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FOCUS FILM COURSE
By ANDREW BUCHANAN No. 1 1— FILM MUSIC
One may listen to music consciously, as at a concert, or unconsciously when it provides what has become known as “background” for a film. In the former case, all one’s .attention is given to the music ; in the latter, the music plays a secondary part to the scenes we are watching, and if it has been sensitively scored and recorded we may well remain unconscious of having heard it at all. Sometimes, background music is so loud it dominates a film and distracts attention from the visual and/or verbal narration, but one should blame the recorder, not the music.
The discovery that music brings films to life and heightens their dramatic values was made in the days of the silent film, when cinemas employed orchestras as in theatres, and entire programmes were scored with suitable music. In London’s leading cinemas surprisingly large orchestras were resident, and music was specially composed to accompany films, the orchestral parts being .sent out with copies of the films when the subjects were generally released. 'To view a silent or even a talking film before music has been added is known as seeing it “cold”. Music warms up a film in an astonishing way.
Equally astonishing is the fact that it rarely seems out' of place. For instance, we well know that orchestras are not usually to be found on mountain tops, in coal mines or playing during a surgical operation, and yet when music accompanies such scenes on the
screen it becomes an integral part of the film and, though we may not realise it, is giving dramatic emphasis to the sequences.
Disney’s cartoons have always exemplified the supreme importance of music in film. Here indeed is a universal language. The combining of music with film reached great heights at the peak of silent film presentation, and then it was ousted by dialogue, but not for long. It crept back, first in musical and vocal films, spectacular dance shows, and so on, and later in background form, which I have described. However, it is only in recent years that certain producers have found in music wedded to film a new language capable of lifting the medium out of the national mould into which it has become wedged. Ambitious features made in this country have employed specially composed or adapted music as never before, in such subjects as The Red Shoes and, due shortly, Tales of Hoffmann, in which music can be said to provide the actual foundations upon which the film is constructed.
Until one has wrestled with film, spending hours cutting and editing visuals, it is difficult to realise the extent to which a sound track full of dialogue restricts and governs the flow of visuals, whereas scenes containing a minimum of human speech can be freely assembled to create maximum, pictorial values, and when music is added to the result, film truly flowers.
FOCUS INDEX
A complete index of FOCUS: A Film Review, Vols. I and II, is now available. Copies may be obtained from the Manager, Blue Cottage, Sumner Place Mews, London, S.W.7, on receipt of stamps to the value of ljd.