Music in Early Films of Katharine Hepburn

I have added a set of viewing notes that can act as informal cue lists for the early films of Katharine Hepburn, from A Bill of Divorcement (1932) through Break of Hearts (1935). The page is linked under "cue lists" on the "Supporting Materials" page. Here is the link: early Hepburn.

All of these films were released by RKO and as such make an interesting study not only in Hepburn's early development but also in studio style. That's true of music as well, as most of the underscoring was done by Max Steiner (the films after 1933 by Steiner's protegé Roy Webb).

Underscoring by Miklos Rozsa

The website Chiaroscuro is a highly idiosyncratic collection of commentaries, critical quotes, stills, and posters for about 100 films. The site's owner is obviously a cinephile, and so one finds titles of films from American, European, and Asian traditions, including both famous (2001: A Space Odyssey) and not so well-known or early films of a variety of directors. (Caution, though: The site owner's own commentaries are usually in German.)

On the page for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), we find this critical comment embedded in a longer quotation from Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's book Film Noir. An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (1992):

Miklós Rózsa wrote the music for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, and it illustrates the conventional Hollywood leitmotif technique of film scoring. This technique associates a musical theme with each character, setting, or situation, thus heightening the dramatic flux and the audience’s unconscious understanding and expectation of the film’s story. It should be pointed out that the popular song "Strange Love" represents the sweetness of Toni and the happy ending, not the hardness of Martha. Rózsa over scores to the point that nonmusical moments in his films amount to negative emphasis. (267-268)

Much the same could be said of Rozsa's better known underscores for Double Indemnity and Spellbound. As an alternate to the two-film compare/contrast paper discussed in the first writing Interlude (HtM, 125) or in connection with the critical essays discussed in the second writing Interlude (HtM, 234), it might be a productive exercise for a student to compare Silver and Ward's evaluation with the glowing assessments of Christopher Palmer (who was Rozsa's assistant during the composer's last years), Royal Brown, Lawrence MacDonald, or Fred Karlin.

Palmer's book is The Composer in Hollywood (1990); the chapter on Rozsa is on 186-233 and starts with this sentence: "Miklos Rozsa is the complete professional, and without doubt one of the great musicians of our time." The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is mentioned on 189 and 201. Brown has an extended essay on Double Indemnity in Overtones and Undertones (1994), 120-133; see also his introductory comments at the bottom of 119. MacDonald has an essay on Spellbound in The Invisible Art of Film Music, 85-88; on the other hand, see his somewhat equivocal evaluation of Rozsa's music for films in the 1970s (270-272). Karlin also has a detailed analysis of Spellbound in Listening to Movies, ch. 6.

Essays from early editions of Film Art: An Introduction

David Bordwell has posted PDF versions of a number of interpretive essays (case studies of individual films). These were included in early editions of Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, but were not carried over into more recent editions. Most are concerned with narrative construction; some are presented specifically as samples of film criticism.

Here is the link to his site: David Bordwell. This is not the home page; it's the page for Film Art. Find the essay download buttons about half way down the page.

And here is a list of the essays, which are written with clarity and concision and thus might serve not only as starting points for student projects but as models for their writing. I have noted points relevant to sound.

The Man Who Knew Too Much
dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1934. From Film Art, 2nd edition (1988): 292-295.
--Described as "a model of narrative construction," this film -- like its 1956 remake -- has a famous scene in which an assassination is attempted during a concert.

Stagecoach
dir. John Ford, 1939. From Film Art, 4th edition (1992): 366-370.

Hannah and Her Sisters
dir. Woody Allen, 1985. From Film Art, 4th edition (1992): 376-381.
--"Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters examines the psychological traits and interactions among a group of characters." One paragraph in the essay discusses the varied treatment of intertitles, which serve to introduce (and so articulate) scene or section changes. Sometimes the intertitles are silent, sometimes spoken by characters.

Desperately Seeking Susan
dir. Susan Seidelman, 1985. From Film Art, 4th edition (1992): 381-387.

Day of Wrath
dir. Carl Dreyer, 1943. From Film Art, 4th edition (1992): 387-391.
--In a web of motifs of all kinds, the musical motif or theme plays a role. Here it is the familiar chant melody Dies irae.

