3 FILM MUSIC WILLIAM JOHNSON

Face the Music

"It is written that Alexander was sometime so can be repeated unvaryingly time and time fervently stirred with [music], that, in a manner, again. against his will he was forced to arise from ban- There is a good deal less precision in attempts quets and run to weapon; afterward the musi- to explain the affective power of music. As far cian changing the stroke and his manner of as film music is concerned, attempts are prac- tune, pacified himself again and returned from tically nonexistent1. For "pure" music, on the weapon to banqueting other hand, there is a large body of research —From THE COURTIER, by Baldassare and theory, much of it conflicting. Castiglione, 1516. For reasons which will be examined later, music accompanying a film does not usually "Some of my more practised colleagues assure work on the spectator in the same way as me that when I have had all their experiences "pure" music works on the listener, and so it my youthful exuberance will disappear, and I is not necessary here to sift through all that shall look upon film composing not as an art research and theory. A more direct and empiri- but as a business. At present I still feel a morn- cal approach is possible. The affective elements ing blush which has not yet paled into the which do apply with equal force to "pure" and light of common day. I still believe the film film music are few and relatively clearcut. They contains potentialities for the combination of operate on the physiological plane—the same all the arts such as Wagner never dreamt of." plane on which Alexander apparently respond- —Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1945. ed to music. Music can act on the body in three ways: "Let's face the music—and dance." through its rhythm (speed and emphasis of —From the Astaire-Rogers film beat), its dynamics (loudness or softness) and FOLLOW THE FLEET, 1936. its pitch (high or low). Of these three, rhythm is probably the most Nearly everyone responds to music in some potent. From Siodmak's Phantom Lady (1944) way, even if less wholeheartedly than Alex- I still remember the frenetic jazz drumming of ander. From primitive times down to the pres- Elisha Cook, Jr., polarizing the film's mood of ent, the affective power of music has been used menace and suspense, even though all other to reinforce the dance, the drama, and reli- details have gone. Similarly, the only memor- gious, social, political, and military ceremonies. able scene in Konwicki's Salto (1964) is the And in the last four decades—the era of the salto itself, a group dance to a deliberately sound film—the dramatic use of music has been paced music which briefly gives shape to an brought to a fine pitch of precision. Music can otherwise amorphous film. be tailored to fit the film's action—or, in some The physiological action of a musical beat cases, vice versa—to the nearest twenty-fourth presumably depends on its relation to certain of a second. The dynamic balance between the natural tempi of the body, such as the heart- music and the film's other sounds can be con- beat or breathing rate. If faster, it tends to be trolled with any desired rigor. And the blend- stimulating; and the greater the speed, the ing of music and film, once made definitive, greater the stimulation is likely to be. A pro- 2 FILM MUSIC

incidental music loud enough to be physi- ologically disturbing—Quincy Jones for the an- guished ending of Lumet's The Pawnbroker and for the beginning and ending of that fable of racial animosity, Dutchman. Here again there is no automatic converse: soft music does not necessarily arouse euphoria or tranquillity. The musical cliche of tremolo strings for suspense is usually played softly. Both very high and very low notes can be physiologically disturbing, since they are at the threshholds where sound is perceived as a physical rather than an aural sensation. The HOUR OF THE WOLF: killing of the boy. hanging of Billy Budd in Peter Ustinov's film of that name is accompanied by a piercingly gressively faster tempo, as with William Wal- high note on the violins. At the end of Bello- ton's music for the charge of the French knights chio's Fists in the Pocket, when Julia lets her in Olivier s Henry V, builds excitement. The brother die in an epileptic seizure, a phono- consistently fast tempo of the "Can't Buy Me graph record sticks eerily on the high note of a Love" number in Lester's A Hard Days Night, soprano. Ominous low notes on the double accompanying as they rush down bassoon—lowest of all orchestral instruments— a fire escape to cavort in a field, is exhilarating; are heard in 's score at the and so is Hanns Eisler's musical theme of rapid beginning of Welles' Citizen Kane, when Kane triplets with the "Closing the Gap" sequence in is dying. In Shohei Imamura's The Pornog- Joris Ivens's documentary on the reclaiming of rapher, double bassoon notes accompany the the Zuyderzee, New Earth. The stimulation scenes involving a pet carp which a widow takes on a more somber aspect in Bergman's believes to be the disapproving reincarnation The Hour of the Wolf: when Max von Sydow of her late husband. imagines himself killing a boy who stares at him, the rapid monotonous pulsation of beats From the foregoing miscellany of examples in Lars Johann Werle's score intensifies the it can be seen that the physiological effects of sense of nightmare. rhythm, dynamics, and pitch are far from spe- cific. They gain whatever definition they do Musical tempi that are slower than the body's have from the cinematic context. This is still natural tempi do not have a positive converse more true of the other elements of music (har- effect. They may be and often are relaxing- mony, tone color, etc.), whose effects on the like the nostalgic Simon and Garfunkel songs with The Graduate—but other musical ele- ments and the dramatic context may combine Climactic sequence in THE PAWNBROKER. to give them a different character. The slow melodic phrases with which ac- companies the climax of Zinnemann's Behold a Tale Horse serve to tighten, not relax, the suspense. Compared to rhythm, dynamics and pitch are extremely limited in the kind of physiolog- ical responses they can arouse. Above a cer- tain level of loudness, music can cause pain. Some film composers have deliberately created 3 FILM MUSIC listener do not conform to even the most gen- eral pattern. Acutely dissonant harmony, for example, might seem to be as fundamentally disturbing as loudness or high pitch. But, unlike these, dissonance cannot be measured objectively. Someone familiar with the works of Boulez, Babbitt, and Berio will not have the same con- cept of dissonance as someone who listens to nothing more modern than Richard Strauss. In film music, dissonance can become even more elastic. Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" sounds much less dissonant on the sound track of Dis- LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD: Brisk neoclassical MUSIC ney's Fantasia than in the concert hall, not sets the scene (above), stow romantic music merely because it has been reshuffled and re- accompanies the action (belotv). orchestrated but also because the smoothness of the images and the logic of the story they tell rubs off onto the music itself. In Muriel, by contrast, Resnais sets out to demonstrate the jagged fragmentation of life as lived by his characters, and his deliberately abrupt editing interacts with Hans Werner Henze's discordant musical interjections to enhance and be en- hanced by them. Moreover, Resnais's direction even gives a nervous jagged edge to 's nostalgic song "Deja." Associations also play an important role in determining the cinematic impact of the more complex elements of music—harmony, tone color, form. To achieve a certain effect, the film- maker or composer can rely on the spectators awareness, however vague, of different musical patterns and their usual context. With Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad, for example, Francis Seyrig's music comes in two harmonic styles. remain formal and baroque, the romantic lan- At the beginning it is neoclassical, with mild guor of the new harmony helps to suck the discords resolving into concords in progressions spectator into the flow of unresolved events on that would have been acceptable 200 years ago; the screen. this fits in with the baroque interiors of the The difference between the two harmonic chateau and, together with the past tense of styles of Last Year at Marienbad is accentuated the narrators reminiscences, establishes a sense not only by tempo and rhythm (rapid 4/4 time of reflectiveness and completion. But then, as against slow 3/4) but also by tone color: the the camera moves in among the players and first is scored for string orchestra, the second spectators of the chateau's theater, the film for solo organ. The rich, fuzzy tones of the shifts into the present tense, and at the same organ, partly through their association with the time the harmonic pattern of the music shifts church, seem to lend themselves well to the to a long chain of discords, still relatively mild extraordinary and the ritualistic. Organ music but persistently unresolved. While the images accompanies Bunuel's black comedy The Crim- 6 FILM MUSIC inal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ensayo de for the protagonist, while the dry, unemotional un Crimen) and Denys de Daunant's short slow- quality of the latter suggests the almost me- motion study of bullfighting, La Corrida Inter- chanical psychological drive that leads him to dite; it underscores the credits of Franken- kill. heimers Seconds; and it occurs in ambient2 Here again there is more than one difference form in such somber melodramas as Dark Eyes between the two kinds of music. They are dis- of London (master criminal dis- tinguished not only by tone color and tempo guised as a blind musician) and Daughter of but also by form and style—and the listener's Darkness (Siobhan McKenna as a nympho- response to these musical elements depends al- maniac who kills her consorts and then assuages most exclusively on associations. It's a stylistic her guilt by playing the organ). At the opposite association that makes one wince in The Sound pole are the clear tones of the flute, which can of Music when Julie Andrews walks down the have the effect of neutralizing a tendency to- church aisle to be married and the sound track ward melodrama: this is what happens in accompanies her with a full orchestral version Renoir's Boudu Sauve des Eaux, where the in- of the song "Maria." The style of this song, in cidental music for solo flute counteracts Michel bouncy 6/8 rhythm, is out of place in the Simon's roguish playing of Boudu as a "char- ecclesiastical setting. acter." The dry, staccato tone of Norman Mc- While it's easy to tell when a stylistic associa- Laren's artificial music for Neighbours—pro- tion is wrong, it can be difficult to tell when duced by drawing the sound track directly onto such an association is right. There is, for ex- the film—is even more antiseptic, helping to ample, a certain style of music—12/8 time, keep the savage fable free of any sentimen- moderately fast, with a sweeping melody, and tality.3 guitars and woodwind prominent in the orches- For 's Peeping Tom, com- tration—which invariably accompanies west- poser Brian Easdale uses the tinny, wavering erns. However, a passage in the same style tone of an upright piano to accompany scenes occurs without sounding at all incongruous in showing the childhood of the voyeur-killer pro- Vaughan Williams' London Symphony. Thus tagonist. The climactic killing of a dancer is the power of music to set a specific scene can- accompanied by the ambient recording of a not be taken for granted, and many screen com- Chico Hamilton fast jazz number in which posers play it safe by simply underlining what staccato percussion effects predominate. The the images have already made clear. Open fifths nostalgic associations of the former arouse pity moving in the pentatonic scale reassure one that The Sand Pebbles is set in China; character-

PEEPING TOM: Nostalgic piano music highlights istic rhythmic and melodic patterns for voice the suffering of the killer (left), percussive jazz and guitar endorse the Mexicanness of Viva the suffering of his victim (right). Zapata!; and the tune of "Waltzing Matilda" 7 FILM MUSIC is a continual reminder that On The Beach is the humor of the entire scene. When Stanley set in Australia. Kubrick, at the end of Dr. Strangelove, sets the This use of musical stereotypes quickly be- image of a nuclear explosion to Vera Lynn's comes tiresome. One of the pleasures of Chris singing of "We'll Meet Again" he is accom- Markers short documentary Sunday in Peking plishing more than a verbal joke: by super- is the incidental score by Pierre Barbaud, which imposing World War II on World War III he avoids all conventional "Chinese" sounds. But is reminding the audience, as they laugh, that imaginative uses of stereotyped associations are the latter will not lend itself to nostalgia so possible, especially when some kind of contrast well as the former. is involved. In both Ichikawa's The Burmese A wide variety of other associations can be Harp and Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai, triggered by musical forms, from the funeral ambient music emphasizes the clash between march at the end of Olivier's Hamlet to the Western and Japanese cultures: in the former, square-dance music accompanying the zany car the Japanese environment is invaded by British ride at the beginning of Arthur Penn's Bonnie soldiers singing "Home Sweet Home"; in the and Clyde. The potency of such associations latter, by British prisoners of war whistling the can be judged from the fact that it may take "Colonel Bogey" march. Incidental music has only a few seconds of music to fix a particular been put to similar uses. In Tati's , mood. In Mackendrick's The Man in the White the scenes in the ultramodern house and factory Suit plays a technician obsessed are accompanied by cool jazz, those in the with developing an indestructible fabric. Dur- uncle's vieux Paris neighborhood by a valse ing his first day's work at a new factory he musette. comes across the research lab, and as he pushes The last example can be construed as a shift the door ajar to peer inside, Benjamin Frankel's in time as well as space, and from this it's a incidental music briefly surges up in the kind of short step to the final sequence in Bunuel's romantic crescendo which usually accompanies Simon of the Desert, where a "nuclear rock" a lover's reunion. This is not just an amusing marks Simon's miraculous transportation to the parody but a neat way of making the audience twentieth century. The use of musical forms feel the power of Guinness's obsession. and styles to evoke a period may be just as An equally brief association in Asquith's banal as "Chinese" music and the like: a Vien- Orders to Kill is too potent. At the end of the nese waltz in the background and one is in a film the young British agent visits the family nineteenth-century salon; a snatch of plain- of the Frenchman, erroneously identified as a chant and one is in the Middle Ages. On the traitor, whom he had killed during World War other hand, a film-maker may undermine a II. After leaving, he shakes off his constraint scene with anachronistic music, as George and strides away in what could be a conven- Stevens does in The Greatest Story Ever Told tional but unexceptionable it's-no-good-crying- when he accompanies the raising