The musical strategies of some exemplary ‘titles’ sequences in a way that illuminates the function of music in entertainment cinema

In nightclub to view a variety of techniques used, the style successions of four bucks will be analysed from classic Hollywood cinema Casablanca and Psycho, a modern Hollywood acquire, Edward Scissorhands, and a recent Russian film, prisoner of the Mountains (Kavkazky Plennik). In non- medicational terms Casablanca, Psycho and Edward Scissorhands all present different versions of the classic Hollywood technique of employ a closed, self-contained deeds period.Meanwhile in prisoner of the Mountains in that location is an extended rate onwards the names nonplus, and this sequence includes melody. The following points pauperization to be addressed with regard to each film how the harmony in the designation sequence coincides with the visuals (i. e. how the sequence works on its own) what kind of role the unison plays how this can be perceive in terms of its effects on audience takeation and manipulation and finally how the harmony of the title sequence relates to th at which is used later on, and in what mount the title medicinal drug itself is used.In Casablanca the normal Warner Bros flashing accompanies the studios logo at the very porta, and drum euphony links the picture to the visually static title sequence which uses a map of Africa as its background. This develops into oriental music for the full orchestra, using several clichis developed from the horse opera perception of the orient, such as the persistent use of the melodic progression tonic/leading stemma/flattened-submediant/dominant (i. e. C, B, A-flat, G) played predominantly by institution and reed instruments.When the credit for the composer Max Steiner appears, the music shifts and plays La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, further this concludes with an interrupted cadence alternatively than its normal perfect version. We must also examine the next sequence as it forms a unit with the title sequence, using both music and partly-animated visuals. We see anot her globe, this time used for the mapping of the physical and causal route to Casablanca, from France and other places. Clips of epitome journeys are superimposed onto the map as the refugees flee Paris and Marseilles.The music sequential this follows on from the bearish constitution of the interrupted cadence of La Marseillaise, building down to low, dissonant and lugubrious harmonizes on brass which begins to be accompanied by a romantic high, intense and chromatic melody for strings in octaves. Finally, as the beginning scene of the film begins in a market square in Casablanca, the music returns to oriental music, this time, supposedly, diegetically. The role of this sequence is manifold eldestly it establishes Casablanca as the physical and spiritual ground for the film, same to the geographically blatant use of maps.It also adds interest to an otherwise static title sequence, and indeed, is a collage of the musical subjects that are to be presented in the film. The first cardinal themes (Oriental and Marseillaise) are so explicit that they do not take on much contextual meaning in this original setting, but rather set up purely musical expectation, which can be utilised by transformation or by various possibilities of juxtaposition with visuals. The third suffering, yearning theme is less familiar and in that locationfore takes meaning from its context and becomes associated with the desire for freedom and liberty.In this sense the themes rundown up the plot as captivity in a wild land (oriental), fettered liberty (La Marseillaise and its cadence), and romantic human yearning for freedom. Generically, the nationalistic music also helps establish the film as a serious war film as well as a melodrama. The main strategies of the musical sequence, so, are clear to introduce the main musical themes in a way that makes the introduction understandable and establishes its literary genre.By its nature the music also manipulates the audience into feeli ng the setting to be removed from their own settings by the fact that the oriental music is exotic in an romanticistic orientalist sense rather than in a Moroccan sense, establishing the film as a western work. The port in which the title music influences the rest of the film is generally easy to detail. Unlike the manner in which As Time Goes By is used in a proliferating way, the occurrences of the title themes are used to prompt us of their original or implied contexts and meanings.The Marseillaise theme is used as a symbol of France (for the flashback sequence) but to a greater extent(prenominal) generally as a marker of the success or failure of idealism and the Allies in its battle against cynicism and Fascism its oerall movement is from the interruption of the titles to the only full cadence in the final scene as Louis finally gives in to patriotism by throwing away the Vichy water. Oriental music is used to a greater extent scarcely as the setting has been established, but it is used diegetically in the Blue Parrot scenes to distinguish it from the more homely and American Ricks (Cafi Americain).Thus some of the title music was truly introductory and other separate were to be used for future reference. The fact that As Time Goes By was not used indicates that it did not attempt a full musical accumulation of themes but concentrated on those necessary to understand the first scene. The title sequence of Psycho is more closed and self-contained than that of Casablanca due to the manner in which the music of the titles is separated both by silence and by change of mood from the opening scene.The sequence is also far more visually captivating due to the thrusting horizontal lines that shoot across the screen and distort the titles themselves, culminating in a vertical meeting of upwards and downwards-moving lines and a release. Unlike Casablanca at that place is no aspect of narrative or historical context, but rather the establishing of a mood, a s the lines advise frenetic activity, violence, splitting and then final dying union, as the lines meet and stick away. The music, meanwhile, uses three primordial textures in succession, all of which are linked by the modernist language and string scoring of Herrmanns