Music
For the generation of pure emotion, it’s hard to imagine a more effective combination of artistic mediums than the pairing of the images of cinema with the undeniable transcendence offered by a great piece of music. There’s something about the synthesis of the visual and the auditory, which reinforce and elevate one another’s meaning, that makes cinema, in its capacity to combine these two elements, capable of achieving a feeling unavailable to any other single art form.
Though cinema began as a purely visual medium, existing without synchronized sound for the first thirty years of its life, music has been a part of film for a long time. Though filmmakers could not attach music to the film itself, exhibitors quickly understood that films played better if they were aided by music—most movie houses employed a pianist or organist who, whether working from a score supplied by the studio or filmmaker, or playing live alongside the film as it ran in an act of musical improvisation, became a kind of emotional guide for the audience.
According to sound and music theorist Michel Chion, “In the silent era, live musical accompaniment played by flesh-and-blood musicians in the theater gave every screening, even those with modest means, the allure of a true performance—a characteristic that the ritualized conventions of the sound films of the 1960s would appropriate and make their own.” According to Chion, this early relationship was maintained into the sound era, which began after the arrival of synchronizing technology in 1927. In fact, an early film that showed audiences the possibility of synchronized sound was The Jazz Singer (1927, Crosland), in which star Al Jolson sang in one of the film’s many sound sequences.
The arrival of sound was a sensation that shifted the entire industry’s means of production; what movies were and could do was suddenly redefined—it wasn’t overnight, because it took some time for studios to convert, but by late 1929, almost the entirety of the movie business had started to use sound. According to Chion, “the sound film quickly took on the musical practices and codes of silent-era film music, with the unique difference that the music was now recorded, linked body and soul with the film.” Music was now an inseparable component of the film itself, as the musical score and popular music that appeared in the movie was joined to the visual track.
diegetic vs. non-diegetic music
While elements appearing inside the frame are generally collected under the umbrella term mise-en-scene, music and sound are a little harder to classify—sometimes they emanate from within the frame, and sometimes they come from somewhere beyond its edges. Differentiating between those two types of music and sound helps us discuss what role they play in shaping our perception of the story and characters.
One type of music is diegetic music—this is the closest kind of music to an element of mise-en-scene. Diegesis refers to the interior world of the film; if any sound is diegetic, that means the characters in the story hear it. A passing subway train, a honking car horn, dialogue exchanged between characters—all of these are elements of diegetic sound. They appear within the world of the characters on screen, and their sources are easy to identify, often because they’re paired with some visual evidence: the subway cars rattle by in the image, a car pulls up outside an apartment, characters’ mouths move while they appear in the images.
Diegetic music works the same way. Sometimes referred to as source music, diegetic music comes from someplace inside the world of the film. A scene in a nightclub, for example, might feature musicians on the stage, as in the image below left from Paris Blues (1961, Ritt). Or, a character might switch on a car radio playing a popular song, as in the image below right from Cape Fear (1962, Thompson). The music comes from a discernible place inside the narrative, and its source is clearly established.
Even though diegetic music comes from a place inside the narrative that is ostensibly rooted in reality, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t carefully chosen. Every piece of popular music that appears in a film must be cleared with the artist who originally made it, which means that filmmakers must pay for the rights to use that piece of music. If they’re going to have to pay for it, they have to be pretty precise about why they want to use it; usually, that means they want the piece of music to comment in some way on the action of the narrative.
Watch an example of diegetic music in the scene at right from The Aviator (2004), directed by Martin Scorsese, a filmmaker with a well-earned reputation for using music in combination with images. The film is a period piece set in the early days of Hollywood, and the scene you’ll see is set in The Coconut Grove, a popular hangout for movie stars and studio heads. Scorsese casts singer Rufus Wainwright as one of the club’s entertainers; he sings “Stairway to Paradise,” a song that appears within the world of the film—the clubgoers hear it—but also comments on the aspirations and beliefs of the people trying to build something in the nascent film industry. Pay attention to the way music works in combination with the image.
|
|
Non-diegetic music, by contrast, does not appear within the world of the film. It exists in the strange space beyond the frame, where the filmmaker provides a kind of musical comment on the action without the characters’ knowledge. Non-diegetic music is there for the benefit of the audience, shaping our perceptions of what we see through a play to our emotions. It’s almost like an act of narration—the characters don’t hear the music, but we certainly do.
