The Musicality of Narrative Film

The Musicality of Narrative Film

Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture

Series Editor: K. J. Donnelly, University of Southampton, UK

Advisory Board: Philip Brophy, Australia, Michel Chion, University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, France, Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, Claudia Gorbman, University of Washington Tacoma, USA, Lev Manovich, Graduate Centre, CUNY, USA and Elisabeth Weis, Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA.

The aesthetic union of sound and image has become a cultural dominant. A junction for aesthetics, technology and theorisation, film’s relationship with music remains the crucial nexus point of two of the most popular arts and richest cultural industries. Arguably, the most interesting area of culture is the interface of audio and video aspects, and that film is the flagship cultural industry remains the fount and crucible of both industrial developments and critical ideas.

Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture has an agenda-setting aspiration. By acknowledging that radical technological changes allow for rethinking existing relationships, as well as existing histories and the efficacy of conventional theories, it provides a platform for innovative scholarship pertaining to the audio-visual. While film is the keystone of the audio-visual continuum, the series aims to address blind spots such as video game sound, soundscapes and sound ecology, sound psychology, art installations, sound art, mobile telephony and stealth remote viewing cultures.

Titles include:

Anna Katharina Windisch and Claus Tieber (editors)

THE SOUNDS OF SILENT FILMS

New Perspectives on History, Theory and Practice

Danijela Kulezic-Wilson

THE MUSICALITY OF NARRATIVE FILM

Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture

Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–42975–9 hardcover

Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–42976–6 paperback

(outside North America only)

You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above.

Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

The Musicality of Narrative Film

Danijela Kulezic-Wilson

University College Cork, Ireland

© Danijela Kulezic-Wilson 2015

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2015 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978–1–137–48998–2

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

To Ian

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Part I  The Topography of Film Musicality

1  Introduction

What is musical(ity)?

The musicality of film as metaphor

Musical poetics of film

2  Music as Model and Metaphor

Tracing the origins of contemporary film/music analogies

Film’s musical potential and contemporary film music practice

The influence of MTV

Part II  Comparative Analysis of Music and Film

3  The Musicality of Film Rhythm

Music rhythm and its reflection in aspects of film rhythm

Rhythm, metre and Gestalt laws of perception

Rhythm of the shot and the cut

4  The Rhythm of Rhythms

Macro-rhythm and issues of perception

The immersive power of form

Repetition as a structural and a musical device

The power of patterns

The musicality of narrative and editing patterns

5  Musical and Film Kines

The illusion of movement

Musical movement within a shot

Musical movement of editing

Audio-visual motion and emotion

The kinesis of audio-visual interaction

The musicality of cinema action

6  The Symbolic Nature of Musical and Film Time

Time in music and film

Philosophical and spiritual dimensions of linear and nonlinear time in music and film

Multiple temporalities in music and film

Time as a symbol

Music as a portal into the multiple temporalities of the Lynchian universe

Part III  Case Studies

7  Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man and the Rhythm of Musical Form

From cool to political, spiritual and musical

Structural rhythm

Rhythm of silence and sound

Micro-rhythm

Rhythm of time, space and motion

Affective rhythm

8  Hip Hop and Techno Composing Techniques and Models of Structuring in Darren Aronofsky’s π

Paranoid filmmaking as an inspiration for paranoid analysis

The patterns

Hip hop editing

Audio-visual kinesis and musical patterning

Techno flow

9  Audio-Visual Musicality and Reflexivity in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina

Love and lust

Opposites, gaps and the porous borders between them

Flowing movement, morphing desires

Nuts, bolts and invisible joints

The powers of fate

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Filmography

Index

Figures

7.1    My own transcription of the musical theme from Dead Man composed by Neil Young, recorded by Vapor records, 1996

7.2    William Blake in the village of Makah Indians (Dead Man, Jim Jarmusch, 1995)

8.1    Max Cohen taking his pills (π, Darren Aronofsky, 1998)

8.2    Rhythmic transcription of sound effects accompanying the images of Max taking pills (π, Darren Aronofsky, 1998)

8.3    Rhythmic transcription of sound effects accompanying the images of Max locking the door (π, Darren Aronofsky, 1998)

