Music Makes Films Better - An Arguement

Music is such a vital utensil in a filmmaker’s toolkit; it is- arguably- the thing that spectators remember the most about the film itself.

I don’t know about you, but I certainly can’t hear the melancholic travis-picked intro bars to ‘These Days’ by Nico without picturing the wind-swept Margot Tenenbaum stepping off the Green Line bus in a glorious slow motion shot that will have your heart lurching and tear ducts throbbing whilst she gazes wistfully onto the eyes- shielded by those trademark Vuarnet 03 sunglasses- of her brother Richie, in the critically acclaimed cult classic The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Anderson). Nor can I hear ‘Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon’ by Urge Overkill without picturing the image of Uma Thurman, blood streaming from her nose and the $5 milkshake from her unassuming and sweet date with charming hitman Vince Vega, now regurgitated and bubbling down her chin after an accidental heroin overdose in Pulp Fiction. Quite different examples, I know. But the sentiment is the same: would those scenes be as impactful if not for the songs that blanket them?

In the Silent Era of film (1890s to 1930s), all the way through to classical Hollywood (from the 1930s to the eradication of The Hays Code in 1968), filmmakers used a technique in their orchestral score background known as ‘Mickey Mousing’, which syncs the music to the doings of the actors on screen. Its name obviously derives from the work of Walt Disney’s silent animated shorts- we’ve all seen them- with Mickey and his friends racing around with trills and whelps and woops from the orchestra shadowing their every move. In J.W Murnau’s 1929 film Sunrise, there shows a scene in which a woman, laden in black clothes and red lipstick, creeps to her secret lover’s window- unbeknownst to his wife. The music, in turn, is slinky and stealthy and suspicious. With Mickey Mousing utilised in these films, if you closed your eyes, you would be able to discern the mood and actions of the scene, but only with your ears.  

The power of music in film spans back to its earliest days, and the Mickey Mousing technique is still seen today where you’d least expect it. In fact, I asked the people around me for their thoughts on how music shapes the films they’d watched. My partner mentioned the franchise of Star Wars, due to the sorcery of the composer John Williams and his attachment to different musical motifs to each character, she said that you could close your eyes and know who’s on screen and what they’re doing, just from the sound of the music used.

That’s score covered, now let’s move on to soundtrack, the act of scouring the earth for the perfect pre-composed song to fit your filmic masterpiece and to augment the effect for spectators to the very highest degree.  

In music, we are aware of the terms ‘homophony’ and ‘polyphony’. The former indicates a balance and a relationship between the multiple strands that make up the harmony of the piece. The latter, we can expect complete and utter disarray and discordancy with each strand; they are content doing their own thing and need no other strand to balance on. In this way, polyphony has the effect of finding hidden meanings within its surface level dissonance. We can apply both these terms and this theory to film. Within the strands that make it up- the cinematography, the editing, the setting et cetera- the music can either flow with the other strands or fly independently. An example of a film’s soundtrack working in tandem with its other strands to provide audiences a sense of understanding would be ‘Promising Young Woman’ (2020, Fennell). This is easily my favourite film to come out of this decade as of yet; I cannot stop thinking about it. The songs used encapsulate the key themes of the film. To give an example, the opening scene greets us with multiple shots of the crotches of gyrating businessmen in a crowded club as the song ‘Boys’ by Charli XCX booms. the film, at its core, is about boys. Men behaving like arrogant little boys, and women having to either put up with it and suffer the consequences, or fight it. 

Polyphony would be encompassed by the terms of contrapuntal music. So, music that juts out in a scene- either too happy or too sad given the cues of the setting or the acting- but for some strange reason, the effect is astonishing and provides audiences with either a sense of humour or horror. For example, A Clockwork Orange uses a score comprised of predominantly Beethoven, due to the protagonist’s infatuation with the composer, and a lot of the pieces will be heard playing in the scene itself, diegetically, rather than added in post-production, non-diegetically. The audiences’ preconceived notions are subverted by Kubrick’s using the precious melodies of Ludwig Van during the rapid and side-splitting sex scene time-lapse; the vibrant and incongruent music only accentuates the humour gained from watching the naked figures scoot about like flies.

In summation, music is such a vital utensil in a filmmaker’s toolkit; it is- arguably- the thing that spectators remember the most about the film itself. To back this up, I asked my friends and family what film they remember by its soundtrack and not any other feature, and I received such responses as: 

“Chef (2014, Favreau) has lots of Cuban and Latin American style music which I love, it has a brass band version of Sexual Healing as well which I enjoy more than Marvin Gaye’s original”

“Eyes Wide Shut (1999, Kubrick)- the music is so terrifying” 

“Napoleon Dynamite (2004, Hess) includes music which is both incongruous to the other songs, like the dance scene with Jamiroquai’s Canned Heat, and the score by John Swihart is off key and out of tune like Napoleon.”