THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC

Volume 1, Number 2/3, Pages 283-287 ISSN 1087-7142 Copyright 2003 The International Film Music Society, Inc.

Dominique Nasta. Meaning in Film: Relevant Structures in Soundtrack and Narrative.

Regards sur limage, Srie IV, Esthtique et thories de limage. Berne; Berlin: Peter Lang, 1991. [179 p. ISBN 3261044829. $31.80]
MELISSA URSULA DAWN GOLDSMITH

n this thought-provoking, demanding, and rewarding monograph, Dominique Nasta pursues the meaning and relevance of film sound tracks (including music, noise, and speech) and narrative (film stories and inserted micro-stories) through applications of linguistic, literary, and philosophical theories. Readers knowledgeable in comparative literature will appreciate Nastas detailed approaches, sifting through many complex works and finding precisely the theoretical tools she wishes to explain and use. Readers knowledgeable in film studies and film music may find the monograph dense but will enjoy Nastas perceptive observations on audiovisual discourses in film, the film examples analyzed, and the monographs pedagogic potential. Meaning in Film: Relevant Structures in Soundtrack and Narrative, a translated revision of chapters from Nastas doctoral dissertation in cinema studies at the Universit Libre de Bruxelles (the name of the translator is unascertainable), is divided into an intro- duction and three chapters. The introductory paragraph of her second

chapter offers an unassailable and accessible basis for this monograph and reveals Nastas astute understanding of sound versus silent film aesthetics:
If there is currently a debate on the uses of sound in film, this is because the general tendency has been to consider sound film a sequel to silent film. The causes of sound introduction have been canvassed interminably, while neglecting the evolution of image before and after the emergence of sound. However, a few film theor[et]icians sensed the existence of two highly different aesthetics in the evolution of film: silent film aesthetics and sound film aesthetics (43).

In the Introduction, Nasta takes as a starting point Nol Carrolls assertion that we are in need of theories about film instead of film theory. She cites Carroll, from his monograph Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), if more comprehensive and complex large-scale theories can be derived, they should be derived

from the comparison and scrutiny of what we regard to be successful piecemeal theories (9). The theories about film Nasta advances enable the study of relevance in film ranging from brief occurrences to the film as a whole. For Nasta, the three pillars of meaning are: relevance (code, intention, interpretation, and semantics), polyphony (the verbal double voice-visual discourse), and the concept of mental spaces (discourses and idea, belief, image, and reality spaces). Nasta explores these pillars in Chapter 1, Perspectives on Meaning in Film. In the process, she focuses on two approaches to filmic meaning: structuralist-semiotics and pragmatic-enunciation. Structuralism and semiotics have many common goals, but one major difference Nasta points out is that structuralists view the director or author as a mediator of many voices and cultural conventions rather than as a creator or originator. Semioticians view the director or author as a creator, in contrast to structuralists, and they also accept the notion that the director or author may be simultaneously creator and mediator. According

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to Nasta, in semiotics, Peirce divides signs into icons, indexes, and symbols, forming a triad that has one dominant over the others in film. This triad operates under two modes that coexist in relation to one another: the signifier and the signified. Nasta gives an example of a traffic sign (an icon) operating as an index (calling for an action) and a symbol (a sign that is red and means both danger and stop). If there is a change in context, the code modifications offer a transgressive result. An example of a transgressive result is when a car horn sounds (an icon), operating as an index (calling for an action) and a symbol (the car, driver, or nearby cars or pedestrians are in danger), is placed in a different context, operating as an index (the lovers in the car lean against the horn, but the horn is still calling for an action) and a symbol (the lovers are having sex and ignoring their surroundings and present situation in traffic). Nasta does not define codes explicitly and she does not break down codes further, unlike Metz and others who classified codes. Metz distinguishes between several kinds of codes in Language et Cinma (Paris: Albatros, 1971) and The Imaginary Signifier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). His cinematographic codes are divided into general cinematographic codes (cinematic aspects common to all films, such as the screen) and particular cinematographic codes (aspects belonging to certain classes of film). His classes of film are by author, country, genre, and school. Metz calls these classes sub-codes. Other kinds of codes include non-cinematographic codes and extra-cinematographic codes. Nasta explains, in the first category he introduces political, religious or moral ideas, while the