Musical montages are key places where non-diegetic music is used to stitch together moments happening at various times and various places. In Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), a gangster film that takes place over almost three decades, he frequently uses music to accelerate the passage of time. In one of the film’s most distinctive sequences, he pairs the sweet, pleasant piano exit of Eric Clapton’s “Layla” with images of various gangsters being found dead around the city. The point is the ironic disjunction between the brutality of the violent images and the pleasing melody of the musical piece. Watch the scene at right, paying close attention to the ways in which the music seems to comment on the images—and it should, because Scorsese carefully designed the scene while shooting to parallel with the musical piece.
|
|
Non-diegetic music represents the guiding hand of the filmmaker, who affirmatively makes a choice to include a specific piece without having to motivate its use in the diegetic world of the characters. While a song playing on a radio or in a nightclub is sometimes a step removed from the authorial, narrational voice of the filmmakers, a piece of non-diegetic music is more overt evidence of their presence.
POPULAR music
Popular music, sometimes called a “needle drop,” is often used as a part of the diegesis, but in some cases, that music weaves back and forth between a diegetic application and a non-diegetic application. The use of popular music has long been a part of cinema; characters in American films of the 1940s often stop to enjoy a musical performance in a nightclub or restaurant. However, beginning in the 1960s, more filmmakers began to experiment with the use of popular music as a substitute for a composed musical score, blurring the lines between diegetic and non-diegetic uses of music.
Watch the clip at right from the opening of American Gigolo (1980, Schrader), in which the song “Call Me” by Blondie blasts over the soundtrack. There’s a diegetic motivation—it’s probably playing on the radio as sex worker Julian Kay (Richard Gere) drives to his next appointment—but it also becomes a kind of theme of the movie, announcing its thematic and stylistic intentions. It plays over the duration of the credits sequence, which gives it a non-diegetic flair.
|
|
The use of popular music in cinema is now more or less standard. Some filmmakers’ work is impossible to fathom without their consistent use of popular music; in their selections, they often reveal something about their personal tastes. In other cases, popular music can be used to place a period film in its specific historical moment, bringing audiences back to that era sonically. But above all, popular music carries very specific emotional meaning for audiences, especially if they are familiar with the song being used. The use of a particular song could exponentially expand the emotional impact of a particular cinematic moment, becoming inseparable from the images it accompanies; however, if some members of the audience have a negative association with that song, it could risk alienating them.
Watch the text commentary at right on a sequence from Coming Home (1978), a post-Vietnam film about a disabled veteran (Jon Voight) who develops a romantic relationship with a woman (Jane Fonda) whose husband (Bruce Dern) is still fighting overseas. Director Hal Ashby uses popular music—often The Rolling Stones—to date the film’s setting (1969), but also to comment emotionally on the relationships between the characters. In the sequence you’ll see, he relies mostly on The Stones’ “No Expectations,” a song about the heartbreak of leaving a place and a person behind.
|
|
Popular music has proven itself to be one of the most distinct and emotionally resonant of tools in the filmmaker’s kit. Some movie moments are completely unimaginable without the songs that accompany them, and some songs become irrevocably associated with particular movies.
MUSICAL SCORE
Though popular music has taken on an extremely important role in cinema, the older and more traditional approach is for filmmakers to rely on composed musical score, written and performed specifically for the movie itself.
Musical score is, almost without exception, non-diegetic. The characters do not hear musical score that plays over the images in which they appear, but that musical score shapes our emotional understanding of what’s going on in the story. Think about it: suspenseful music in a horror film underscores the potential arrival of a monstrous or violent threat; sad, mournful melodies can express how characters feel after an important person dies; pulse-pounding, relentless driving score can propel the excitement of a car chase; a swell of orchestral music culminating in a kiss between the two leading actors seals their romantic union.
Though it might seem like Indiana Jones can hear his own theme music—when it kicks in, he seems to get stronger—he can’t. But, in movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Spielberg), the musical score written by John Williams takes on a mythic level of meaning, investing the character with a very specific identity. The theme from Indiana Jones is just as much a part of the character’s iconic status as his fedora, whip, or Harrison Ford himself. Watch the clip at right on a chase scene from Raiders, and pay careful attention to the use of music composed specifically for the film.
|
|
While popular music can carry very specific associations and generate great emotional impact, musical score that is composed particularly for a film is able to express its characters’ feelings (and by extension, transfer those feelings to the audience) at the second-by-second level. Composers often work on musical themes while the film is in production, but really refine them once they see the finished film, allowing them to respond to the images they see, filling each individual moment with a different emotional register.
