Grey Sighs of the Fog, Liaison of Pitch and Celluloid by Payman Akhlaghi, Film Music Graduate Paper 2007 UCLA

7/31/2019 Grey Sighs of the Fog, Liaison of Pitch and Celluloid by Payman Akhlaghi, Film Music Graduate Paper 2007 UCLA

1/28

Grey Sighs of the Fog

The Liaison of Pitch and Celluloid

An Appreciation

Parts I & II

By: Payman Akhlaghi

Music 597

Prof. Roger Bourland

Fall 2006 Winter 2007

UCLA


2/28

Grey Sighs of the Fog: The Liaison of Pitch and Celluloid

A Graduate Level Independent Research Paper, Submitted Toward Degree of PhD in Composition

Author: Payman Akhlaghi Excerpts of a Projected Book Fall 2006 Winter 2007, UCLA

Page 2 of 28

www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Yellow Wails of the Meadow

In 1928, Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) wrote in praise of the Japanese Kabuki for

its integration of the different sensory and intellectual elements of theater into a cohesive

artistic entity, one that if perceived as it had been instinctually intended, would induce a

unified emotional and dramatic effect in the audience. There, he spoke of a monism of

ensemble, where sound-movement-space-voice do not accompany (nor even

parallel) each other, but function as elements of equal significance. The Kabuki artist

employed the theater as a quasi-synesthetic medium, building his summation to a grand

totalprovocation of the human brain, without taking any notice which of these several

paths he is following. As he observed, for example, once a character moved to the fore

of the stage, ever further away from a surrendered castle, his movement was conveyed

and accentuated in four stages of removal: spatial(by the actors steps), flat painting(the

change of backgrounds), intellectualindication (a curtain was understood to obscure the

fading castle), and finally, the employment ofsound(i.e. the Japanese samisen music

with its rhythmic and onomatopoeic sonar characteristics.) In Kabukis cohesive appeal


3/28




Page 3 of 28


to sensory data, its application of the macro and micro views of the scenic and stage

events, and in its sense and methods of timing and tension-building, Eisenstein found an

ideal case in point for his own theories on the basic unity of theater, but more

importantly, on what he now considered the rightful heir to theater, that is the art of

cinematography. In his words, here we find something totally unexpected [] where

theater is transformed into cinema. And where cinema takes that latest step in its

development: the soundfilm. [These and all other subsequent quotations from

Eisenstein are taken from The Unexpected, first published in 1928, found in Film Form, a

collection of essays by the director, pp. 18-27. For more information, see below,

Bibliography.]

To him, the principles of cinematographic montage and the ideal state of sound-

film were already realized in the Japanese arts and its world-view, most conspicuously in

the Kabuki theater, but also in the hieroglyphic notation of its language, and especially, in

the pictorial imagery of its poetry. Here, he saw the perfect opportunity to emphasize

what he had previously declared necessary in order to achieve a contrapuntal method of

combining visual and aural images. [] a new sense: the capacity of reducing visual and

aural perceptions to a common denominator.

Of course, the quest for a gestaltexperience in multi-media performing arts had

not been unknown to the Western classical artists throughout the ages, the most eloquent

expression of which could be found in the elaborate Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, both

in its theory and in its rather successful practice. But to Eisenstein, the co-operation of a


4/28


5/28




Page 5 of 28


The New Sense

The common denominator in Eisensteins words may be best described as that

underlying matrix of psychological events which propels the narrative of the greatest

works of art and gives them a strong sense of cohesion. The sweeping momentum of a

Beethoven symphony, the harmony between words and pitches in a Schubert song, or the

multi-layered coordination of drama, music and visuals in a Wagner opera, all appear to

stem from the artists prodigious ability to access this least ostentatious reservoir of

creative resources. It is certainly there, and we certainly sense it, either as an emotional

aggregate of the whole or as the quasi-tangible common denotation of the sound-picture

and the dramatic elements. And yet, even in a more literary art such as theater or cinema,

one might find it all but impossible to descriptively capture in words this elusive unifying

thread of the drama with absolute certainty.

Consider the all too well known case of William Shakespeares Hamlet. The plot

might be described as to begin in grief and disdain, pushed forward by curiosity and the

desire for revenge, and land in a partial settlement of the grievances and the fatalistic

death of the hero. As such, the play follows the curve of a classic tragedy rather

faithfully. But is there not more elements and layers to this storythe unanswered loves,

loyalties and betrayals, sanity and madness, justice versus revenge, scrupulous

investigation against impulsive action, nobility and savagery, and so onthe organic

interweaving of which could not be so easily obviated in words?