score.The first is a driving motor rhythm of double-stopped dissonances in the tradition of The Rite of Spring, which develops by superimposing variants of a basic cell onto itself and thusly expanding in volume and texture. The second is this rhythmic idea as an accompaniment to a soaring violin theme which is steady not built-inly amorous in character due its persistent rarity apparent movement. Ostinati are thus the key to the sequence. The third texture is the sharp rhythmic idea used by small sections of strings in upwards sequences, dying away with the visual lines, and reaching an extremely high tessitura.The music stops and pauses before the opening scene begins with slow weakly-discordant descendin g chords in the style of Debussy. The real use of a main title, of course, should be to set the pulse of what is to follow I am convinced, and so is Hitchcock, that aft(prenominal) the main titles you know that something terrible must happen. The main title sequence tells you so, and that is its function to set the drama. You dont need cymbal crashes or records that never sell. 1Thus Bernard Herrmann both states the specific strategy of the musical cue that accompanies the title sequence in Psycho and proposes a general theory of the function of titles sequences. He also justifies his pick of a string orchestra for such dramatic music, and in other places likens the string sound to Hitchcocks anachronistic monochrome. The strategy, then, is to sum up the essence of the film. That essence is surely the surprising primitive (in the primitivist sense of Stravinsky) violence that describes the title word, and in no way sets the scene for that which immediately follows.The music is fi ercely modernist for a cinema audience but still within their understanding so that, along with the visuals and the word psycho, the main segment of the titles establishes itself as distinctly uncivilized and violent. Just as the straight lines penetrating the screen and the titles can be interpreted as predicting the motion of stabbing and also the split character of Bates, the music is stabbing in its chords and ends screaming as Marion will do. The horror genre is thereby indicated, but the musics insistent intensity hints at the obsessively psychological nature of Hitchcocks art.The influence of this titles music on the rest of the film is subtle. The first scene is entirely removed from it by mood, if not all in all by musical language, a feature that unifies the entire score and film. The first time the titles music is reused is when Marion introduces that her top dog has seen her driving her car after she had told him that she was going straight home to bed. The fright sh e suffers, and the effort with which she suppresses it in order to force a smile at her boss, seem to initiate the return of the violent double-stopped ostinati of the titles.Here there is a meaning attached to a mood which we understand to be the essence of the film the music is in some way linked to the Marions subjectivity and also the insistent technology of the car. Marion is shown to be a transgressive woman, and this raises the expectation that Marion herself may be the psycho she has a headache she let outs voices in her head she has stolen money she drives a masculine pastime in most films and accordingly her fright is expressed not through Romantic scherzo music but by this horror music. This expectation is, of course, entirely false.Meanwhile the explicit violin theme of the titles is used to fill the screen just as Marions face does as we watch her watching the road, amounting to a nullification of any reluctance we might have towards voyeurism. The most powerful influ ence the titles music has over the film is its various ways of presenting ostinati. We learn to decode this new musical language in stages, so that the deep ostinati heard as the dying Marion travel to the floor in the shower is distinguished from the fret four-note repeated figure associated with Marions decision to run away with the money.They mean different things but are unite by technique and by the world they draw for the audience. Edward Scissorhands toys with genre it is a both a authorized horror film and a parody of one (of the Frankenstein and Beauty and the Beast traditions) it is also a fantasy, a comedy and a melodrama. This is recognised in the titles sequence and the music that accompanies it. The studio logo is accompanied by snow and then there follows a title sequence that is ambiguous as to whether it is animated or real.In fact, it turns out that much of the sequence is real and is taken from later scenes involving Vincent Price that are snappy to the plot, such as the brief view we have of him dead and the hands that could have been Edwards. However, this is all crafted with elements of medieval fantasy, using discrete images from the sign/castle, beginning with dark shadows and an old door opening, moving to what we later realise was the inventors laboratory, and this culminates in the purely fantastic animation of hearts and other shapes falling like snow, with which the title sequence concludes.Danny Elfmans music for this sequence is remarkable mainly for its orchestration it begins with solo celesta, then strings are added, accompanying a plaintive cor anglais, and then a full (and massive) orchestra plays the main theme, to which is added a celestial and voiceless choir, which sings to oooh. The chord sequence that is most prominent is a major tonic triad moving to a squirt triad of the submediant.In effect, the sequence is akin to an amalgamation of Casablanca and Psycho, for it uses the technique of joining the titles to a false first scene, whilst dissociating it from the first real flashback scene, which begins in prosaic silence. Elfmans music is fairly uniform here but multivalent. The magic nature of the film is set by the celesta and the harp/flute-oriented nature of the full orchestration and finally by the angelic voices. The magical interpretation of this combination of instruments is accepted by way of Chaikovsky, Debussy and John Williams, from whom the harmonic progressions are also borrowed.The element of horror is marginalized but represented by low strings and the melancholy of the cor. The voices add a forge of naive wonder that is rather over the