Search Results

Robert Siodmak and Orson Welles are both central figures in the history of sound film. Siodmak and Welles are also central to the history of film noir. Although Welles’ contribution as a director to the genre is not nearly as voluminous as Siodmak’s, his film noirs encompass almost the entire history of the genre, from Citizen Kane (1941), the ur American film noir as well as the prototype of the modern sound film, to Touch of Evil (1958). At the same time, if it's true that Siodmak is more closely associated with film noir than Welles, none of Siodmak's films has received the sort of critical attention, especially with regard to their sound tracks, that The Lady from Shanghai (1948) or Touch of Evil has. Hence the split in “Split Screen” between subject (Welles/Siodmak) and topic (sound/music). To wit, whereas part one concentrates on the play of silence and ambient sound in what has traditionally been considered both a minor Welles film and marginal film noir, The Stranger (1946), part two, reversing track, rack-focuses on what is arguably Siodmak's most accomplished film noir, Criss Cross (1949), as a way to engage a more inclusive notion of ‘music’. Here, instead of bracketing the score to map the sonic landscape as I do in part one, I bracket the use of ambient sound or acoustic effects in order to explore the notion of musicality understood not simply as ‘background’ or ‘source’ music but as voice-over narration.

This chapter explores the ways in which one particular film, The Shout, employs Dolby sound technology in order to evoke the boundaries of sanity and the edges of everyday, rational experience. The chapter then develops in order to examine the ways in which peripheral – often coastal - areas of Britain are employed in films of the 1970s as a space in which peculiar, uncanny activities are seen to be taking place. These films - such as Neither the Sea nor the Sand, Straw Dogs and Doomwatch - are placed within the contexts of a rapidly modernizing nation. As such, this chapter notices how far events such as the construction of motorways in England apparently shifted widely-held conceptions of the apparent ‘Otherness’ of rural and coastal communities.

This book examines a range of so-called ‘male’ and ‘female’ film genres in order to uncover the ways in which film sound conveys meanings about gender. The notion of genre has played a key role in the writing of this book, partly because genre and gender are frequently so inextricably linked: action or science fiction films seem to be so often categorised (both inside and outside of academia) as ‘male’, while romantic comedies or melodramas are deemed ‘female’. Rick Altman, in Film/Genre, highlights that genre is linked to the recognition of repeated semantic codes or conventions, leading to the categorisation of film texts based on common features. Genre conventions allow filmmakers to work to particular ‘formulas’ and realise the expectations of film distributors and consumers.

Film had always been accompanied by sound in one form or another, but the ‘talkies’ introduced the prospect of a wider variety of film genres within mainstream narrative cinema that had not been possible during the silent era: genres that were reliant on language and verbalisation rather than mime and gesture. This development marked a change in film performance and acting style. As noted by Robert B. Ray: ‘Sound and the new indigenous acting style encouraged the flourishing of genres that silence and grandiloquent acting had previously hindered: the musical, the gangster film, the detective story, screwball comedy and humour that depended on language rather than slapstick.’ Although silent slapstick comedy remained in Hollywood, championed by the Marx Brothers, among others, the ‘talkies’ created great demand for a new generation of actors, those who could speak; it also generated a near-panic when these proved to be not that easily obtainable. Writers and directors of screwball comedy seized this opportunity, recognising that the comedy genre needed to incorporate the possibilities offered by synchronised sound.

As modern film audiences, we are well aware of the capacity of music soundtracks to perform a multitude of functions in film. Music, whether diegetic (a part of the world of the film) or non-diegetic (outside of the world of the film), has the capacity to create emotion or humour; to be narrative or symbolic; to create atmosphere or provide information about a setting; and in its various forms, music is integral in creating meaning about film characters. This chapter looks at the use of music in melodramas of the 1940s and the 1950s. Melodrama is a film genre that notoriously makes use of music for its emotional capacity and for its ability to generate meaning about female protagonists in film texts that have been historically labelled as ‘women’s films’ or ‘female weepies’. In this discussion, I am interested in the use of diegetic music in melodrama, the function of which appears more difficult to outline. Diegetic music is also crucial in providing semantic information about characters and in establishing time and place. Yet what links can be drawn between diegetic music and the representation of gender in melodrama?

The introduction examines the significance and history of Alfred Hitchcock’s partnership with Bernard Herrmann. It also demonstrates the enduring appeal and legacy of the partnership in cinema from the 1970s onwards, especially as Herrmann worked with other directors steeped in the Hitchcock tradition.

Representations of gender have varied greatly during this sustained period of film. Furthermore, it seems that while stable, hegemonic – or stereotypical – notions of gender have arguably always been embedded in American mainstream cinema (including the idea of the strong, silent male and the chatty verbose female), these depictions have frequently been challenged and the audio element of the audiovisual cinematic experience has been key to these subversions. An important contributor to this operation of sound is the ‘acoustic remainder’, discussed in Chapter 2, a hermeneutic category arguably applicable to all films discussed here. The idea of quoting famous lines of film dialogue has become a particularly cherished meta-cinematic practice – a form of entertainment for film enthusiasts. Likewise, the film audience can ‘take away’ musical underscoring (who might repeat the song by playing a recording of the same song at home), thereby extending the sonic life of the film and its messages, potentially eternally. In this way, key sounds such as film dialogue and film music can ‘remain’ with audiences, and thus associative ideas about gender and sound are potentially able to do the same.

Illustrating some of the points made in chapter 5, chapter 6 offers an extended analysis of some complex tendencies in Raging Bull’s cinematography, editing, and sound devices. The film tests the limits of the classical Hollywood style and sometimes crosses over into avant-garde practice. Raging Bull offers an illustrative case study of the boundaries of Hollywood’s stylistic systems.