second would contain an occurrence such as accompaniment music. (12). In her discussion of the second approach to meaning, pragmatics and enunciation, it appears that Nasta either assumes that her readers already have some knowledge of pragmatics and enunciation or that she avoids offering definitions for two terms that are extremely difficult to define. A general understanding is that pragmatics can study a full gamut of idiosyncratic responses that the reader, viewer, or listener experiences when a message is received. Pragmatics can also study the interpretation of various semiotic inferential paths and the full gamut of presuppositions required by that message. Borrowing from cognitive psychological research on perception, pragmatics explores filmic inferences. Enunciation theories, which study the signifier and what is signified, is especially useful for pragmatics who want to study filmic narrative and point of view (15-18). Nasta explains Parrets synthetic view of looking at pragmatic objects through the contextualization of the object (image, shot, or sequence) and context (the whole film). In film analysis, sometimes the structuralist-semiotics approach is more suitable than the pragmaticsenunciation approach or vice versa. The structuralist-semiotics approach is especially useful in the analysis of films that seem to purposely offer multiple inferential paths that weave in and out of the boundaries of expectation (for instance, Hiroshima mon Amour, The Gold Rush, The Crying Game, Wallace and Gromit films, or The Spy Who Loved Me). The pragmaticsenunciation approach is especially useful in the analysis of films that require more attention to the emer-

gence of meaning and reconstructing the interpretation of discourse in a film (for instance, Apocalypse Now, Masculine-Feminine, Potemkin, Rashomon, Amadeus, or The Purple Rose of Cairo). Nasta explains that both approaches also have problems. According to her, the structuralist-semiotics approach though useful for discussing relevance in filmis not usually the best approach for a comprehensive study of filmic meaning and it cannot explain the passage from direct to indirect or derived meaning of an image by means of inferences and recognition of intentions (18-19). Moreover, the approach can make an incidental film event seem more important than it really is. The pragmaticenunciation approach cannot specifically relate meaning to relevance and thus focuses on the viewers ability to interpret film. Nasta then presents Grices linguistic theory of natural meaning and non-natural meaning, a theory that is employed and combined with other theories throughout and especially in her second chapter on music and sound:
The causal theory of meaning ignores the fact that the meaning of any action needs to be explained in the sense of what the user means by this action on a particular occasion. While natural meaning (meaning N) does not need a pre-established convention (e.g., clouds mean rain), the non-natural meaning (meaning NN) bound to an utterance presupposes an intention to produce belief and a recognition of this intention from the part of the audience. For instance, I might present you with the head of John the Baptist, intending to show you that he is dead, or I might

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throw a bucket of water over you, intending to suggest that you leave (19).

In connection to the Gricean meaningN and meaning NN, there is Nastas central idea that films contain truth and truth variants. She points out that Wittgenstein questions the correspondence relationship between reality and ones view of it (a view with both visual and linguistic limitations) and the coherence theory of truth. For Wittgenstein, the coherence theory of truth is achieved only when a world divulges the possibility of truth variants that are acceptable as long as they are coherent. Film discloses the worlds truth variants, but the viewer can grasp true meaning only if s/he identifies the manifest intention behind the onscreen images (21). Nasta returns to Wittgensteins Iworld while analyzing point of view in Kurosawas film Rashomon and many other times later on. Chapter 2, Music and Sound: The Code and Its Transgression, will be the most interesting chapter to those studying film music. In it, Nasta explores musical and non-musical sound structures. These structures include the relationship between sounds and images, time theories, aural and linguistic limitations, discourse spaces, code and non-code music, subception, synchronization, and film music and song classification. Music is capable of natural meaning and non-natural meaning. Foregrounded music in film is music that is intended to be heard by the audience for it exists on the expressive surface of the film and has an immediate connection to the mise-en-scne. It is capable of non-natural meaning if it can infer something from the image without merely accompanying it (47).