8.4    Transcription of the visual rhythm of the pill-taking/door-locking scene (π, Darren Aronofsky, 1998)

8.5    Transcription of the sonic rhythm of the pill-taking/door-locking scene (π, Darren Aronofsky, 1998)

8.6    Transcription of the audio-visual rhythm of the pill-taking/door-locking scene (π, Darren Aronofsky, 1998)

8.7    Max Cohen stating his assumptions about patterns in nature (π, Darren Aronofsky, 1998)

9.1    Anna Karenina confronted with the distorted image of her face in a ballroom mirror (Anna Karenina, Joe Wright, 2012)

Acknowledgements

During the long and convoluted path of researching, writing and then abandoning this book for a while I always knew that if it was ever published, the main person to thank would be Kevin Donnelly without whose generous support, faith in the project and persistent nudging I would never had gathered enough energy and confidence to see it through. I’m also very grateful to Chris Penfold for his valuable guidance during the book preparation process.

Along the way many other colleagues offered their advice and support, generously shared their thoughts and work-in-progress papers and inspired me. In no particular order I offer my sincere thanks to Annabel J. Cohen, Zoran Erić, Ana Kotevska, Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, John Hill, Martin McLoone, Hilary Bracefield, Robynn Stilwell, Liz Greene, Miguel Mera, Annette Davison, Julie Brown, Katherine Spring, Randolph Jordan, Chris Morris, Mel Mercier, James Wierzbicki. I’m very grateful to Gillian Anderson and Ron Sadoff for offering a first home to what would become one of the book’s chapters, for Ron’s creative input in assembling the figures for Chapter 8 and to both for making my annual pilgrimage to the Music and the Moving Image conference the most exciting event of the year. I thank Mahayana Dugast for teaching me how to change my perception of what matters. Most of all I’m infinitely grateful to my husband Ian for his loving support, patience, help with endless proofreading and for making everything easier.

Earlier versions of some of the material presented in this book appeared in ‘The Musicality of Film Rhythm’ in K. Rockett and J. Hill (eds) National Cinema and Beyond (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), 113–24; ‘The Musicality of Film and Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man’, Film and Film Culture Vol. 4, 2007, 8–20; ‘A Musical Approach to Filmmaking: Hip Hop and Techno Composing Techniques and Models of Structuring in Darren Aronofsky’s π’, Music and the Moving Image Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 2008, 19–34; ‘Musical and Film Time’, Muzikologija/Musicology Vol. 8, 2008, 253–71.

Part I

The Topography of Film Musicality

1

Introduction

‘Film is like music’, we often hear. It is one of cinema’s most enduring analogies and is usually understood simply as a metaphor. Yet, since its birth, film has not only been compared to music, but it has also been explained through the use of musical terms and even conceived and structured using music as a model. From the French school of Impressionists to the MTV generation of directors, filmmakers as diverse as Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Godard, Sergio Leone, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Mike Figgis and many others have been inspired by music and stimulated to think about film in musical terms. While it is now accepted that at the very beginning the comparison with music was motivated by the need to challenge the general view of film as cheap entertainment and to demonstrate its artistic importance, what inspired this comparison in the first place is the fact that both music and film are arts that unfold in time, generating a sense of movement and rhythm. Over the years, various interpretations and versions of the ‘musical metaphor’ applied to film have appeared in both theory and practice, but in the last few decades this idea received fresh impetus thanks to a new generation of filmmakers whose notable musical sensibility is not only displayed in carefully assembled soundtracks or musically edited sequences but also in the internal logic of their films. However, despite its high-profile advocates among practitioners, the idea of film musicality has never been explored with a fully-developed theoretical argument which would justify filmmakers’ enthusiasm for comparing film to music and provide evidence that film’s musical qualities are not only metaphorical. This book intends to do precisely that by conducting a thorough comparative analysis of the common denominators shared by these two arts – time, rhythm and movement – exploring both the depth and the limits of the film/music analogy.