Watch the commentary at right on a sequence from Dressed to Kill (1980), director Brian De Palma’s Hitchcockian thriller about a sexually unfulfilled housewife (Angie Dickinson). While in a museum, she engages in an entirely wordless flirtation with another museumgoer; De Palma’s camera works alongside the musical score by Pino Donaggio to express the character’s excitement, fear, arousal, and despair. Pay particular attention to the way the musical score expands the emotional possibilities of the scene.
|
|
Writer Germaine Dulac eloquently explores the possibilities offered by the union of music and images: “Should not cinema, which is an art of vision, as music is an art of hearing, on the contrary leads us toward the visual idea composed of movement and life, toward the conception of an art of the eye, made of a perceptual inspiration evolving in its continuity and reaching, just as music does, our thought and feeling?”
At its best, music in cinema elevates the scene it accompanies, expressing the themes and harnessing that which cannot be spoken in language. Both cinema and music operate at emotional level beyond the written and spoken word—the pairing of images and music offers the possibility of transcendence. Some dimensions of human experience cannot be expressed in words; cinema, when it pairs images and music, can pick up the slack.
CLIP quiz - music
Review the following clips and answer the questions on Blackboard.
DUST BE MY DESTINY (1939, Seiler)
How does the musical score in this sequence from Dust Be My Destiny match the emotions that the characters are feeling? Identify the emotions and how the music underlines them. |
|
AMERICAN GIGOLO (1980, Schrader)
What is the mood generated by the use of “Call Me” by Blondie in this opening scene of American Gigolo? What impression do you get about the world and this character from the music and its lyrics? |
|
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (2023, Stahelski)
How does the music in this clip from John Wick: Chapter 4 relate to the action of the characters on screen? What is the impact on other elements of film form like images and editing? |
|
FACE/OFF (1997, Woo)
Explain and justify the use of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in this extremely violent sequence from Face/Off. Why does director John Woo use this particular song? What is the intended effect, and how does its presence achieve that? |
|
Music in flashdance
In a few cases, a film’s use of music becomes so legendary that its soundtrack actually transcends the film itself, cementing a musical sound into the culture that stretches far beyond the movie. This doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does, audiences often know the music from a movie more fully than they know the movie. As a result, they tend to develop an impression of the film from its soundtrack, rather than the other way around.
Certainly a film that would fall into this category, Flashdance (1983, Lyne) is about 19-year old Alex (Jennifer Beals) who lives a double life. During the day, she’s a welder at a Pittsburgh steel mill, but at night, she’s an exotic dancer creating elaborate, performance-art style striptease routines in a local bar. She doesn’t want to be a welder forever, and has her sights set on dancing professionally, if she can work up the courage and the financial means to get into the school of her dreams.
The soundtrack spawned a number of hits, including “Maniac,” performed by Michael Sembello. The songs that appear in Flashdance are a time capsule of the 1980s sound, with drum machines and a plastic-sounding mode of production that is inseparable from the era in which they were made.
When director Adrian Lyne takes songs like “Maniac” and pairs them with images of Alex practicing her dance routines in her apartment, he creates an association between the pop song and a certain set of recognizable visuals. The two become inextricably linked, as indicated by the official music video for the song, which relies partially on footage from the film.
One of the critiques of Flashdance upon its release was the way in which the editing seemed to be shaped by the inclusion of the music itself; a common lament of critics at the time was that movies were becoming something unimaginable—they were taking on the characteristics of the most horrifying thing in the world: the music video.
Here’s the thing, though. They weren’t really wrong. A number of sequences in Flashdance are basically music videos, where the narrative itself gets put on hold to showcase the song being played, with the dancer (often Alex, but sometimes others, as well) taking center stage. The editing was faster to keep up with the pace of the songs, the shots were highly expressionistic and detached from traditional reality, coupled with bright colors and wild use of light and shadow. Critics who fretted about the influence of music videos on movies were seeing Flashdance correctly—you can just disagree over whether that was a bad thing or not.
To borrow a lyric from one of the other big hits on Flashdance’s soundtrack, “What a feeling.” That’s the whole idea here. More than any other single art form, music generates emotion in the listener. When you take that set of emotions and attach them to images, the emotional possibilities expand exponentially.
The filmmakers behind Flashdance know that—the use of music in the film cannot help but translate to the audience. This literally happens in the film, as Alex does her dance audition for ballet school, and actually gets the old, crusty board of directors to start tapping their toes when she does something that is more pole-dancer than Nutcracker. Music is irresistible.
Music is undeniably one of the most powerful, transcendent forms of art. When it combines with cinema, it can achieve something even greater.