6/28




Page 6 of 28


The mere reluctance of Hamlet in revenging his fathers death, for instance, has

long been a cause clbre amongst analysts and performing interpreters. Here is a partial

illustration taken from various film adaptations:

Freudian interpretation attributes Hamlets reluctance to the unconscious

workings of an unresolved Oedipus complex and hence, a tacit sense of

complicity, a view which was most unequivocally taken by the Franco

Zeffirelli/Mel Gibson team in their 1990 adaptation;

The present writer has long thought of it as a result of Hamlets sophisticated

regard for the boundaries of the material world as opposed to the ancient world of

spirits, his attachment to the etiquettes of nobility and the supremacy of reason, a

perspective which is consistent with his educational background in philosophy

and his royal status, and one that seems to be in line with the Grigori

Kozintsev/Innokenti Smoktunovsky film version of 1963;

Alternately, one could see his long hesitation to act as an outcome of Hamlets

effeminate, soft-spoken manners of nobility, a view seemingly endorsed by the

1948 Laurence Olivier production, or

Consider him incapacitated to kill by a progressive early 20th

century existential

mind and a heroic soul trapped in a eighteenth or nineteenth century [sic!] body,

as Kenneth Branagh did in his 1996 version, or yet

Think of him as a sane young man simply thrown in a torturous depression by the

agony of a knowledge he cannot possibly use in a court of law, as Michael

Almereyda/Ethan Hawke did in their 2000 setting of present-day New York


7/28




Page 7 of 28


And so on.

The case of Hamlets hesitation for revenge, only one of many forceful dramatic

elements in this play, demonstrates how futile would be any attempt in claiming the

ultimate definition for the essence of this work. After all, amid their so many

interpretive discrepancies, each of the aforementioned adaptations is successful in its own

right, the story of Hamlet still captures their respective audiences, and with all likelihood,

the play will continue to lure new artists into finding still fresher angles to tackle its all

but too familiar plot for decades to come. Furthermore, in addition to the ambiguities of

the character and plot, there still remain so many other interpretive and creative

possibilities for so many of the other theatrical or cinematographic elements of this

workbe it the scenic design, costumes, language style, sound design, lighting, historical

setting, etc.each of which could be played with latitude, but all of which should be in

harmony with each other, if a coherent adaptation is desired.

And now, lets add music into the equation! Of all the intangibilities that impede

communication in the social world behind the production of a play or a film, the abstract

nature of the music by default makes it perhaps the hardest of all to be conquered. As we

watch and listen to each of the above cinematic adaptations of a single play, be it

accompanied by William Waltons 1948 minimal usage of brass fanfares, Dmitri

Shostakovichs 1963 tragic mood of the octatonic strings, Ennio Morricones 1990 lyrical

melodies, Patrick Doyles 1996 heroic orchestrations, or Carter Burwells 2000


8/28


9/28


10/28




Page 10 of 28


Finally, notable achievements in film music could be found in the more

commercially successful movies [Mikls Rzsas score forEl Cid(1961);

Simon/Garfunkel/Grusin work on The Graduate (1967)], as they could in the so-called

art-films [Jrgen Kniepers music forWings of Desire (1987); the use of J. and R.

Strauss, Aram Khatchaturian and Gyrgy Ligeti music in 2001: A Space Odyssey

(1968)]. There are also cases where the asymmetric sophistication of the music stands out

and gives a helping hand to the lesser maturity of the film for which it was composed

[Williams music forJane Eyre (1970) and The Terminal(2004); Jerry Goldsmiths score

forThe First Great Train Robbery (1979)].

Velvet Whispers, Crimson Cries

Of the same Kabuki performance, Eisenstein further wrote:

The moment of the discovery of the hiding-place [of the

villain after a fight] must be accentuated. To find the right

solution for this moment, this accent must be shaped from the

same rhythmic materiala return to the same nocturnal,

empty, snowy landscape [as seen earlier in the play]


11/28




Page 11 of 28


But now there are people on the Stage! Nevertheless, the

Japanese do find the right solutionand it is a flute that enters

triumphantly! And you see the same snowy fields, the same

echoing emptiness and night, that you heard a short while

before, when you lookedat the empty stage

The multi-faceted connotations of a sophisticated musical composition, often

hard to be verbalized, allows for adding layers of meaning to a naked scene, and

even define its sense and purpose for the audience. Here, unlike a concert setting,

an immediate emotional experience of the music precedes its intellectual

appreciation. This would very much please Leo [Lev] Tolstoy (1828-1910), who

late in his life What is Art? (1896)endorsed what he considered the

immediate, contagious art, particularly in the world of music, over works that

would require intellectual mediation. For him, the sincerity of emotion ruled in

true art. What Eisenstein admires in the Japanese art strongly suggest that he had

been influenced by the ideas of his compatriot. This is an ironic fact, because for

all the formalism that he was to be accused by the Stalinist regime, he seems to

have always been an artist of nature at heart.

