanted writer and an unstable young woman. The music themes demonstrate the extremes of this wildly out-of-control affair.

The Raymond Chandler mystery Farewell, My Lovely receives fine treatment from David Shire’s sultry, electric twilight score. Starring old favorite Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe and always mysterious Charlotte Rampling as the femme fatale, Farewell, My Lovely is a detective yarn with a brain.

If you watch television too much and you’ve been seeing those strange AT&T commercials with that abbreviated, haunting music echoing the words “Calling you,” then you might be interested in the cut featuring Arnold McCuller singing from Bob Telson’s Baghdad Cafe score. Directed by Percy Adlon and featuring some great performances by Marianne Sagebrecht and pre-City Slickers (and subsequent one-arm pushup man) Jack Palance, Baghdad Cafe is an oasis of oddball characters and eclectic nuance. The score is like a haunting nightmare that turns into a beautiful dream.

The theme from the 1959 release Black Orpheus is only one of the many reasons to see this gorgeous film. In this interpretation by Marcel Camus, the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice lives again in the guise of two star-crossed Brazilians at Carnival time. Black Orpheus is an exuberant, bittersweet film filled with beautiful images that conveys a timeless message.

Mark Isham is a relatively new (age) performer on the scene who has been working without interruption (his latest effort was for the Richard Gere/Jodie Foster film Sommersby). In 1988, he composed a wonderfully melancholy, jazz-laced theme for Alan Rudolf’s The Moderns. Treat yourself to this offbeat vision of 1926 Paris restored by one of Robert Altman’s protégés.

‘Round Midnight is late-night, gin-in-your-glass, smoke-in-your-eye jazz that takes you to another place and time. Directed by Bertrand Tavernier and starring Dexter Gordon, this film incorporates its music into the very soul of its story. Great jazz music from Thelonious Monk, Cootie Williams, Herbie Hancock and others punctuate this sonorous film.

Elaborate, futuristic and visually stunning, Blade Runner is set in dank, murky Los Angeles in the not-so-distant future. The vision by David Webb Peoples and Ridley Scott is aided immeasurably by the throbbing, synthesized score by Vangelis. Harrison Ford stars as Deckard, a latter-day Philip Marlowe-type, who is blackmailed to track down and off a band of highly-evolved androids called “skin-jobs.” “Memories of Green,” the track selected here, is one of the film’s most beautiful arrangements.

The theme from Martin Scorcese’s masterpiece Taxi Driver concludes the CD. Bernard Hermann’s classic composition (his final score) is the perfect accompaniment to the rain-swept, early-morning streets of New York as seen through the eyes of a madman. It spills over into the psychotic love affair between Travis Bickel (an intense and unwavering performance by Robert DeNiro) and a presidential campaign worker (Cybill Shepherd). As you listen to quiet alto sax by Kim Richmond, you feel the passion and unfulfilled longing and the melancholy in today’s impersonal urban experience. The whole fits like a glove.

Body Heat: Jazz at the Movies is available from Discovery Records in Santa Monica. As you listen to the carefully selected and arranged songs on this CD, it conjures images and music from other classic films of recent vintage. Who can forget the feeling of terror in Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” score for The Exorcist; the happy-go-lucky swing in Marvin Hamlisch’s The Sting; the unrelenting desire to escape in Giorgio Moroder’s score of Midnight Express; John William’s interpretation of unseen apprehension in Jaws; Robert Redford’s choice of “Canon in D” for his Academy Award-winning Ordinary People; or the oddity of David Lynch’s choice of the Roy Orbison tunes for Blue Velvet.

The list goes on and on. Music and movies are inseparable.

Thank goodness.

Now that you know what to listen to, here’s a quick paragraph on what to see.

After a recent screening of Jurassic Park, I saw a twelve-year old boy whose face was entirely drained of color. I asked what he thought about the movie. “Scariest movie I ever saw” was his honest and shaky reply. Even if you read the book, Steven Spielberg’s dinosaurs will completely amaze you. Jeff Goldblum is particularly good as mathematician Ian Malcolm.

Renny Harlin’s Cliffhanger, starring Sylvester Stallone, works on a variety of levels, but especially at high altitude. In fact, many of the rock climbing scenes will leave you gasping for air. Check your brain at the door and enjoy John Lithgow’s over the top performance as the evil villain.

Menace II Society is a marvelous in-your-face movie that effectively conveys the sense of hopelessness and the vicious cycle facing much of today’s urban black youth. This is a violent, profane movie with a message that is impossible to ignore. It also represents an auspicious directorial debut by Albert and Allen Hughes, 20-year-old twins from Detroit.

Lastly, on video, is the wonderfully infectious sci-fi film Night of the Comet. This small, dark comedy is full of dead-on characterizations, snappy dialogue and an absolutely killer soundtrack. Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney star as girls who just want to have fun despite a natural disaster of epic proportions. Written and directed with style by Thorn Eberhardt, Night of the Comet is, quite simply, a whole lot of fun.