To allay any scepticism I should promptly add that, while this book examines the indisputable similarities between film and music and the numerous ways in which they have influenced both theoretical and practical aspects of filmmaking, I do not suggest that film, particularly narrative film, is musical per se nor will I try to argue here that any motion picture is musical just because it unfolds in time, creating a certain sense of movement and rhythm. The existence of common features between music and film, however, suggests that film is potentially very musical. This potential, which is of a composite, audio-visual nature, can be fulfilled and enhanced by employing different filmmaking strategies and devices such as the organization of the mise-en-scène, camera movement, movement within a shot, editing, sound design and music itself. Basically, any aspect of film’s audio-visual texture that may invest the parameters of time, rhythm and movement with musical qualities can be considered a carrier of film’s musicality.

At the same time, since rhythm, movement and time in film are part of an audio-visual texture which is defined by the presence of sound and music as much as by the content of the images, music and film can be viewed as partners in a relationship that can be explored in both analogous as well as interactive terms. Thus one of this book’s aims is to maintain what I perceive to be a necessary balance between two paths of inquiry: one which will examine the enduring idea of music as a model for film, and the other which will address music’s role in realizing film’s own musical potential by exploring its contribution to and influence on film rhythm, movement and time as subjects of comparative analysis. What is emphasized in this context are the sensual and aesthetic aspects of film and their ability to produce the effects of fluency, immediacy and affectiveness similar to those found in music. All this means that the presence of music in film will be explored in this book from a perspective that differs from the usual historical, semiotic, musicological or cultural approaches and will instead focus on different roles that music plays in enabling film to realize its own musical potential.

The recognition of this potential is not the sole purpose of this book. Another aim which ranges beyond familiar topics of film music scholarship is to treat the soundtrack in its totality – speech and sound effects included – as a significant and potentially as effective a source of musicality as composed or pre-existing scores might be.¹ This is only natural considering that in the musical approach to film the notion of music as an ingredient which is added to film in post-production to enhance its various features has been replaced with a practice in which the boundaries between the score, sound effects, speech and noise are significantly blurred, while also allowing editing, camera movement or movement within the shot, narrative rhythm and acting to express their own musical rhythm and fluency. Consequently, I will argue that the dedicated utilization of musical principles in film not only breaks traditional hierarchical relationships established in classical narrative between speech, music and sound effects but has also contributed significantly to the recent changes in contemporary cinema’s audio-visual aesthetics, indicating a shift from the habitual segregation of the visual and sonic aspects of film towards a practice which recognizes their interdependence in realizing film’s musicality. My case studies will also show that the dominance of musical logic in this type of approach to film can lead to the abandonment of classical narrative rules altogether – even when it involves directors who normally abide by them – steering the form towards a reflexive and/or highly stylized, rhythmicized structure, fluent movement and musicalized sound design as the most effective vehicles for exploring the sensual side of cinema.

What is musical(ity)?

In the most basic sense, the word ‘musical’ is an adjective that describes something relating to or producing music, but also something ‘sounding pleasant and melodious’. It can also mean ‘being good at music’ for which the psychology of music also uses the term ‘musicality’. However, even in the narrow field of music psychology the concept of musicality can still provoke debate with questions of whether being musical marks a creative or interpretative talent, whether the investigation of musicality should focus more on acoustic properties or the emotional side of the musical experience, whether the possession of musical abilities presumes an understanding of musical (aesthetic) content, and so on (Revez, 1947). Moreover, the concept of ‘being musical’ supposes the existence of its antithesis in the concept of being ‘unmusical’, which challenges one of the oldest views on musicality voiced by Plato. In his Phaedo, Plato comments on musicality not as a property of individuals but as an essential attribute of the human species. As Zuckerkandl explains,

the implication is not that some men are musical while others are not, but that man is a musical animal, that is, a being predisposed to music and in need of music, a being that for its full realization must express itself in tones and owes it to itself and to the world to produce music.

(1976, pp. 7–8)

And one should bear in mind that Plato’s view of musicality originates in a time before music was established as an artistic profession, let alone a noble one.