Occasionally (and usually at the moment when the nerves

seem about to burst from tension) the Japanese double their

effects. With their mastery of the equivalents of visual and


12/28




Page 12 of 28


aural images, they suddenly give both, squaring them, and

brilliantly calculating the blow for their sensual billiard-cue on

the spectators cerebral target. I know no better way to

describe that combination, of the moving hand of Ichikawa

Ennosuke as the commits hara-kiriwith the sobbing sound

off-stage, graphically corresponding with the movement of the

knife.

There it is: Whatever I [Givochini, a comic forced to sub

for an operatic bass!] cant take with my voice, Ill show with

my hands! But here it was taken by the voice andshown with

the hands! And we stand benumbed before such a perfection

ofmontage.

Todays film audience is likely to take the synchronization of sound-music

and screen movement in cinema for granted. From transliteration of action to

music in works of animation or even live-action comic or battle-scenes

commonly dubbed as mickey-mousingto broader thematic and atmospheric

relationships found in more dramatic scenes, precise timing of the music to the

picture is often paramount. But this article was written only one year after the

very first talking-movie, the Jazz-Singer(1927) was released in the United States.

Furthermore, Eisensteins Kabuki-based extrapolations for sound-film were being

made from within a country, which still had a few years ahead to catch up with

the new technology. In short, his views appear to be remarkably insightful.


13/28




Page 13 of 28


Not surprisingly, a few months following the publication of this article, in

the fall of 1928, he embarked on a journey to Europe and the United States, in

part to become acquainted with the new techniques of the sound-film. This 3-

year-plus journey (1928 to early months of 1932), although longer and less

successful than intended, was not without its fruits. Perhaps most consequentially,

was his apparently welcome visit to the Disney studios in Los Angeles, which at

the time were making gigantic steps in the techniques of synchronization of

sound-music and animation. Despite the fact that Snow White and Seven Dwarfs

(1937) was released 5 years after Eisenstein left the United States, and the

committed work on the monumental Fantasia (1940) was not begun until 1938,

there is room to believe that Walt Disney and his team had already developed the

necessary techniques for sound-picture coordination at the time of Eisensteins

visit.

Indeed, according to the film historian, Russell Merritt (2001, 2006), not

only Eisenstein, but also his future collaborator, Prokofiev, studied and discussed

the recording techniques behind these two feature musical animations while

working on their most famous joint project, Alexander Nevsky (1938). Merritt also

states that even Prokofiev had been at the studio when parts ofFantasia were

being recorded and mixed (ibid). This is quite plausible, since although as early

as 1934, he had moved back his home permanently to the Soviet Union, he toured

the United States in a concert tour in 1938, and visited several studios (Jeff

Eldridge, 2002). Prokofievs close involvement with the production of the film,


14/28




Page 14 of 28


composing and even recording some of the music as the film was being shot, his

use of then modern recording techniques, such as mixing separately recorded

tracks of chorus and orchestra or placing a bassoon closer to microphone for

balance enhancements (ibid; and Prokofievs own recount), all bring the Disney

animation-music techniques of the time to mind. Even some of the scenes were

later cut to the originalmusic, which had been already recorded, a rare

opportunity for any living composer of the time.

In Alexander Nevsky, principles of concert ballet and animation-style

synchronization came together, a fact clearly demonstrated in the masterly

choreographed battle sequence on ice, over a frozen lake, along with the dramatic

cantata-style choruses elsewhere in the film. The timbral element for each side of

the battle was uncanny: the dark and ominous low brass depicted the Teutonic

forces, while a folk-like, lyrical chorus was assigned to the Russians. Here one

also finds an example of a quite legitimate onomatopoeic cue, where to create

further suspenseas the ice begins to break under the feet of the enemy army, the

composer uses an eerie silence and timpani glissandi, to a maximum effect. The

music understands the inner rhythm of the action, the well-thought pace of the

montage, and the macro-scope of the drama, without losing the view of the

microscopic sound elements. The well-calculated blow of this sensual billiard-

cue hits right on target, and the effect is mesmerizing.