of Lazarus over-spilt-milk fadeout. But the music that with the resolutely eighteenth-century sound surges up at this point contains a few bars in of Handel's "Messiah," or as Ulu Grosbard does the form of a military march, and this suggests in The Subject Was Roses when he tacks sixties a much less acceptable attitude—that the young folk rock onto his forties setting.4 Yet anachron- man sees no further need to feel responsible ism can be effective in humorous or nonrealistic because he was only following orders. contexts. In the generally undistinguished Marx Music can arouse a rapid and powerful re- Brothers movie Love Happy, when Harpo is sponse because it either acts directly on the forced to empty his pockets, one of the first of nervous system or makes contact with associa- the odd items to emerge is a music box; this tions rooted in the listener's personal experience. proceeds to play a tinkling eighteenth-century- The response is nonrational; and this might style composition whose incongruity reinforces seem to explain why music can make such a 8 FILM MUSIC successful marriage with the screen image, tured, impersonal flow of music and the tension which itself arouses a nonrational response. But would have been diminished. music is also the most abstract of arts, with This organic difference between film and harmonic, rhythmic, and structural patterns music contributes even to films which value a that can readily be expressed in mathematical cinematic flow above dramatic action, such as terms. In this, of course, it differs sharply from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Consider the the dramatic film, which incorporates too much scene where Keir Dullea is jogging around the of the randomness and disorder of reality to be Jupiter spacecraft. This is about as continuous reduced to simple numbers. Even the cutting as a film scene can be, and yet it's still per- from shot to shot, which can have the metrical ceived as a series of discrete events: Dullea is regularity of music, is rarely given it in prac- going away from the camera, he's coming to- tice, and then only for short periods at a time. ward the camera; now the camera is backing The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, for example, as away in front of him; now he's shadow boxing. thoroughly steeped in music as it is, contains Meanwhile, accompanying this scene, the only one brief sequence cut to a musical beat.5 Adagio from Khachaturian's "Gayne" ballet Not only the rhythm but the whole organiza- suite moves along slowly and plaintively yet tion of music is different from that of the dra- with an unmistakable linear flow, suggesting matic film. This difference always plays a part the patient progress of the ship through the in determining the effectiveness (or otherwise) immensity of space. of a , and sometimes its importance It is because film and music do operate along may override all details of rhythm, melody, different lines that the effect of music combined harmony, tone color, and style. There's a simple with film can be quite distinct from the effect example in Thorold Dickinson's Gaslight. Anton of music alone. This is seen most clearly in films Walbrook, in his attempt to drive Diana Wyn- which borrow their music from the concert hall. yard insane, slips his watch into her handbag A simple and striking example is Arthur Ben- as they are leaving for a concert. Then, during jamin's "Cloud Cantata" in Hitchcock's 1956 a piano recital, he whispers that she has taken version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. As it and must give it back. Her agitation at being the cantata is played during the opening credits, accused and then at seeing the watch in her the camera cranes slowly forward over the handbag is made all the more agonizing by her orchestra until the screen is filled with the unsuccessful struggle not to disturb the music. clashing cymbals which bring the work to a Here it is the organic nature of music, not any close. This camera movement gives a shape and individual qualities of the piece being played, tension to the music which it would not have which heightens the tension. While the scene for anyone seated in the concert hall; and of could have been acted out during a play, lec- course it conditions the spectator to experience ture, or sermon, these do not have the struc- even more tension when the cantata is played again at the climax of the film, with an assassin planning to make his gunshot coincide with the cymbal clash. Usually when concert music is incorporated in a film it is not so much the music's shape as its tone or mood which is modified. The most obvious examples of this are the romantic dramas which use passages of nineteenth-cen- tury romantic music (or twentieth-century imitations of it) merely as splashes of senti- ment—Chopin with A Song to Remember or

2001 7 FILM MUSIC the Warsaw Concerto with Dangerous'Moon- light. But a similar if far less gaudy transforma- tion can be found in films like Hitchcock's Vertigo and Godard's Weekend (both of which use ambient Mozart) and Pasolini's Accattone (incidental J. S. Bach). In Vertigo, when James Stewart is in a sanitarium, broken up by Kim Novak's apparent death, Barbara Bel Geddes visits him and plays a record of some "thera- peutic" Mozart chamber music, but he tells her to turn it off because it is making him dizzy. To the audience, the Mozart comes as a small island of clarity and composure amid the heav- ing orchestral sea of Bernard Herrmann's in- THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH cidental score, and Stewart's incongruous re- accompany the screen version of his love life, sponse helps to show just how deeply his obses- the Bach in Accattone and the Mozart in sion is rooted. The farmyard recital of a Mozart Vertigo and Weekend blur into something ap- piano sonata in Weekend represents a similar proaching an undifferentiated "Bachness" or island of calm amid violence, and the yawns "Mozartness," and could be replaced by any with which Godard's "hero" and "heroine" react of a large number of the composer's other to it help to show how far they have become works to the same effect. addicted to brutality. In Accattone, the calm An apparent exception to this "shrinkage" of flow of Bach is superimposed on scenes of vi- concert music in the cinema is Straub's Chron- olent emotions—such as Accattone's fight with icle of Anna Magdalena Bach, in which the his brother-in-law—and the effect is the reverse featured works are strongly differentiated. But of the splashes of music in filmslik e Dangerous here the music is no longer incidental in any Moonlight. Here the music acts as a kind of sense of the word; it is central. The film shows cooling filter to preserve the somewhat melo- how Bach's life is dominated by his music, dramatic incidents from sentimentality. which flows superbly on over financial worries To a music-loving purist, the use of concert and even the death of his children. In order to music in Vertigo, Weekend, and Accattone is bring the music to the forefront Straub has had probably as offensive as in A Song to Remem- to drastically pare down the cinematic texture ber. The qualities he prizes in music—above of his film, leaving dnly an ascetic minimum of all, the formal qualities of balance, of inter- subject movement, camera movement, dialogue, dependence and contrast of parts, of repetition and cutting. and variation—are thrust into the background Since concert music can normally be effec- in the movie theater, where the spectator's at- tive in the cinema only with a loss of complex- tention is held primarily by the screen image ity, it isn't surprising that music which sounds and the events that it is depicting. In short, banal to begin with may make an ideal accom- whatever