Won the first Academy Award for an originally composed score.

Analyzed by Kathryn Kalinak, "Max Steiner and the Classical Hollywood Film Score: An Analysis of The Informer" in Film Music 1 ed. Clifford McCarty.  She briefly discusses Steiner's appropriation of classical repertory.  "The Blind Man" melodically evokes the minstrel's song "Che faranno ivecchi miei" from Puccini's La Fanciulla del West.  The melodies do not in fact appear related, though Kalinak may be correct that their locations in the story and subject of homesickness are similar.  Kalinak suggests that Steiner again draws on Fanciulla when he matches each drip of water while Gypo awaits execution with a note from the money motif, as Puccini scores Johnson's drops of blood.  When Gypo decides to betray Frankie Steiner borrows the rhythm of the theme from Dvorak's New World Symphony mvmt ii.  Mary's theme is highly chromatic and reminiscent of Wagner's "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde.  Steiner's "The money" (descending tritone followed by augmented chord arpeggiated downward against pedal point) derives from Verdi's Requiem Mass.  Kalinak does not further detail these relationships.

"It was one of Laura's favorites. Not exactly classical but sweet." Mr. Carpenter re: "Laura" played on phonograph by what I think is an orchestra but sounds like an organ+.

15:50 - transition "Laura" from present (sparser) to flashback (fuller arrangement).

From Raksin commentary:

11:35 - "Now this is a place where they might have had music in those days but I decided no way."
violin piano accordion.
Memory music is "supposed to be Muzak." David Raksin
21:50 - "it's supposed to add a little glamor."
28:28 "now a little underscoring music because it's a slightly dramatic scene here so the music is sort of messing around with that."
59:55 cut from country to main apartment: "See there are no phoney little snippets of music there."
Alfred Newman, the Bernard Hermann turned down film.
1:11 - might have been music for entrance to interrogation room but Rasin "couldn't do it," "too corny."
1:20:10 - "See this is a very difficult king of scoring you've got to do something that is in a supressed way dramatic. And that's what there is."
1:21 - "What there is is these little fragments of music which I put in which are intended, you know, to add a little depth and glamour without really changing the thing."
1:24:30 - radio built into bedroom wall is modern. Electrical transcription (1:25:50) - necessary explanation for how Waldo can be heard on radio when present in room.

Otto Preminger originally wanted to use "Summertime," then Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady" because Laura is a whore. Raksin said acretion of ideas and associations that a song already so well known would have for its audience was undesirable.

From Rudy Behlmer commentary:

In the Vera Caspary's novel Waldo expalins "Old tunes had been as much a part of Laura as her laughter. A hardy and unashamed lowbrow, she had listened to Brahms but heard Kern." "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" from Jerome Kern's Roberta (1933) is mentioned in the book, and then used in all drafts of script: one of Laura's favorites, played by Laura's phonograph, 3 musicians at restaurant, underscoring for montage depicting Laura's rise in business world.

Account of choosing Rite of Spring for Fantasia (35-6) cited in Nicholas Cook's Analyzing Multimedia (174).

A social and cultural history of Hollywood in the 1940s framed as its great height followed by decline and fall. Each chapter focuses on one year, reporting political and economic conditions as backdrop for behind-the-scenes anecdotes. Relevant to my concerns is the second chapter, “Ingatherings (1940),” which discusses the influx of European artists to LA which resulted from Hitler’s rise to power. The chapter’s most extensive music-related anecdotes concern Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, the making of Fantasia and Dimitri Tiomkin. The author is skeptical of the veracity of insiders’ reports, viewing Hollywood as a fantasy world, an imaginary city. This circumspection applies to the composers’ stories; however, while occasionally conflicting accounts of the same events are considered, the overall picture is presented as accurate. Movie produces had specific ideas about what kind of music they wanted in their films, and treated major composers and full-time studio composers alike as hired servants. At the same time, the concentration of classical musicians in Hollywood fostered encounters and collaborations among them, prompting (non-film) compositions and recordings which otherwise might not have been produced.