On the other hand, the comparison with music and the use of the words ‘musical’ and ‘musicality’ in the sense of ‘being in possession of attributes typical of music’ are commonly used in many different non-musical contexts. Writers as diverse as Samuel Beckett, Paul Auster, Nick Hornby and Aaron Sorkin, for instance, have often used the musical metaphor to describe their commitment to creating melodic and rhythmic qualities in dialogue and large-scale form. And while Auster and Hornby often speak about the musicality of the writing process in purely metaphorical terms,² in The Book of Illusions Auster also describes the acting style of the silent film actor Hector using a musical analogy. When he says that Hector’s ‘gags unfold like musical compositions, a confluence of contrasting lines and voices’ (p. 38), this echoes a noticeable tendency among actors to use comparisons with music when describing certain styles of acting, especially comic ones. The performative dimension is obviously an important factor that can lend a musical quality to spoken language – Sorkin made the same point when he said that hearing dialogue on stage during his first visit to the theatre was like a musical experience which he had been trying to recreate in his own writing (Gross, 2012). And while Sorkin might have used the analogy metaphorically, Beckett took it quite literally and reinvented modern theatre by creating plays more concerned with the sonic and musical qualities of language and the rhythm of its delivery than its denotative meaning. While this resulted in a painstaking purification of language on paper, the perceptual musical effect that Beckett strove for is ultimately dependent on the precision and virtuosity of the performers who are requested to deliver their lines at breakneck speed (Kulezic-Wilson, 2011a).

Discussing the musicality of other arts or musicality in non-musical contexts implies the possession of certain attributes that are recognized as being typical of music, but is there a quality that can be described as music’s specificity? The existence of diverse music traditions reminds us that different cultures respond to different types of music. The Western musical practice has evolved around a concept of musical time that is completely different from those typical of Asian or African practices. Between these concepts and even within them one can recognize a number of diverse approaches to the employment of rhythm, melody and harmony, different ranges of tastes and preferences.

It is also important to consider that the concept of musicality and the definition of music itself are different today from what they were, for instance, seven or eight decades ago prior to Cage’s revolutionary ideas of including indeterminacy, noise and silence into musical pieces and performances, the invention of electronic music, musique concrète,noise music and so on. It is indisputable that not all these types of music are recognized as such by the general public, so it would be wise to admit at this stage that my personal understanding of musicality is very broad, informed by a Western-centric musical education and ideas from the 1950s and 1960s avant-garde which encourage us to look for music beyond the written score and outside of the concert hall – to be open to the idea that one can find music in sounds of nature, industrial noise or everyday traffic. That being said, this ‘extended’ understanding of music, while relevant when discussing the musical qualities of the film soundtrack in its integral form (speech, music and sound effects combined), is not at all essential when addressing the musicality of other aspects of film and particularly its rhythm, movement and temporality, since these parameters are inherent to traditional concepts of music and musicality. Therefore traditional forms of music practice present a perfectly adequate starting point for asking the question: is there a certain quality of music which is independent of style and convention, whether we talk about the ritual drumming of African tribes, Indian ragas, Gregorian chants, or various forms of popular music, a quality that makes us recognize any of these performances as music even if we don’t necessarily respond to all of them with equal enthusiasm? What is indisputably musical about all these music genres and traditions?

If one takes away the idiosyncrasies of various rhythmic, harmonic and melodic approaches that are typical of different styles and traditions, what is left has certainly something to do with the kinetic and rhythmic aspects of music, a perception of movement that is inherent to the experience of listening to music. Music scholars generally agree that music is perceived as motion even though it has proved to be difficult to obtain a consensus on what might be the source of that perception. Hanslick’s famous definition of music as ‘tonally moving forms’ (1854/1986, p. 29), or ‘sounding form in motion’ (depending on the translation of the phrase tonend-bewegte Form) has been varied many times without being seriously disputed. Roger Sessions even gives movement priority over sound (‘basic ingredient of music is not so much sound as movement’, 1962, p. 18) while for Edmund Gurney, music is nothing less than ‘ideal motion’ (Zuckerkandl, 1973, p. 78). Or as David Epstein (1995, p. 5) sums it up, motion may be ‘the quintessential factor in music, the aspect of music to which all else is ultimately subservient, the aspect that in turn moves us in our affective experience with music’.