the music's complexity in its own paniment for a film. Anton Karas's "Harry right, it is required to serve merely as one voice Lime" theme is absurdly trivial, but it's doubt- in the film's contrapuntal texture of sights and ful whether the music of Mahler or Schoenberg sounds. The content as well as the form under- or any other distinguished Austrian composer goes the same compression: a piece of music could have set the mood of The Third Man used to accompany a film tends to represent half so well. only one mood or association. Just as any of This doesn't mean that banality is automati- Chopin's more romantic pieces would do to cally desirable in screen music. Both the potency 10 FILM MUSIC and the limitations of banal music are demon- than ideal for the mood, and even though the strated in Murnau's Sunrise. After the husband's music might roll on regardless of any changes half-hearted attempt to drown his wife, she within the film sequence, the total effect could runs away and jumps onto a streetcar traveling still be satisfying. This was where the organic to the city. There is a long and extraordinarily nature of music, the sense of continuity men- poignant dolly shot taken from inside the street- tioned earlier in connection with Gaslight and car as it weaves its way through sunlit streets 2001, came into play. Because there was no and a busy factory district: while the wife sits dialogue or other sound for the music to inter- there still appalled by her husband's action, fere with, a could benefit from the life goes on unaware outside. The scene is momentum even of a score which suggested an accompanied by a thoroughly sentimental tune inappropriate mood.6 that is just right, since the visual texture is so With the advent of sound it was no longer rich that simple, even banal music can help clear what the role of film music should be. to give it a sense of unity and direction. Later, The makers of some early sound films treated however, when husband and wife are recon- music in much the same way as for silent films, ciled and they enter a church to watch a wed- and in so doing occasionally achieved novel ding, not only is the music sentimental and effects by accident. In Tay Garnett's Her Man banal but the images are, too. Instead of com- (1930), for example, Johnny is the villainous plementing each other the two elements add manager of an American bar in Havana and up to excess—sugar on marshmallow instead Frankie is a bar who falls for a pure-hearted of sugar on lemon. sailor. Not surprisingly, the tune of "Frankie Despite its recorded sound track, Sunrise is and Johnny" is used liberally on the sound a silent film, and its use of music follows the track. At one point, in fact, Johnny plays the needs and conventions of the silent era. The tune on the bar piano, and when the scene cuts music of that era—whether produced by a live to a dialogue between Frankie and Johnny in pianist or orchestra or by some kind of record- her room, the piano music continues without a ing—had to perform all the functions of today's break. If the film were silent, it would be multichannel sound track. Not only did it serve routine for the music to bridge the two scenes indiscriminately as both incidental and ambient in this way, but with the music integrated into music but it also stood in for sound effects and the film there is an abrupt shift of mode from dialogue. Not surprisingly, it was expected to ambient to incidental. Such a shift has been run continuously from the start of the film to used deliberately in some recent films (one the finish. example is The Loneliness of the Long-Distance While live accompanists could produce syn- Runner, where the singing of "Jerusalem" con- chronized effects—for the beating of gongs, tinues through the capture and beating up of a ringing of phones, dance scenes, etc.—they did youth who escaped from the reform school). not have the time to devise or rehearse many As a result, what was a carryover from the silent of these. Normally they would choose a piece era in Her Man now seems ahead of its time in of music appropriate to the dominant mood of sophistication. each sequence and simply play it with any Most early sound films, however, broke away necessary repeats for as long as the sequence from silent traditions. There were two main lasted. Elaborate cue books were compiled to developments, both based on the assumption provide music for a variety of moods. In many that audiences over the years had heard enough cases it was the title rather than any expressive of pianos and pit orchestras and would now be quality of the music that determined the match- most likely to pay to hear the human voice: ing ("Light Cavalary Overture," "Hearts and (1) The all-talking film either dispensed Flowers," "Spring Song," etc.). However, even with incidental music altogether or restricted though the sound of the music might be less it to the opening and closing credits. Ambient 11 FILM MUSIC music, of course, might still occur. I'll have ground score. There were degrees of "mickey- something more to say about this type of film mouseness": some scores—'s for later. The Informer is a notorious example—followed (2) The all-singing, all-dancing film wel- the action in synchronous detail, while others comed music on condition that it remained were content to echo each scene as a whole— strictly subservient to the human voice and body tremolo strings for suspense, solo bassoon for movements. In effect, all the music in this type drunkenness, and so on. of film was ambient, since the instruments play- Neither of these two types of music was ing it were on the scene in reality or by impli- satisfactory. The weakness of background music cation. While the musical (together with the can be seen by comparing two of Carol Reed's film opera and the film chante of Jacques films, The Stars Look Down (1938) and The Demy) is outside the scope of this article, many Third Man (1949). The former is directed and of the observations made here apply to it as edited in a casual, often elliptical style and it well. seems surprisingly modern today in everything Soon the novelty of all-talking pictures wore but its music. Hans May's score twitters and off and incidental music began to make a come- mumbles to itself in the background, making back. It was, after all, an added "production no positive contribution to the film at all. The value." At first the majority of screen scores Third Man is cinematically a good deal less were arrangements of existing music; by the adventurous and has dated badly, but Anton mid-thirties, however, scores were being spe- Karas's celebrated zither score—simple tunes cially composed for the more elaborate "A" fea- amplified into the foreground—gives it a mod- tures, and during the next decade this prac- ern panache which is still extremely effective. tice spread to nearly all films. Background music could even be positively It was normal for incidental music of the distracting, as if it were coming from a radio thirties and forties to occupy between 70 and in the theater lobby. This was particularly true 100 per cent of the film'srunnin g time. But the of the many scores that were conceived and re- score was also expected to avoid detracting in corded at a "foreground" level and then toned any way from the action or dialogue, and two down in the final of the sound track. styles of music were developed to show the But it could happen with any score that had no necessary deference: detectable relevance to the image. Background music consisted of a "wash" of Mickeymousing went to the other extreme: sound devoid of any striking melody, harmony, it was distracting because it was too relevant, rhythm, or orchestration, and of any abrupt like a running commentary delivered by a com- changes in