The Music Made Them Do It:  The Intersection of Film and Music
By Lisa Hood-Anklewicz

Imagine walking into a cinema today, to see a typical Hollywood film, filled with action, lots of dialogue, a few laughs and maybe even a little romance, but with one key element completely missing; the music.  None.  Not a song sung, not a note played.  Can you actually even imagine it at all?  How about picking one of your favourite films from the last ten years, one you’ve seen numerous times?  Can you remove all the music from that, and still enjoy the movie as you did before?  Could the Academy Award winning Best Pictures of the last twenty five years or more have won that distinction without any musical score?  Music is so entwined in today’s cinematic standards, that it’s almost impossible to imagine any of this.

When the film industry was still finding its legs, music wasn’t anywhere near its radar.  Early films had no sound, let alone music.  As public viewing theatres grew in popularity, the theatre owners began to hire pianists to play live alongside the screening of each film, bringing the music industry and the film industry together.  The live accompaniment added more entertainment value to the theatre experience; however, the audiences also began to react differently to the images on screen.  Dependant on the music played with the film, the audience now felt a higher sense of emotion during each picture. 

As silent films progressed into narrative plots, the film studios began to score accompaniment music to be played along side the film to achieve the emotional reactions they intended.   With the onset of “talkies,” the beginning of sound cinema, the need for live musical accompaniment was no longer needed.  But the film studios saw no reason to be rid of musical accompaniment all together.  It was quickly realized that the same emotional manipulation could be achieved by laying the musical score on the film’s soundtrack directly.  From that point on, music has slowly been developing its own cinematic life and weaving its way into every corner of the film industry.

With the drastic changes that occurred in the music industry during the 1950s and 1960s, film music took some sharp turns of its own, becoming more and more prominent, to the point where, today, Hollywood depends on the film’s musical score to assist in carrying out the plot of their films.  Music in films is no longer a simple accompaniment to attract a desired emotional response.   Music has become a communicative part of the plot, working its way into the narrative of some films.

Musicals are the real stepping stone for the narrative musical resolution.  At the height of the musical era, the whole film was centred around music for entertainment value, much like a Broadway production on film.  The manner in which the music is applied in a musical affects the reality factor of the film as a whole.  The application of song in Singin’ In the Rain and 42^nd Street are great examples of how the music affects the reality level of the film.  Both films are fictional stories centred on the production of entertainment, a film in Singin’ In the Rain and a Broadway musical in 42^nd Street.

Because the plot in 42^nd Street is focused on the production of a musical, the film’s musical numbers are incorporated in the plot as stage numbers of the Broadway production, a very realistic approach.  Singin’ In the Rain uses a less realistic approach which was much more typical of musical film productions.  Characters often burst into song and dance at random moments and places in the stories plot.  Since most people don’t break out in song and dance in a real life situation, the Singin’ In the Rain approach creates a level of fantasy.  The ultimate example of this fantasy presentation is The Wizard of Oz.  While the film is in Oz, song is everywhere, often without narrative provocation.  However when the film is in Kansas, the musical aspect of the film is quite limited, and more realistic.  Outside of the background accompaniment, there is only one song in these scenes, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”  When Dorothy does break out in this song, there is a decreased level of reality in the film; however, the narrative leading up to the song performance sets up the fantasy factor, as Dorothy’s character is clearly a dreamer, so she is a little bit of fantasy in herself.

When the film industry moved away from the musical genre, the use of lyrical song became quite rare.  The new musical emphasis was on the background accompaniment score.   During this time, the scores of films came to develop two types of personalities, aggressive and passive music.  A film wouldn’t rely on simply one of these personalities, but use both together to accompany the narrative.  Passive background music would be used exclusively in the background, sometimes at a level where the viewer doesn’t quite register its presence, much like light mood music in a bar.  When the music takes an aggressive personality, this is when it can’t be ignored by the viewer as its intention is to alter the mood of the audience, provoking an emotional reaction in connection to the film’s narrative. 

The aggressive use of background music can be as simple as establishing a mood that differentiates the good guys from the bad guys, or different locations when they are on screen.  More often it attempts to provoke a psychological and/or emotional response from the audience; nostalgia, empathy, sorrow, happiness, fear, anxiety, hope, suspicion, shock, anger, curiosity, disappointment.  The Film Noir and Thriller genres use background music to create mystery and tension in complement of the darkness of the films.  A Period film uses the music to help establish the film’s time frame and a sense of nostalgia in the audience.