However, despite the general consensus that music is perceived as motion, there is also the fact that movement in music does not really fit into the concept of motion as defined by physics. More than that, the movement of music does not fit into the concept of just any movement either (more about that in Chapter 5). Rather, when Hornby, Auster and Scorsese compare the experience of reading books, acting and watching films with listening to music, they generally refer to the continuity of flow that in our minds makes certain activities similar to music, and has the same effect of immediacy. Thus, it is not only the feeling of movement but the sense of effortlessness of movement and fluidity that is the source of music’s appeal or even, as Sessions claims, the ‘essential and inherent quality of music’ (1962, p. 66).

At the same time, the sense of flow generated by music does not always imply the consistent kinetic drive typical of goal-oriented forms of Western music based on tonality. We can also sense an inherently musical type of flow in genres which produce a sense of stasis and what Jonathan Kramer (1988) calls vertical temporality, such as minimalist and ambient music. However, what makes the perception of music’s movement different from any other is that it is associated with the experience of immersivity, which relates to the concept of flow developed by the psychologist M. Csikszentmihalyi (1990). This concept refers to a state of ‘intense yet effortless involvement in activity’ and it is characterized by full concentration on the relevant stimuli, total absorption in the activity, altered perception of time and loss of self-consciousness. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow may appear in connection with various activities, like rock climbing, sailing, dancing or performing music and it can be so enthralling that it is almost painful to interrupt it (p. 39). Although Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow clearly refers to an experience that originates from the personal performance of a certain activity, I would suggest that a similar experience might also be achieved due to the visceral and emotional responses elicited by the process of immersive listening to music. In fact, the absence of self-consciousness which characterizes the flow activity might connect with the state of absorption in any art, not only music. The fact that music in particular has been traditionally associated with this sense of immersivity is probably one of the reasons it has been held by many in higher regard than other arts.

Closely connected with the concept of flow is the process of transformation or morphing. In the musical context these two processes are practically inseparable from each other as the pull of music in many ways results from the fact that its flow embodies a process of change/movement which is generally associated with the experience of listening to music. From the simplest musical forms which might be based on the change of a single musical parameter to complex orchestral textures in which the process of morphing is so palpable in every aspect that it can be experienced on a visual or a spatial level, music brings the sense of transformation of sound in time. Even works which emphasize the idea of stasis and nonlinear temporality utilize the process of morphing on some level, whether rhythmical, harmonic, melodic or timbral.

Music as flow is also connected with Bergson’s concept of temp durée which is not endurance, Bergson insists, but is rather experienced as a ceaseless flow: ‘a melody to which we listen with our eyes closed and thinking about nothing else, is very close to coinciding with this time which is the very fluidity of our inner life’ (quoted in Zuckerkandl, 1973, p. 244). However, while time flows without sound or presence, leaving only a possible trace in memory, the flow of music occupies the present with its sound, anticipates the future and uses the past to reveal its temporal Gestalt. Although as elusive as flow is by definition, music nevertheless displays an ability to inspire and move that exceeds the power of any other art. At the same time that very fluidity is what invites the comparison between film and music.

The notion of film musicality, however, is not widely recognized in film practice or scholarship and is certainly not characteristic of the mainstream film industry. Apart from Noël Burch’s Theory of Film Practice (1969/1973), which explores the influence of the concepts of atonality and musical serialism on cinema, and David Bordwell’s article on film/music analogies from 1980, film theory has not paid much attention to the practice of adopting musical principles in filmmaking. Its cause was certainly not helped by the fact that in the same year in which Bordwell’s article called for the ‘persistence’ of the musical analogy, Burch expressed ‘embarrassment’ with his theory in his forward to the second edition of Theory of Film Practice in English (1981, pp. vi–vii), denouncing its formalism, elitisms, ‘musicalism’ and ‘flight from meaning’. It is maybe no surprise then that, even