rhythm or dynamics. While the mood pulsive talker in the audience ("Look, he's go- of a background score might vary from sequence ing to kiss her .... Now she's slapping his to sequence, in some films there was often no face . . . . "). In Rudolph Mates dark and perceptible association at all between music and frenetic thriller D.O.A., for example, when Ed- action: the score of Huston's African Queen mond O'Brien is eyeing young women in a (1951) is a late example of this. The main pur- hotel, Dmitri Tiomkin decides to nudge the pose of the background score was to keep the audience in the ribs half-a-dozen times with a audience's ears fully occupied and to strengthen wolf call on a swanee whistle. Mickeymousing the film's continuity. came off best when it stayed close to its origins, Mickeymousing is the pejorative name for the accompanying broadly comic action. In Walter practice of making the score continually echo Forde's Bulldog Jack, the hero thinks he's elud- twists in the action or mood of the film. Be- ing the villain by running up a long spiral stair- cause of this follow-my-leader strategy, a mick- way, while the villain is in fact running down eymouse score was permitted to be a good it. As the film cross-cuts from one to the other, deal louder and more idiosyncratic than a back- the incidental music alternates between a rapid- 12 FILM MUSIC ly rising and descending scale, and this height- thirties and early forties. Most important of all, ens the comic suspense. But the limitations of music was not generally thought of as an in- mickeymousing even for humor can be judged tegral part of the film,t o be planned in advance. from the fact that in one of the most hilarious of It was left to music directors to tack it on after all Disney short cartoons, Band Concert, the the action and dialogue were set. This also music is independent of the action. Indeed, the meant that the composing or arranging had to humor arises largely out of this independence, be done in haste, since the studio would want as Mickey's band, whirled up into the air by a to release the film as soon as possible after it tornado, continues to play without faltering. was "in the can." With more serious films, mickeymousing was Another limitation was the level of musical not worth all the effort involved. Erich Wolf- sophistication considered acceptable to the mov- gang Korngold's score for Mervyn LeRoy's iegoing public at that time. Though many screen Anthony Adverse industriously echoes the composers would have been at home in a post- moods and tempi of the action, but the one Schoenberg or Stravinsky idiom, the popular scene in which it fuses with the romantic ex- ear was not ready—or not thought to be ready travagance of the plot to electrifying effect is —for such twentieth-century innovations. Now, precisely the one scene which departs from in the US at least, a majority of screen com- the mickeymouse technique. Anthony Adverse, posers had been brought up in the tradition in Paris after various adventures, goes to the of Germanic music—in fact, several were recent opera to see a famous singer who is Napoleon's refugees from —and so they turned mistress and also, though he doesn't yet know naturally to the late-nineteenth-century Ger- it, the girl he fell in love with years before; she manic idiom of Wagner and Richard Strauss. knows that he is in the audience and that her This idiom, with its heavy texture and grandi- first appearance will be a shock to him. Korn- ose structure, could hardly have been worse gold's music for this crucial moment is ambient suited either to the reticence demanded of back- (the score of the fictional opera) and simple. ground music or to the mercurial shifts in mood There is some recitative by minor characters to entailed in mickeymousing. In France and prepare for the singer's entrance and then a Britain, screen composers such as Maurice Jau- slow, haunting aria which she begins in the bert and William Alwyn could draw on a more shadow of a doorway (so that Adverse first restrained tradition of music, with happier re- recognizes her voice), moving downstage into sults. But it was Hollywood that dominated the the light for its climax. film scene. It may be argued that this opera music echoes The state of recording techniques in the thir- the mood and tempo of the scene just as thor- ties also robbed film music of some of its effec- oughly as the rest of the film score. But there's tiveness. It was impossible to achieve the clarity a significant difference. In this scene the music of sound, the dynamic range, and the separa- asserts its own shape (that of an operatic ex- tion of different sound track elements that are cerpt), which happens to fit the dramatic shape routine today. of the action. In the rest of the film, the fitting While film music was floundering, some film- is accomplished at the expense of the music, makers of the thirties managed to sidestep the which is forced to gallop along one minute, turn problems. They turned their attention to sound languorous the next, then pulse with foreboding, effects, treating them as an extension of the and so on. These wrenching changes weaken film's visual possibilities. In so doing, they the music's sense of continuity. created what might be called "underground" Quite apart from the inherent weaknesses film music, often far more sophisticated and of background music and mickeymousing, effective than anything that screen composers there were several circumstances that militated were writing. The most famous example of this against the creation of good film scores in the is the complex sound that Rouben Mamoulian 13 FILM MUSIC devised for the first transformation in Dr. Jekyll vogue in the thirties and forties. The action of and Mr. Hyde (1931). This included such in- a drama or comedy would shift to a nightclub, gredients as artificial high and low frequencies; for example, where the characters would pause the sound of gongs reversed in time with the to listen to a torch song. Of course, the main impact cut out; and Mamoulian's own heart- purpose of such ambient music was not usually beats. It was musique concrete a decade before to add to the expressiveness of the drama or the term was invented—and, more important, comedy: by introducing a new or familiar song its eerie, unidentifiable sound gave the specta- number, producers hoped to cash in on the tor an apt sense of disorientation and unease. popularity of screen musicals. Hitchcock, whose thirties films were accom- Yet often these musical interpolations did panied by nondescript arrangements of back- enhance the film. If the mood of the music ground music, consistently relied on unusual complemented or contrasted with the mood of ambient sounds to reinforce the tension of his the action, and if there was at least some justi- images. Here again there are celebrated exam- fication for its presence, the music could com- ples: the scream dissolving into a train whistle plete a nexus of associations that would deepen in The Thirty-Nine Steps; the organ note sus- and intensify the audience's dramatic experi- tained by the hand of the murdered organist in ence. This accounts for the fascination of the Secret Agent; the disjointed drumming by the nightclub scene in Raoul Walsh's The Roaring murderer at the end of Young and Innocent. Twenties, where racketeers Cagney and Bogart Most interesting of all is the Swiss folk dance plot darkly at a table while Priscilla Lane gaily in Secret Agent in which each dancer twirls a sings "I'm Just Wild About Harry." In Howard coin around inside a bowl, generating a high- Hawks's To Have and Have Not, on the other pitched whine like that of the electronic moon hand, all but one of Hoagy Carmichael's songs beacon in 2001 and with much the same dis- cause the drama