Sound and Music in Film Art: An Introduction

Although they tend to downplay their contribution to film sound research and pedagogy, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's chapter on sound in their best-selling Film Art: An Introduction is excellent. As with all the chapters in the book, Chapter 9 is clearly organized, with a wealth of brief comments on individual films, plus a few longer analyses. Their approach to the topic is very compatible with HtM, and the chapter or its analytic essays could easily serve as additional reading in a course for which HtM is the principal textbook.

In the Supporting Materials section, I have added a Word file that gives a detailed table of contents for Chapter 9 in the 7th edition (the current edition is the 8th (2006)), along with a list of all the films mentioned in the chapter, keyed to topics.

Link to Film Art on Bordwell's website: David Bordwell. And to the publisher: Film Art, 8th edition (this link goes to a table of contents). Filmsound.org quotes a few definitions of terms from the FIlm Art sound chapter: definitions. The sound chapter from the first edition of Film Art (1979) was reprinted (without images) under the section "Practice and Methodology" in the anthology Film Sound: Theory and Practice, ed. Elisabeth Weis and John Belton (1985). This venerable anthology is still in print (Columbia University Press).

Quiz 7 alternatives

I have uploaded two alternates to Quiz 7 from the Quiz bank used during the summer 2009 class. These can be found on the Supporting Materials page, under the heading "Materials related directly to the book." Quiz 7 asks students to analyze a film scene and produce commentary about "interesting" points. After a semester in which they are regularly asked during class sessions to analyze film clips for their sound, such open-ended instructions are enough.

The two alternatives are more specific, asking students to describe details of the sound track and then answer a question about diegetic/nondiegetic or empathetic/neutral/anempathetic functions. For the first, a scene from Possession is the focus; for the second, one near the end of Catch Me If You Can.

In the past, I have also combined these two as a unit-end or semester-end exam.

To Have and Have Not--additional comments

I have posted a music cue list for To Have and Have Not on the supporting materials page of the HtM website: Supporting Materials.

Two additional pedagogical comments about music:

1. Franz Waxman's music for the establishing sequence is built in a sharply defined two-part design, with a dramatic opening for main titles followed by a more melodically profiled and rhythmically robust "native music." The elements are similar to the main-title music for Casablanca, which in turn is a reworking by Max Steiner of his music that opens The Lost Patrol (1934). In its somewhat crude directness, the "native music" (that's what it's called in the studio cue sheet) is uncharacteristic of Waxman, and one has to wonder whether he was asked to write "something like Casablanca."

In Casablanca, a brief dramatic opening is followed immediately by "native" or "Arab" music, then by La Marseillaise. In The Lost Patrol, the opening is identical, but the end is a British military march. The three main title cues make for interesting comparison, and they provide an interesting instance of reuse as well as a case of style-topic duplication.

2. The second comment is about music as sound advance. The Hotel Martinique is the central and primary location of action in the film. Although even the basement is used at one point (to hide the injured resistance leader), the primary locations are the main floor restaurant-bar, a second-floor corridor and rooms, and the street outside the Hotel. Several times music from Cricket's band is heard before the scene changes to the restaurant-bar area, and the effect is very similar to sound advances that bridge more radical breaks in both time and place. The first example occurs after 00:11:00, with the entrance of "Martinique." (See earlier blog entries for more information about Hoagie Carmichael's music.)

Music in Two Recent Spike Lee Films

Both Inside Man (2006) and Miracle at St. Anna (2008) are mainstream films that can be watched by anyone, if one allows for idiosyncracies of Spike Lee's directorial voice in the same way one would for, say, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, or Sergio Leone. The underscore for both was composed by Terence Blanchard, who was trained as a jazz musician, played for earlier Spike Lee films, but has gradually morphed into a composer of orchestral underscoring.

The music for both of these films is surprisingly unadventurous, in both cases doing its job effectively and efficiently according to prevailing fashion in Hollywood but not attempting anything beyond that. (One can say the same of the treatment of sound in general.) The most striking moments are in the main titles and end credits of Inside Man.

In the former, a disconcerting moment occurs somewhat like the beginning of North by Northwest: the musical style (its style topic -- see HtM, ch. 8) seems out of sync with our expectations. It's obvious this will be a thriller or crime pic, but we hear a Bollywood-style pop tune. Nor is the connection made clear anywhere later on (there is a Sikh man, a minor character who is treated poorly by the police, but that's as close as we ever get to a motivation for the music). In the end credits, the same music has short segments of rap embedded in it, but the hip-hop elements barely ripple the surface of the tune's Bollywood optimism.

All this being said, an instructor might ask students to compare the musical style in Inside Man with a crime thriller from the 1990s, perhaps The Fugitive (1993) or Se7en (1995), though many others would be possible of course. Miracle at St. Anna can be compared with WWII films from that era (Back to Bataan (1945), for example) or from the decades that followed (perhaps The Longest Day (1962), a scene from which is shown near the beginning of Miracle at St. Anna).

Sound Match and Onscreen/Offscreen Symmetry in Amadeus

The soundscape of Amadeus (1984) is jarring in many respects -- and not just because of the bizarre hyena-like laugh that Tom Hulce's Mozart produces repeatedly throughout. The musical performances are almost always too loud for the physical settings and are too obviously in contemporary concert and stage performance styles. (The occasional period instrument or two cannot disguise the 1980s' modes of performance--and sound recording--in both concert and operatic scenes.)

Nevertheless, the film abounds in interesting details of the intermingling of sound, image, and music. I wrote about one of those yesterday ("nondiegetic-offscreen"). Here are two additional examples of the treatment of sound early in the film.