Over time, film music found its way back to the foreground of the film like it had been in the musical genre, but without the genre’s structure.  Background music continued to be used in its passive and aggressive applications, and the foreground music took on these same personalities as well, giving a film four different applications of music.  Aggressively, the music would be played or performed within the narrative with a direct intention of affecting the narrative plot in some manner.  Passively, the music is again played or performed within the structure of the narrative, but is not integral to it.

A Clockwork Orange has some of the most interesting examples of film music’s foreground aggressive and passive uses.  In the portion of the film where Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his gang break into the house of a writer, attacking him and raping his wife, the use of music is passive foreground.  As part of the narrative, the character of Alex is singing “Singin’ In the Rain” during the scene.  The song has no impact on the narrative development of the film, but it is presented so aggressively that the audience is forced to acknowledge the song’s presence, and in this case, may experience a psychosocial reaction with the juxtaposition of the visual violence on screen and the nostalgia effect that is often associated with the song.  Later in the film, the aggressive application of foreground music is used as part Alex’s rehabilitation treatments.  The music this time is being played from a recording within the scene, but still retains the force of acknowledgement for the audience as the music has a purpose which alters the narrative plotline of the film, and the development of Alex’s character.

The film music industry is ever developing with the developments of the pop music industry and changes in the film industry, and in today’s film production, it has found more uses for music and new ways of applying them. It could be suggested that since the inception of sound in the film industry, film music has slowly changed from being created for the film to creating the film for the music. 

Perfect examples of films created for the music are The Beatles films such as Help! and more recently Spice World with The Spice Girls.  Even when the music is not part of the narrative, the narratives have been created around the music in the films because of the musicians.  These kind of films are generally just more promotion on behalf of the music industry and their artists and a way to “cash-in” on their popularity and fame in a new forum.  Sometimes the music becomes the purpose for a film’s narrative, such as in The Blues Brothers.  Working loosely within the musical genre structure, the conclusion of the conflict in the narrative depends on the ability of the characters to arrange for and put on a music concert. 

In other instances, the narrative has not been written specifically for the music, but specific music has been kept in consideration during the pre-production development of the narrative plot.  The conclusion of The Birdcage includes a sequence in the drag club which solves to the conflict of the Keeley family’s inability to exit the building unnoticed by the press.  The character of Armand (Robin Williams) refers to the song “We Are Family” in his dialogue, and the song is then played in the club, to be part of the narrative resolution, an aggressive foreground application.  As the characters make their way through the club, dressed in drag for disguise, “We Are Family” plays in the background, and is even sung along to by a few of the characters.  The use of this specific song in this scene assists the narrative by that despite their differences and their inability to accept each other for the sake of their children getting married, the assistance that Armand’s family provides the Keeley’s is enough to bridge that gap.  “We Are Family” plays to demonstrate that at this point in the narrative, the two families have come together and foreshadows the final scene, the marriage of their children.

When Paul Thomas Anderson was working on the script for Magnolia, he specifically had some music of Aimee Mann’s in mind.  Some dialogue in the film is inspired by Mann’s lyrics.  One line of dialogue is almost identical to a lyric in Mann’s song “Deathly”; the lyric reading "Now that I've met you / Would you object to / Never seeing / Each other again" and the line of dialogue being “Now that I’ve met you would you object to never seeing me again?”  Anderson takes the use of music even further in Magnolia and breaks the fourth wall, between the audience and the film.  During the climatic sequence of the film, the narrative uses one of Mann’s songs, “Wise Up,” as part of the narrative wrap up, by having each of the characters sing along to the song on camera.  The song is played as part of the score, not within the narrative, yet the characters in the narrative are singing to it.  The effect is almost startling to the audience, as Anderson has combined the use of aggressive background and foreground music at the same moment, something that had not been done before.

With Anderson’s narrative use of “Wise Up” in Magnolia, it’s hard to speculate how much farther music can wind its way into the narrative of films.   Sofia Coppala’s The Virgin Suicides made use of pop music in the narrative in place of dialogue during phone “conversations” between the films two groups of main characters.  In place of the characters actually speaking to each other, they just kept playing songs back and forth that related lyrically the sentiment that they wanted to express.  It is hard to imagine that an narrative of this type could be achieved for an entire film, but it does almost seem to be the obvious route for film music to take on its narrative journey.

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