Nasta suggests that film music obliges the viewer to follow double paths that are both visual and aural. Using Jean-Rmy Juliens concepts and classifications of synchronous film music, Nasta identifies the main functions of music as illustrative (not imitative) and implicative (code music that is used as an interlude to dramatic tension, to emphasize human emotionby using music such as schmaltzor as credit music). The illustrative function is broken down further into three subfunctions: decorative (code music used for filling the visual sphere with epoch elements that fit the screenplay (56), employing musical styles and performance forces to evoke a historical period), connective (code music that creates narrative continuity), and emblematic (non-code music that symbolizes a different idea from the one presented visually). Film music with a decorative subfunction can be found in Ben Hur or Zeffirellis Romeo and Juliet; film music with a connective subfunction can be found in The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner; and film music with an emblematic subfunction can be found in The Trial (I will return to non-code music later). Analyzing several film examples, Nasta explains how sound tracks lie or act similarly to parables and interprets the music as occupying idea or belief spaces that may or may not share the same reality spaces as their visual counterparts. Nasta also deals with filmic counterpoint or the relationships between music or nonmusical sounds and images. Her examination of songs in films reveals why analyzing them is a border problem. These songs can be employed to tell or continue to tell a story; they can make it difficult to tell if the film is based

on songs or if the songs are occurrences in the film. If the song in the film also exists separately as a sound recording, the reception of that song will be affected. I imagine songs in The Bodyguard or Moulin Rouge. Whitney Houstons recording of Dolly Partons I Will Always Love You in The Bodyguard and various performances of fragments of Elton Johns Your Song as well as Nicole Kidmans performance of Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend/Material Girl (the latter mentioned a nod to Marilyn Monroe and Madonna) in Moulin Rouge are good examples of how songs and recordings could help market a film, ensuring accessibility to wider audiences through familiarity, and how film could recycle successful songs and add to its own commercial and critical success. They are also good examples of how a film can create an additional context for the song, affecting the reception of both music and text (the listener and viewer must question how the songs relate to the film and how the film relates to the songs), and vice versa. Noise and speaking are discussed at the end of this chapter. Chapter 3, The Filmic Narrative: Interpreting the Whole, offers the most complex syntheses of theories explained in the previous chapters. Nasta aims at a global model of interpretation for analyzing the whole film. In this chapter, the author explores the film story versus the story in literature, micro-stories or little stories within the main story, filmic actual worlds versus possible or relative worlds, and narrative changes. She analyzes narrative in several films including Antonionis The Eclipse, Greenaways The Draughtsmans Contract, and Allens Purple Rose of Cairo.

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Throughout the chapter Nasta focuses on both verbal and sound elements of filmic narrative. Although this monograph is promising for the new approaches to sound tracks it will inspire, there are several weaknesses. Typographical errors, which do not obstruct comprehension, are so numerous that they warrant mention here. The translation from the French needs to employ a tighter economy of words (for instance, many definite articles should be omitted). Either Nasta or the translator does not differentiate appropriately the words score and music. It is also unclear if there is supposed to be a play on the English words score and partition (meaning division or separation) and the French word partition (meaning score and division or separation) in relation to film and sound track editing. The word engender appears too frequently in places in which the words generate or produce would work better. Nasta also makes a number of curious and dubious observations on music. She discusses Wagner and leitmotivs without explaining the impact of Wagners Gesamtkunstwerk on filmmaking and composing film music. Caroline Abbates Unsung Voices (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), was published the same year as Nastas monograph; William Darby and Jack Du Bois deal with film music and Wagners Gesamtkunstwerk in American Film Music: Major Composers, Techniques, Trends, 1915-1990, McFarland Classics (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, 1990). It appears that Nasta has mistaken the Kane motive or the opening music from the film Citizen Kane for the Rosebud motive (she calls the latter gloomy whereas the former is more correctly

gloomy). During her discussion on the filmic counterpoint between music and image or visual narrative, Nasta remarks, the most challenging and rewarding audiovisual counterpoint[s] are those recalling Baroque inventions (where instruments and voices progress simultaneously and contradict each other) and those functioning through superimposures, as in the Gregorian chants (69). It is not entirely clear what these superimposures might be: is she, for instance, referring to the employment of the same cantus firmus in later settings? Nasta explains in great detail that music in the film sound track can be foregrounded or can be capable of possessing primary relevance to the audience and filmmaker, but she never addresses the role of the composer or the composers own involvement. Sometimes it is not clear who Nastas film theorists are. This is especially true when she refers to older, film theorists. A survey of the entire monograph, including the bibliography, reveals that Nastas film theorists are mostly French and Russian and that her older film theorists are Eisenstein, Metz, Adorno and Eisler, and Kracauer (Arnheim is cited in the footnotes and one of his writings is listed in the bibliography). She gives little attention to German, English, and American film theorists. For instance, Bla Balzss writings on montage (he calls montage optical music) and counterpoint would have been an especially interesting addition to Nastas discussion of montage and counterpoint, in which she gives Eisensteins perspective: for Balzs, montage was about images and cinematography (picturedriven) as well as psychological association and tempo; for Eisenstein, who complained about