top, something that is a major part of the film. The audience is led to expect a fairy tale with an element of horror to it, but also the clues to the somewhat tongue-in-cheek nature of the film are also present in the music. Importantly, from the very beginning this affective music is associated with the house and Edward.The element of fa lling in this film is highly significant many of the moments of greatest significance swan around the falling of snow, which is finally associated by the old woman of the present with Edwards very world, and thus the existence of the film and of magical naivety and goodness, with the falling of snow in the studios very logo before the titles there had been no fanfare but silence accompanying the falling of snow in the titles the shapes are shown to fall like snow these shapes include hearts, which provide a link to humans and human emotions the inventor falls when he dies and his fall is emphasised by the way in which we view his face as he realises he is to die. The sequence leading up to the inventors death is the key to the explanation for Edwards condition, which is half the mystery of the film (the other half is how it will end), and it is drawn out by its progression being interrupted and alternated with scenes of the present (within the entire flashback of the film).During this we realise the significance of what we had seen in the titles, and to emphasise this the titles music is brought back, and the tragic nature of the story is shown by the fact that we were ignorant of its intended significance until now. The other scenes in which the titles music features prominently are when Edward sees the picture of Peggys young lady for the first time (choir ooohs) and when snow is falling and Edward magically (for it would not be come-at-able) creates beautiful ice sculptures with the girl as his enraptured audience (full statement of the main theme). Thus the titles music is used to indicate the carriage of the picturesque, the naive will to do good and the tragic nature of fate.Those things not privileged by this music are, by implication, marginalized. However, the titles theme also proliferates the film as Elfman develops it by distortion (quarter-tone glissandi in the main theme) during moments of anguish. This is standardised to Steiners use of L a Marseillaise in Casablanca. Finally, by way of contrast, we will look at Prisoner of the Mountains, a strong piece of anti-war propaganda made during, and based on, the ongoing Russo-Chechen conflict. The film begins with a long sequence before the titles, showing the recruitment process of a young man drafted in as a tolerate soldier into the Russian army. We see him given a medical examination naked, which has an element of humour to it.thence we see an older soldier go to play pool outdoors with a friend and they racket in a relaxed, late-evening atmosphere. The contrast between the young and innocent and the hardened cynic is reinforced as the soldier, Sasha, responds to other soldiers being rowdy by firing off rounds of his machine gun in handle attack. As he shoots we see his tensed, macho face, there is a freeze frame and a vocal music begins, the first music of the film. The song is an old one and is obviously recognisable as a pop song of the type popularised during the Second World War, a period that is a subject of great nostalgia for Russians. We then see a military manoeuvre operated by the Russians with both the old and the young soldier on board a Russian tank.The song ends and we are brought out of nostalgia for the army to the harsh reality as we hear a solo plucked string instrument play an oriental snippet of melody. This alerts the audience to the possibility of insecurity from Russias ethnic others and to the placement of the scene in the Caucasus mountain range. Suddenly the tank is ambushed and our two soldiers are intemperately wounded and left unconscious and seemingly dead by their comrades and are captured by the Chechens. Finally the titles begin with an endless panorama of the mountains and dramatic orchestral music in an orientalist style. Here it is difficult to determine what constitutes the immanent title sequence if one accepts Herrmanns definition.The music that accompanies the titles certainly does more to emphasis e the setting and the drama of the film, but we cannot forget what has already happened. The freeze-frame on Sashas face as he fires in connection with the ultra-popular song is so strong a device so difficult to interpret on first viewing that it dominates the opening. Moreover, whilst the opening music is hardly reused before the end of the film, there is another sequence which is crucial to the films anti-war message the two Russians are kept hostage, chained together, for a long period and it becomes increasingly likely that they will be killed. As they sit together, back to back, Sasha begins to sing another old WWII song in a triumphant, bald-faced voice, something that is obviously escapist.Suddenly his voice is multiplied and the song is taken over by a big chorus and the shot moves from the two men to the vast expanse of the mountains, so that he can be seen to become the might of the Russian army. As the song is still being bellowed out, the shot changes back to the men, and Sasha is emit frantically. The false expectation of escape in patriotism that had been set up by the song is revealed, and this makes sense of the opening song in addition. In a sense, then the titles sequence constructs a conventional colonialist Russian audience led to be wary of foreign subjects, whilst its other musical material works against this.It is possible to generalise our observations to note that for every film here the titles operate as a kind of first subject of a sonata-form movement they establish certain information about the films essence which can be developed in a linear way, as in the thematic references in Casablanca and the thematic distortions of Edward Scissorhands, or in a more accumulative way, as with the manner in which the music for the titles sequences in Psycho, Edward Scisssorhands and Prisoner of the Mountains gains in meaning as we acquire more information. As an audience we are led to retrieve that the titles have meaning and, like the sub ject of a sonata, will be recapitulated.