to flag because they are too turbing effect. obviously inserted for their own sake. "Carry Such uses of sound, developed at a time when Me Back to San Francisco" is redeemed by its incidental music was unreliable and directors pertinence: it wryly expresses the homesickness had little control over it, have continued to the which expatriates Bogart and Bacall may feel present day. In several recent films which have but are too hardboiled to admit. no incidental music it turns out that the direc- The power of this kind of ambient music has tor has created his own "score" with sound attracted film-makers a good deal less concerned effects. In Bergman's Brink of Life an ambu- than Hollywood producers with box-office suc- lance siren surges up behind the opening credits, cess. There's an outstanding example in Del- and a climactic sequence is accompanied by vaux's The Man with the Shaven Head. At a Eva Dahlbeck's rhythmic, almost metronomic school concert, a shy middle-aged professor screams. During the attempted jail break in goes backstage to watch an attractive girl stu- Jacques Beckers The Night Watch most of the dent sing a romantic song entitled "The Ballad natural sounds have a dramatic charge because of Real Life." As he moves about, silent and they expose the prisoners to the risk of dis- restless, seeking the best vantage point to view covery; this is particularly true of the scene in her, a transference seems to take place, and the which one prisoner batters his way through the song is pouring forth on his behalf the emotion cell floor in what might be described as a for- that he is too inhibited to reveal. tissimo percussion solo. And in Bunuel's Belle Ambient music in the thirties had a valuable de Jour many of Catherine Deneuve's day- side effect: it broke the stranglehold of back- dreams are cued in by the jingling of harness ground music and mickeymousing on incidental or the ringing of doorbells or missal bells. scores. As is shown by the opera in Anthony It's only a step from the musical use of sounds Adverse, ambient music could easily insinuate to the use of ambient music, which came into itself even into a film otherwise dominated by 14 FILM MUSIC one of these prevailing types. The next step was (1946) and 's for Delmer for the ambient song or instrumental number Daves s Dark Passage (1948) are all too long to move into the incidental score—and it did and repetitive and they often intrude on scenes this in the form of the theme tune. that would be better left silent7. Yet because Once again the box office was the main spur their themes have a somber romanticism that behind the move. Unlike background or mickey- epitomizes the mood of the three films, the mouse music, a theme tune could be used to scores are extraordinarily effective. promote the film, and it could also be issued As with the ambient song, it wasn't only Hol- separately and profitably as a phonograph re- lywood that went in for theme-tune scores. The cording. But once again it was a move in the French cinema especially has long had a predi- right direction. A theme tune could be played lection for them, from Maurice Jaubert s "Valse softly, but it could not fade anonymously into Grise" for Duvivier's Carnet de Bal (1937) to the background; its orchestration, tempo and Rene Cloerec's heavy nostalgic tune for Autant- even time signature could be varied to suit Lara's Le Diable au Corps (1949) to Francis different scenes, but not to the extent required Lai's light nostalgic tune for Lelouch's A Man for outright mickeymousing. Like accompani- and a Woman (1966). Even so un-Hollywood- ments of the silent era, theme-tune scores could ish a film-maker as Yasujiro Ozu made good use assert their presence and, at the same time, of theme-tune scores—with thoroughly occi- deploy the continuous character of music re- dental-sounding themes—in such films as Tokyo gardless of twists and turns in the screen action. Story and Good Morning. There were, admittedly, serious weaknesses By the fifties further changes had taken or in the theme-tune score. Following the fashion were taking place on the film music scene. It of the time it was generally long, and its length was becoming a common practice to plan the involved repetitions of the theme that could music in advance. Sometimes the composer had quickly become tiresome. Moreover, it staked a chance to make suggestions about the film as everything on the aptness of its particular well as the music (even if they were rarely fol- theme. Whereas an ambient song (as in The lowed ), and at worst he had more time to work Roaring Twenties) was involved in only one on his score. Advances in recording techniques scene, the associations of an incidental theme were improving the fidelity of the sound track, had to complement or contrast with the tone widening the composer's effective "palette" of of the entire film. When the theme was right, sound. At the same time, the frontier of musical however, it could triumph over many weakness- style considered acceptable for the moviegoing es. To take just one group of examples, David public was being pushed away from the late Raksin's score for Preminger's Laura (1944), nineteenth century. Occasionally it might be 's for Hitchcock's Spellbound pushed backward, as it is for the scene in York- in's Divorce American Style where ex-husbands TOKYO STORY: Like most Japanese directors, Ozu used occidental music—in both contemporary and ex-wives try to sort out whose children are and historical films. spending Sunday with whom—a scene of con- fusion that ironically accompanies with a pastiche of Mozartian clarity. More of- ten, of course, the frontier was pushed forward. introduced strong dissonance into his music for Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951), and Benedek's The Wild One (1953) had a jazz-influenced "serious" score; but the most daring scores could be found with thrill- ers, horror, and science fiction, whose subject matter lent itself most readily to disconcerting 13 FILM MUSIC sounds. As suggested earlier, there is an equa- tion between what the eye and ear will accept in the way of stimuli. The visual fantasmagoria of the Star Gate sequence in 2001, for example, matches the bizarre sounds of Gyorgy Ligeti's "Atmospheres" (the most advanced music yet to appear on the track of a major Hollywood feature), and anyone who can enjoy the former is unlikely to complain that the latter is more dissonant than vintage Max Steiner. All this does not mean that film music has progressed steadily since the forties. Planning, improved recording techniques, and greater Wilder's ACE IN THE HOLE musical sophistication have often conspired to produce bigger, louder, and in no way better scores. The irrelevant but reticent background tesquely out of character. In Peter Glenville's score of the thirties has been amplified into to- Becket, when Henry II hears of Becket's first day's irrelevant and brassy "foreground" score, challenge to his authority, there is a twiddle of examples of which can be heard with films as strings to convey the king's annoyance—some- diverse as Barbarella and The Bible. At the thing that Peter O'Toole is well able to convey same time, as theater admissions have dropped for himself. In Tony Rome, the prevailing jazzi- and sales of music-from-the-sound-track records ness of the score deliquesces into syrupy violin have risen, composers have been encouraged to music when Frank Sinatra first kisses Jill St. write theme-tune scores in which ostentation John. In Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet there is and catchiness are more important than rele- a distracting orchestral surge when the two vance. Such scores take the vices of foreground protagonists first look each other in the face. music one stage further, being