Last Year at Marienbad
dir. Alain Resnais, 1961. From Film Art, 4th edition (1992): 391-396.
--"Abrupt changes on the sound track accentuate the film's discontinuities."

Innocence Unprotected
dir. Dušan Makavejev, 1968. From Film Art, 4th edition (1992): 401-406.
--"It is useful to think of its form as a collage, an assemblage of materials taken from widely different sources." Among those are songs and song performances.

Clock Cleaners
dir. Walt Disney, 1937. From Film Art, 4th edition (1992): 418-420.

Tout va bien
dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1972. From Film Art, 4th edition (1992): 436-442.
--Three principles of separation--interruption, contradiction, and refraction--operate throughout this film, affecting not only narrative and images but, to an equal degree, sound.

High School
dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1968. From Film Art, 5th edition (1996): 409-415.
--This documentary is in cinema verite style; it "uses no voice-over narration and almost no nondiegetic music."

Glossary terms in Chion, Film, A Sound Art

I have compiled a list of all the glossary terms in Michel Chion, Film, A Sound Art, tr. Claudia Gorbman (Columbia University Press, 2009). Here is the link: Glossary terms.

I had previously posted a detailed table of contents (with chapter subheads and sub-subheads) here: Detailed TOC. The book incorporates, and greatly expands on, material previously published in Audio-Vision and The Voice in the Cinema.

One example of the acuteness of Chion's audio-visual observation and critique: "A visible no that is hastily made over with an audible yes: this can also be taken as a metaphor for sound film." (178) This is in connection with a post-production dialogue change in Blade Runner. From this Chion derives the following: ". . . we can't be sure that what we hear is not something other than what we see being articulated. Is there not a suspicion of dubbing behind every sound and speaking image in the cinema?" He rejects the generally accepted notion of redundancy (one of the glossary terms, btw).

Musical Themes from Glory

In Ch. 3 of HtM, we discuss a scene from Glory (1989) in detail. In the graphic below, I have transcribed three important melodies, two of which appear in that scene or immediately thereafter. The Bugle Call (a) was heard early in the film and is played again at the end. Melodies (b) and (c) are the principal themes in James Horner's orchestral underscore, which is developed almost entirely out of them (they even form the basis of the end credits music). Theme (c) often follows immediately after (b), as if it's an ending phrase (or coda), but it is used independently as well.

Theme (a) appears in its entirety during the second segment of the party scene, a conversation between Shaw and Governor Andrew, at the mention of Antietam (DVD timing 00:11:40). Theme (b) appears in the third segment, under conversation (00:13:00) as Shaw and his friend Forbes talk about forming the regiment, then more plainly in the foreground @ 00:13:44. Details for the first part of the scene are given in HtM. Here is a link to a page that gives details of the second and third parts: Boston Party Scene, 2-3.

Picture of the Rialto

I stumbled upon this picture of the Rialto, with the orchestra visible.



Source: Green Book Magazine (July 1916), p. 176

For those without access to Google Books, a jpeg is available here.

Comments on Music in Darby and Dubois, American Film Composers

In the first writing Interlude, under the section "Examples from the Published Literature," we quote William Darby and Jack Dubois's negative assessment of the treatment of music in Scarface (1932).

Here's another:

The Virginian, released by Para­mount in 1929, typically features orchestral fanfares during the opening and closing credits and then uses strictly sourced music throughout its other portions. While characters whistle and even sing, and a traditional tune ("Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie") serves as a rudimentary motive for the death of Steve (Richard Arlen), the erstwhile friend whom the protagonist (Gary Cooper) must hang, there are large gaps -- trail drives, romantic in­terludes, a final gunfight -- that seem strange because they lack the dramatic musical support to which modern audiences have become accustomed. (p. 9)

From this, you can see the basis for their lack of sympathy with the sound tracks in many early films: their aesthetic priorities are clearly those of the mature Hollywood sound film, with a bias toward dramatic underscoring.

Darby and Dubois also write a large number of short descriptive essays on individual films. Some of these run to several pages and could serve as the stepping-off point for an analysis exercise, project, or comparison/criticism paper. (Their book is American Film Music: Major Composers, Techniques, and Trends, 1915-1990.)