The long scene in which Mozart is introduced to the Emperor (and embarrasses Salieri for the first time) runs from about 00:26:00 to 00:36:34. At the end of this, making the cut at the end of the scene, director Milos Forman manages a simple but very effective match that juxtaposes Mozart in medium closeup, looking left and uttering his hyena-laugh, with Salieri, also in medium closeup, looking right, silent, and bitterly angry. A bit less than three minutes later, a female student is vocalizing as Salieri plays, then cut to the stage with the student singing the same figure as part of an aria in Mozart's opera Abduction from the Seraglio (with Mozart conducting). The sound match is as direct as could be and would make an excellent first example for the sound match as applied to music.

Almost immediately thereafter, a neatly symmetrical pairing illustrates onscreen/offscreen sound. The elderly Salieri talks (still to the priest) about how Mozart's triumph (and apparent stealing away of the soprano's affections) upsets him. At about 00:39:35, Salieri is speaking but the stage music continues offscreen (at a reduced volume). Then (or at about 00:39:40) the reverse happens: we see the stage (and hear music) but Salieri is heard speaking at normal volume in voiceover narration. The aria ends at 00:40:40.

Amadeus and Nondiegetic-Onscreen Sound

Of the four possible combinations of the terms "diegetic," "nondiegetic," "onscreen," and "offscreen," the most difficult one to grasp (and certainly the rarest) is "nondiegetic-onscreen." We discuss the other categories at length in HtM, Ch. 3, but give only a brief mention to "nondiegetic-onscreen." The strictest case (for which I know no example) would be a superimposed image positioned in, say, one quarter of the frame, from which speech or music is heard that is not part of the physical world of the film (a choir of angels, perhaps). Alternatively, a person onscreen might be recalling a speech or musical performance, and the sound track carries that speech or music rather than the usual diegetic-onscreen sound. In such a case, the "nondiegetic-onscreen" is really a variety of point-of-view sound (also discussed in HtM, Ch. 3).

If so, then sound in connection with flashbacks induced by a character's recalling a past event would also be considered "nondiegetic-onscreen." Obviously, this is easier to grasp--and more useful--in shorter segments (not, for example, in Million Dollar Baby, where the entire film is a flashback).

In the earlier sequences of Amadeus (1984), short flashbacks are used several times. In almost all cases, the effect of memory, the nondiegetic as the past, is enhanced by sound advances and sound lags. At 00:13:00, for example, the elderly Salieri is talking to the priest (offscreen). At 00:13:14, we hear the sound of a small fortepiano-spinet, then shortly after we see the Austrian Emperor playing with a more youthful Salieri at his side, coaching him. At the end of this short flashback, cut back to the elderly Salieri talking but the music persists for another 2-3 seconds, a sound lag.

The same device is used for another flashback shortly after (beginning at 00:14:00), and also elsewhere in the film.

To Have and Have Not

We discuss the song performance “Am I Blue?” in HtM, Chs. 1 & 7. To Have and Have Not also features three songs composed by Hoagy Carmichael himself: “Martinique,” “Baltimore Oriole,” and “How Little We Know.” The second and third of these appear several times, and those instances are worth studying and comparing. Of course, reasons for the different placements (in relation to screen action) are of interest, but the cues also provide multiple examples of simple, pedagogically useful diegetic/nondiegetic treatments.

“Martinique” is the simplest: it’s the first music we hear in the Hotel Martinique (@ 00:11:37; out @ 00:12:44). Students might speculate on why it is heard entirely offscreen. (One reason is that Carmichael would have to be paid more, not only for his song but for his playing it onscreen.) Part of this music is heard again in the middle of a long sequence of cues starting @ 01:31:50. About 40 seconds of “Martinique” can be heard with the time lapse scene change @ 01:36:10.

A complex arrangement of “Am I Blue?” actually starts this sequence – although the level is quite low, you can hear the tune clearly when the door to Bogart’s hotel room opens. This cue is also striking for the way action contrasts with the music; that is, the latter is neutral or even anempathetic.

“Baltimore Oriole” is associated with Bacall’s character from the outset; it segues from “Martinique” after brief clapping and goes out @ 00:14:02. Again entirely offscreen, this even continues after Bacall and Bogart go upstairs to the hotel’s second floor rooms, only to be cut off when the door is closed. In again at 00:22:40, it goes out abruptly when the policemen’s offscreen shots are heard. A nearly three minute cue @ 00:37:15 is a more complex orchestration of the melody; this is generally quiet like the diegetic cues heard going on downstairs; however, not only is the orchestra too large for Cricket’s (Carmichael’s) band, but the music is treated dramatically as underscoring. The last appearance of “Baltimore Oriole” is in the long sequence referred to above – one can hear faint clapping @ 01:34:00, then Bogart fires a shot, then music picks up again with this tune. (All this is improbable of course, but convenient for sound track design.)

“How Little We Know” is treated in a way that is faintly reminiscent of Casablanca (hardly the only thing to do that in To Have and Have Not). Cricket is shown composing the song @00:45:58 (with a dissolve back to the hotel), thus bringing narrative attention to it, as also happens with “As Time Goes By” in Casablanca during the scene between Sam and Ilsa. Even after the scene changes, Bogart is heard briefly humming the tune while on his fishing boat. At 01:24;48, we see Bacall at the bar humming the tune as she prepares for a performance, which takes place between 01:29:00 and 01:30:35 (compare this performance with “Am I Blue?”). And, finally, “How Little We Know” closes the long cue sequence that began @ 01:31:50 -- it comes in @ 01:38:24 and plays continuously from there to the end, the tune passing into a nondiegetic orchestra for a few seconds with the end credit title.