Balzss view that montage is picture-driven, montage was about ideas and tempo. (Balzs, who was originally from Hungary and named Herbert Bauer, included film music in his earliest monographs, Der sichtbare Mensch (The Visible Man, 1926) and Der Geist des Films (The Spirit of Film, 1930). Both monographs were written while Balzs was in Vienna). Nastas treatment of non-code music is a bit puzzling: as many writers on music or film imply (Adorno, Agawu, Arnheim, Balzs, Barthes, Cone, Deleuze, Eco, Eisler, Gorbman, Kalinak, Kivy, London, Metz, Nattiez, Rotha, among others), there is no non-code music and therefore all music contains codes on various levels of textual interpretation. Nasta defines code and non-code film music (scores):
code scores are selected for purely descriptive or imitative aims (sad scenes=sad score) and are bound to obey the rules of synchronism. Conversely, non-code scores are combined in different ways so as to enhance an expressive act, not necessarily a synchronous one, since in most of the cases asynchronous scores prove more rewarding and original. The above-mentioned remarks do not imply that the relationship image/music is abolished when talking about non-code scores. What changes is only the final effect which is no longer one of similitude, but rather a dialectic one, oscillating between affirmation and negation, essence and appearance, question and answer (61-62).

She adds, non-code scores can be analyzed independently and can express and signify by themselves, thus triggering a secondary interpretation. (61). She does not

imply that non-code music means non-leitmotivic music. Instead, she focuses on the dialectic relationship between the non-code music and the visible act or non-visible expression onscreen. Perhaps Claudia Gorbmans pure musical codes, cultural musical codes, and cinematic musical codes, in Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), would have been helpful here for Nastas explanation of the oscillating dialectic effect does not seem entirely satisfactory. Eco offers a possible definition of undercoding:
the operation by means of which in the absence of reliable pre-established rules, certain macroscopic portions of certain texts are provisionally assumed to be pertinent unit of a code in formation, even though the combinational rules governing the more basic compositional items of the expressions along with the corresponding content-units remain unknown (Eco, 135-36).

problem of identifying non-code music:

It is precisely this dialectical feature that brings us back to Gricean distinction between natural versus non-natural meaning, and to the problem of relevance. Being dialectically related to image, music is foregrounded and it implicitly brings forth relevant information. Natural meaning applied to the musical sphere equals the decoding of what is heard in accordance with what is shown, while non-natural meaning equals the interpretation of a musical piece through inference. The inferential potential of music renders interpretation possible even in the absence of code (62)

Nastas use of Grices meaningN and meaningNN does not solve the

Umberto Ecos discussion of undercodinghe uses music for introducing the sectionin his monograph A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979) would have been useful for tackling this can of worms. My final criticism is that there are so many theories presented here that an index would be extremely

helpful for sorting out the theories and those responsible for or associated with them. The best aspects of this monograph, however, outweigh its shortcomings. It offers new ways to listen to film sound tracks and focus on filmic narrative and it will be a welcome complement to other studies of film music and film theory. Nastas use of film examples is outstanding. Not only does she make use of canonical films analyzed in film studies courses, she includes many European films that also deserve attention. She provides a brilliantly straightforward explanation of the problems of structuralist-semiotics and pragmatic-enunciation approaches. The discussion of how songs function in film is the most sensible and useful one offered thus far, surpassing the Louis-Jean Calvet and Jean-Claude Kleins song classifications and discussions of songs in films. With the best aspects of this monograph in mind, one hopes that Meaning in Film: Relevant Structures in Soundtrack and Narrative will soon return in a revised edition.