The study of Music
and Film is a relatively new area of
Film Studies, partly because the film
genre has typically been addressed primarily
from a visual point of view. This is
now changing and, to complement the
interest in the study of music and film,
Ashgate have issued this book on the
subject: a symposium with some 12 chapters
by a variety of contributors covering
topics ranging from ‘Ears Wide Open:
Kubrick’s Music’ to ‘Narrating Sound:
The Pop Video in the Age of the Sampler’.
Along the way, the various authors consider
a wide variety of topics such as the
sound-track of the film ‘Amadeus’ and
whether of not it does violence to Mozart’s
music; the use of the opera ‘Cavalleria
Rusticana’ in ‘The Godfather part III’
and the use of Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ in popular
films.
This is a book which
is academic in its origins. All of the
authors have academic backgrounds and
the majority are on the staff of an
academic institution. The editors are
a Professor at the Centre for Research
into Film and Media at the University
of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and an Assistant
Professor at the Department of Art,
Music and Theater, Georgetown.
This academic background
means that, whoever the book’s intended
audience is, it is constructed very
much like an academic symposium. Most
chapters start with a review of the
literature with references, which might
not always be germane to the popular
reader. This is not strictly a music
book so the language used can often
include the technical language of film
studies. More problematically, the writing
can verge on the abstruse. To read the
book satisfactorily, you must negotiate
some of the following:-
‘Gender destabilization
is also effected through performative
strategies which deliberately blur binary
divisions between masculinity and femininity
as exemplified by the multiple simulations
of ‘Tacones ljanos’….’ (p.92)
‘More intriguingly,
music in ‘Amadeus’ functions as a structural
guidance for visual rhythm and a unifying
device for narratively related yet spatio-temporally
disjunctive scenes…’ (p.58)
If such language does
not deter you, then there is much of
interest in the book.
Claudia Gorbman examines
Stanley Kubrick’s use of pre-existing
music in his films after 2001,
most particularly in his last film Eyes
wide Shut. Kubrick’s technique is
surprisingly subtle, even going as far
as editing a three minute film sequence
so that it fits exactly to a Ligeti
piano piece.
But of course, one
of the interesting aspects of music
in films is that many items come with
a pre-existing background. Film-makers
since the 1920s have used the audience’s
knowledge of a song’s title to provide
commentary on the film’s action and
Kubrick continues this in ‘Eyes wide
shut’.
But of course, if you
take a piece of classical music out
of context then all sorts of interesting
issues arise. Mike Cormack analyses
the pleasures of the ambiguity that
this can give rise to. Audiences can
react to the music’s familiarity, but
change of context can also have a distancing
effect. Thus adding complexity and ambiguity
to the film.
Of course, it might
be that the film director is using pre-existing
music simply because it is far cheaper!
Joengwon Joe attempts
to argue that the sound-track of ‘Amadeus’
is a carefully crafted work and that
it does not do violence to Mozart’s
music in the way that musicologists
have argued. Joe successfully argues
that we need to take a filmic view of
the score and the inter-cutting of the
music, rather than considering the musical
sound-track on its own.
Ann Davies looks at
the use of film versions of the opera
‘Carmen’ as a way of presenting her
theory of operatic high culture being
used to somehow validate popular culture.
Her chapter raises some interesting
points about the whys and wherefores
of the deployment of opera in popular
films. As early as 1915, Geraldine Farrar’s
playing of Carmen in a silent film helped
bring the illusion that filmgoers were
participating in a highbrow cultural
form. There are perhaps links to be
made here with Pasolini’s use of Maria
Callas in a spoken role in his film
‘Medea’.
She makes some very
valid points about the way film directors
mediate the opera. We never see the
opera strictly but their view of it.
The result has to be judged as film,
not as music theatre - something which
did not happen when the Bizet estate
complained over the musical text used
in ‘Carmen Jones’. But Davies is rather
prone to over-analysis.
This tendency carries
over into some of the other chapters
as well. Lars Franke makes much of the
use of ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’ in ‘The
Godfather Part III’. He seems to omit
the idea that Coppola might have used
the opera simply because opera was part
of popular culture in Italy of the period.
Kristi A. Brown examines the use of
Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain
King’. Brown goes off in search of ‘The
Troll Among Us’ in a rather interesting
way, but I think loses sight of the
fact that film-makers have used that
piece of music partly because it’s a
damn good tune.
Similarly Vanessa Knights
seeks to examine Almodovar’s use of
the popular bolero song genre in his
early films, raising issues regarding
Queer theory, Camp etc. As is often
the case when Queer Culture or Camp
are examined academically, I feel that
a sledgehammer is being used to crack
a nut. But, as a gay man, perhaps that’s
because I feel a particular ownership
of these issues.
The book concludes
with a quartet of surveys. ‘The Popular
Song as Leitmotif in 1990s Film’, the
use of Accordion in French Cinema, ‘Vinyl
Communion The Record as Ritual Object
in Girls; Rites-of-Passage Films’ and
‘Narrating Sound: The Pop Video in the
Age of the Sampler’. How much you enjoy
these chapters will depend on how interested
you are in their particular object of
survey. But that’s all part of the fun
of this sort of book.
There is much of interest
here to the popular reader, but the
book only gives up its treasures slowly.
Much careful reading and consideration
will be needed on the part of the reader.
Robert Hugill
