Reflections of History Through Film Music

The broader term for film music would be film score. With a film score being all of the music that accompanies a film, my experience in my film music course entail film and music. Beginning the class watching films with no dialogue such as The Battleship Potemkin and Siegfried, the appreciation for music was more profound. In there is no spoken dialogue, just facial expressions and expression through music. During the frantic scenes the tempo of the music is fast and gives the audience a sense of urgency. Then, the scene relaxes and the music is softer because a young boy has been killed. The film intensifies and relaxes the pace throughout the production, which The Battleship Potemkin definitely uses the first function in film scoring. I will add that The Battleship Potemkin was one of my favorites, I felt as though there was hardly a plot just a piece thrown together. As for the second film, Siegfried I was not too fond of it as well. The acting seemed too slow and drawn out or a little over dramatic. The music reflected the emotion which also gave me the notion of the over dramatics. In the film it was clear there was a written script but still in the age of no sound. You could actually see their lips moving in the film, at times I was able to read their lips. But the one thing that strikes me is that there were no women in this film. There were men dressed as women, but it was very evident that they were men. Within every film I noticed that technology was emerging. The Jazz Singer happened to be the first film that used dialogue that could be heard. Although the voices and music were not cued in during the shooting of the film, which is mostly what we do today, it was a successful transition. Also, in the film there was a specific part in the end where we see the father's ghost behind his son who is singing for the Atonement. That is where I noticed the special effects being introduced. In this time period the voices of the actors and actresses were very loud and high pitched. I believe that was due to the excitement of there voices being able to be heard for the first time in history. The Jazz Singer was one of the better films of the class. For me, the most memorable scene of the movie is the argument between the father and son while the song being played has a love theme to it. At the time of argument I expected the consonance and dissonance to be evident, but during the intense scene the music was soft and not abrupt and thunderous as an argument is. Moving on the last, yet, my favorite film, or shall I say musical, Singing In The Rain. It was astonishing and I was moved by it. I first noticed that it was in color as the credits rolled at the beginning of the film. The main title music just so happened to be the actual title of the musical. Singing in the rain contained a lot of program music for the reason that every song had its own scene as well as number. I felt at times throughout the film that there was a lot of audio and dialogue replacement. I watched the mouths of the actors and actresses as they were singing but it did not always match up. Also some of the tap dancing scenes did not match the tapping I heard. Especially the singing in the rain scene and the house dancing scene where Don, Kathy and Cosmo danced together. Other than that I was truly amazed and soaked up every second of the film. Now, I find myself hearing every piece of music in television and movies and its starting to drive me a little nutty. I enjoy being able to recognize and appreciate it now. I'm ready to see what else is in store.