The Use of Music in Film

Musical Score

Music is used to draw out or enhance the emotions in a scene, to hint at emotional cues for the audience or suggest an overall mood.  Songs are sometimes composed especially for a film. They can be used to emphasise the feeling of the piece or to give a sense of time or place. Sometimes anachronistic music is used which enhances the emotion of a scene but does not fit in within the time period of the piece for example the use of David Bowie's Cat People in Inglourious Basterds (2009). The use of modern music within an historical setting creates an interesting contrast. 

The Musical sequence I have chosen is from The Fall (2006).

The opening sequence consists of a series of slow motion black and white shots scored with the second movement of Beethoven's Allegretto from his Symphony No.7. I really like the way the flow of the music and the flow of the images work together. There is a balletic feel to the movement of the images and score. The scene opens in silence as a man's head appears from beneath the surface of a body of water. The music begins. A man appears walking through a cloud of smoke, a feather floats on top of the surface of the water, a man in Native American costume sits smoking, a prosthetic leg lies in the water with an arrow embedded in it. The images continue and there seems to be little connecting them at first, a series of random almost surreal objects and people. The scene is mysterious and the connection between all these images only becomes apparent later on in the film. The sequence is highly stylised and each shot is perfectly framed. The strong contrast of the black and white photography creates strong, indelible images.

The music sets the tempo of the sequence and the slow build up in the music slowly increases the tension of the scene. The instrumentation is sparse and the music is subtle and does not compete with the images. There is a constant froward motion in both the music and the images. There is a melancholy feel to it and the effect of the both the images and the score is very moving. I think it is a beautiful sequence and works wonderfully on it's own but takes on more resonance once the story in the rest of the film unfolds.