not only irrele- Fortunately, some composers have put the vant and brassy but repetitive as well. Maurice technical and other improvements of the past Jarre, who once wrote excellent atmospheric decade or two to better use. It might seem that small-orchestra scores for such varied films as there is little room to maneuver, since mickey- Franju's Eyes Without a Face and Zinnemann's mouse scores are unsatisfactory because they Behold a Pale Horse, has become trapped in are too relevant while background (or fore- this kind of composition. Under the pressure ground) scores are unsatisfactory because they of Hollywood, his musical range has shrunk are too irrelevant. Yet with the right balance until his theme tunes have become almost inter- between continuity (stressing the independent organic shape of the music) and associations changeable: The Loves of Isadora echoes Is Paris Burning? which in turn echoes Doctor Zhivago. Zeffirellis ROMEO AND JULIET Mickeymousing, too, has squeaked into many films of the sixties. Richard Sarafian's Run Wild, Run Free offers a rare example of a recent score that doggedly echoes nearly every vicissitude of the action. Mickeymousing today usually comes in more isolated though no less blatant examples. In John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn, when Interior Secretary Edward G. Robinson consents to help the Cheyenne, a solo violin launches into a sentimental melody that is gro- 16 FILM MUSIC

(reinforcing the tone of the film) a score can to the bedroom; and even when Jacqueline sail close to both dangers without running Sassard is shut outside, there is a visual link aground. Here are some analyses of recent ex- between her fingers touching, almost clutching amples, beginning with those that sail closer at the door and Stephane Audran's fingernails to mickeymousing. scraping down Trintignant's back. Thus the In Desmond Davis's The Girl with Green music, developing without a break as the scene Eyes, when Rita Tushingham first ventures for alternates between the inside and outside of the a drive in Peter Finch's car, she starts out being bedroom, helps to bind the characters together wary but then suddenly relaxes and kisses him. again in a perverse and powerfully erotic love Immediately the scene cuts to the view ahead scene a trois. of the car, a magnificent cloud formation hang- A similar but perhaps less deliberate binding ing over an open landscape that opens up even together of characters occurs in Delmer Daves's more as the camera zooms back to a wider Jubal. Glenn Ford is given a job and a home angle; and with this cut provides by rancher Ernest Borgnine ("the only man a burst of vigorous oboe melody accompanied who was ever kind to me since my father died"). by strings. While the effect superficially resem- The rancher's wife makes advances to Ford, bles that of Tony Rome and Romeo and Juliet, which he rejects. After he has visited the ranch it is distinguished from them on several counts: house one evening, there is an almost stylized (1) the oboe melody is not an ad hoc creation sequence of cross-cuts between the wife gazing but a faster version of the main theme of the from her window toward the building where score (in other words, it is integrated into the Ford sleeps and Ford gazing from his window music's own continuity); (2) it does not coin- toward the ranch house; David Raksin's accom- cide with the kiss, so that there is no gross paniment for this sequence is a high, loud, and tautology of action and music; (3) the scene passionate rendering of the film's main theme. that it does accompany is both a realistic back- This music, in a sense, adds realism to the film's ground and a visual metaphor for the charac- action. The script hews to the old Western con- ters' sense of liberation after the kiss, and the vention that the hero must be pure of heart, music reinforces the metaphor while remaining and there is no overt suggestion that Ford is detached from the foreground action, like a ever tempted by the wife's offer. In the cross-cut theme-tune score echoing only the general tone sequence, the intention could very well have of the film. been for Ford's gaze to imply regret at his awk- Yet when the foreground action consists of ward situation or sympathy for the rancher, and something more complex or less homogeneous for the yearning music to refer only to the wife. than a kiss or love at first sight it can success- But since the music flows behind Ford's scenes fully be reinforced by music. In Chabrol's Les as well, its implications extend to him and en- Biches, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stephane rich his mythic character with human conflict Audran make love while Jacqueline Sassard, and desire. who has been sexually involved with both, It is even possible for music to reinforce the crouches outside the bedroom door; and Pierre mood of an entire homogeneous sequence and Jansen accompanies this scene with a slow im- still avoid tautology. In fact, some of the most passioned crescendo of orchestral music. What impressive uses of music fall into this category. distinguishes this from the routine emotional What vindicates them is the unexpectedness of churning that so often underscores scenes of the sequence in question, involving a dramatic love-making and frustration is the equivocal reversal of the whole mood of the film. A not- relationship among the characters. In the pre- able example is in Bergman's The Magician, ceding scenes the three have been shown sitting nearly all of which is somber and anguished. close together in a circuit of almost absent- Then, just as the magician seems irredeemably minded caresses, then embracing as they walk plunged into defeat and disgrace, he is sum- 15 FILM MUSIC moned to perform before the king. The change is so startling and comes so late in the film that it needs the help of music to establish it firmly, and Erik Nordgren provides that help in the shape of a brisk, bouncy march that continues from the arrival of the royal summons to the final fadeout. In Jiri Menzel's Closely Watched Trains the Nazi occupation is viewed for the most part only as a backdrop to the everyday concerns of the railroad station staff, and the incidental music shares this perspective by being light or ironic (a triumphal march when young Milos finally overcomes his "premature emission"). In Petri's THE TENTH VICTIM one scene, however, Milos is picked up by an SS train as a suspected saboteur, and the music Piccioni's rock-influenced theme goes a long becomes intensely lyrical. Here the perspective way toward making it stand. In 's has changed: Milos has now been whisked into Charlie Bubbles and Louis Malle's The Fire the world of the Nazi occupiers, and everyday Within the themes establish not time or place life is now the distant backdrop—sunlit fields but the protagonists' state of mind. Just as and farmhouses passing by the train. The un- Charlie Bubbles's success turns sour, so Mischa expected lyricism of the music illuminates the Donat's jaunty theme ends with a run of sour shift from Milos's experience of everyday life notes. For Malle uses Erik in all its banality and confusion to his view of Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1, and this quiet, ele- it from the outside, a bright panorama of desire. giac piano music, repeated at intervals through- In the foregoing examples the music rein- out the film, embodies the unquenchable melan- forces the mood of the action but is distinguish- choly at the heart of Alain Leroy. ed from mickeymousing by its sense of con- In some films both the timing and the tone tinuity. Other examples of good screen music of the music may at firstsee m arbitrary. There is do the reverse—they assert their own inde- a curious similarity between recurring musical pendent shape and continuity but are distin- passages in Ichikawa's Kagi (Odd Obsession) guished from background or foreground music and Godard's Weekend. Both passages consist by their protean relevance to every mood of the of somber chords on the low strings, which in film. "Relevance" is, of course, a wide-ranging the former occur irregularly as bridges between term: it can apply not only to the stately sus- pense of the organ music that accompanies the Godard's WEEKEND stately suspense of the action in Last Year at Marienbad but also to the cheap bouncy street- band music which ironically and effectively ac- companies Zbynek Brynych's film about Jew- ish ghetto under the Nazis, Transport from Faradise. A theme tune of some kind is the basis of many recent scores whose primary aim is to establish a sense of continuity. Elio Petri's The Tenth Victim, set in the twenty-first century, stands or falls on its evocation of a future soci- ety, and the bizarre steely buoyancy of Piero 18 FILM MUSIC sequences and in the latter are superimposed can do is to palliate its badness. In fact, while on such scenes as Mireille Dare's description of it is all too easy to create a bad score for a good her involved sexual encounter with a married film, the idea of a good score with a bad film couple. While the two films do not at first sight makes no sense. Thus from one point of view appear to have much in common, they could the screen composer has an uninspiring task. both be summed up as tragedies wearing the He is at the mercy of the producer, director, mask of comedy. Thus in each case the somber script writer, and editor (among others) not music serves as an unexpected but relevant re- only for the quality of the material he has to minder of the film'stragi c side. work with but also for the leeway in which he With the right kind of film, a score can even can do that work. have the two main distinguishing marks of Yet everyone involved in the cooperative background music—a lack of easily identifiable enterprise of film-making faces similar limits— themes and an indefatigable flow—and yet and in one way the composer's task is more make them a source of strength instead of challenging than his collaborators'. He works in weakness. Bernard Herrmann's scores for Hitch- a separate dimension with its own vast possi- cock's Vertigo and Mamie and Truffaut's Fahr- bilities of forms and associations, and the effec- enheit 451 and The Bride Wore Black are tiveness with which he chooses among them outstanding examples. All four films have a cannot be measured in any way by seconds or powerful undercurrent of suspense that lends decibels. A single note that fits the action or a itself to a continuous flow of incidental music. quiet passage that seems to go its own way Herrmann's scores do have themes (some even can do wonders for a film—and yet there is also whistleable) but he blends and varies and pro- a place for the tocsin and the rhapsody. The longs them into what may be heard simply as best screen scores, however simple they may a web of suspenseful sound. sound, are likely to result from a vertiginous Earlier, referring to the Star Gate sequence balance between freedom and bondage. in 2001, I said that anyone who enjoys the image is likely to enjoy the music. The negative NOTES of this also holds good, and it is especially per- 1. Even the best books on film music devote sur- tinent to the Hitchcock and Truffaut films just prisingly little space to this crucial topic. The Tech- mentioned, which are either strongly liked or nique of Film Music, by Roger Manvell and John strongly disliked. Anyone who dislikes them Huntley, contains an excellent historical survey, might argue that Herrmann's scores are as lim- quotations from directors and composers, and de- ited in range and as irritating as those of tailed illustrations (musical passages matched with Maurice Jarre which I censured earlier. On the script excerpts and frame enlargements), but it other hand, anyone who likes the films will makes no systematic study of the aesthetic relation- probably admire Herrmann's music because its ship between film and music. 's Defense et Illustration de la Musique au Cinema, which of- chosen range and persistence are exactly right fers a tremendous wealth of documentation, is even for the suspense. more frustrating: it often seems on the point of re- A screen composer can work only within the vealing exactly what music does for the films but tenor of the film. His music may suggest a dif- then retreats into mere description and arbitrary ferent mood from the action so long as it is appraisal. Hanns Eisler, in Composing for the Films, implicit in the film (as in Kagi or Weekend) does devote several pages to esthetic essentials; but or throws the dominant mood of the film into he is so concerned to expose the abuses of the time relief (as in Transport from Paradise). Except (his book was published in 1947) that perceptive in the special case of the musical, where the statements are intertwined with others that are no longer valid. My aim here has been to focus on the music to a great extent determines what appears relationship between film and music, showing how on the screen, the composer cannot change or and why music can enhance (or detract from) the improve on a poorly conceived film; the best he spectators involvement in a film. I have outlined THE FILM LIBRARY 19

the history of film music only to the extent that is likely to be a church rather than the Holy Land it represents a trial-and-error groping toward a satis- of 2,000 years ago. Grosbard's error, I suspect, is factory aesthetic, and I have cited outstanding ex- more calculating: forties-style music would be a amples of film music only to the extent that they less popular "production value" than folk-rock. throw light on that aesthetic. In describing ex- 5. It's interesting to note that, in the experi- amples of film music, I have tried to be as specific mental field, music and film today often exchange as possible short of using musical technicalities that their usual characteristics. Many abstract films would be unfamiliar to the layman. (such as those of John Whitney) do consist of 2. "Ambient" is the least ambiguous term I can mathematically generated patterns and rhythms, find to describe music which forms an integral part while aleatory music (such as John Cage's) in- of the sounds of a scene. volves randomness and uncertainty. However, 3. There is an objective physical basis to this little if any aleatory music has been used with variety, since tone color depends on the particular dramatic films, and what follows in this article pattern of harmonics (subsidiary notes higher than may explain why. the main note) produced by each musical instru- 6. E. Jaques-Dalcroze, writing in the Revue de ment. The organ sounds fuzzy because most of Geneve, December 1925, noted that silent film its pipes produce sounds rich in harmonics. The accompanists had taken to "eliminating all superflu- flute, by contrast, has few harmonics, and Mc- ous ornament and picturesque effects and were Larens artificial music virtually none. Neverthe- devoting themselves instead to creating a 'contin- less, association is probably more important than uous' music whose sole object was to envelop the acoustics in determining the effect of tone color in continuity of the visual action with an aural atmos- film music. phere of decor." 4. Stevens's error is in relying on the literary 7. In Hitchcock Selon Truffaut, Hitchcock is connection between the title and libretto of the reported as complaining that a scene between In- oratorio and the content of his film. The asso- grid Bergman and Gregory Peck in Spellbound ciation aroused by the sound of "The Messiah" is spoiled by intrusive violins.