As seminal was Prokofievs work on Eisensteins Alexander Nevsky, it

was coming five years after Max Steiners ground-breaking application of


15/28


16/28


17/28


18/28


19/28


20/28




Page 20 of 28


Music As The Blueprint

For those directors with a more heightened sense of aural appreciation, the film

itself might become an attempt in interpreting a musical composition. Consider the

following cases:

The Lives of the Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

This film is one of the latest examples of an essentially prominent role for the

music in the plot. As part of the story, a young playwright has just finished reading a

seemingly published score by Edition Petersin reality, an original composition by the

films composerat the piano. The score was a farewell gift to him from a fellow East

German intellectual, before his committing suicide. The cover of the score reads in

German, Sonata for a Good Man. In lines that directly reflect the Platonic argument on

the purifying effect of music on the young souls, the character turns to his lover and asks

her rhetorically, How could anyone who truly hears this music be a bad person?

Unbeknownst to him, this moment has just been shared by another person, a Stasi

surveillance officer who has been monitoring their apartment in secret. The music

becomes a catalyst of transformation, and afterwards, the officer goes through a radical


21/28




Page 21 of 28


change, eventually sacrificing his position in the government in favor of saving the

playwright from imprisonment.

In a TV interview with Charlie Rose, the writer and director of the film, Florian

Henckel von Donnersmarck, mentioned in length how he had asked the composer,

Gabriel Yared, to compose this piece in advance, and how he had asked him to make a

piece of music that if Hitler had heard in the years before WWII, he would have known

the terrible consequences of his plans, and he would have avoided waging the war. The

director described the music as being similar to the works of the young Alban Berg, as a

depiction of what is real, and as something that won over him with repetition. The music

indeed captures the essence of the era and the characters in its short span of few minutes.

Saraband

Ingmar Bergman is reputed for his highly sophisticated taste not only in cinema,

but also in theater, in literature, and in classical music. Each of his films demonstrate a

different approach to the application of music in film. Consider the following:

1960: In The Devils Eye, he opted for the unusual use of Scarlatti Sonatas, played

on harpsichord.


22/28




Page 22 of 28


1968: In The Hour of the Wolf the dissonant ambiguities of original modern

compositions, almost in the style ofmusique concrte (Lars Johan Verle), mostly provide

a window into the agony of the mysterious paranoia of the protagonist. This is while

elsewhere, within the context of the story, a puppet presentation of an opera by Mozart

yields in an enormously suspenseful and intense scene, which takes place in the

mysterious castle.

1972: ForCries and Whispers, he chose a collection of classical pieces, including

Chopins Mazurka in Am, to maximum effect.

The above were in contrast to two of his better known works up to that point: in

the case ofThe Seventh Seal(1957) and Wild Strawberries (1957), he had primarily

employed the original music of a contemporary film composer, Erik Nordgren.

1975: Mozarts Magic Flute received an interesting treatment by Bergman

in his film production of the work. Compared to such later masterly operatic

adaptations as Don Giovanni (1979) by Joseph Losey, orCarmen (1984) by the

Italian neo-realist director, Francesco Rosi, Bergmans work obviously lacks the

transplantation of the action into more realistic settings. Indeed, it seems to be a

straightforward TV adaptation of a stage production. Yet, Bergman has managed

to convey intelligently his interprertation of not only the music, but the

composers own personality and his niche in the global culture, through the

synched cuts of various headshots during the musical Overture and the Interludes.

Here, the director briefly examines various faces from the audience, each of a


23/28




Page 23 of 28


different age, sex or nationality and expression, one resembleing Penderecki and

another Schoenberg, one an Indian and another a European, until each time he

settles with the fermata on the clever smile of a little girlMozarts spirit

personified.

In an extended 145-minute documentary, made during the making of

Winter Light(1962), Bergman was asked what the letters SDG meant at the end

of his script. The well-known spiritual atheist answered candidly that the letters

were an acronym for a latin expression, meaning Only For the Glory of God,

and that he signed his works with those letters after Bach, who also did so at the

end of his compositions. With such reverence for the master, it should not come

as a surprise that the directors last work to date, Saraband(2003), was not only

named, but also structured, formally and thematically after a cello suite by J. S.

Bach.

Saraband is conspicuously divided into several episodes, each being

introduced with a card, each bearing the title of a movement of a suite, and each

being of a different sentiment. The composition for cello is intertwined with the

film on several levels. On the one hand, each of these movement-titles open their

respective episodes and set its tone and mood. On the other hand, two of the main

characters of the piece, a musician father and his daughter, practice and play

segments of the piece on two cellos. The intericacies of their love-hate

relationship approaching incest, the suffocating tension of the fathers relation


24/28


25/28




Page 25 of 28


stroke of humorous deconstructionism, he allowed the main character ofThe

Crook(1970, played by the same actor but otherwise unrelated) to whistle that

very theme upon simply hearing the expression, a man and a woman! The

narrative of his later work, And Now Ladies and Gentlemen (2002) is presented

through the extended use of dramatically related songs, all ostentatiously related

to the story-line, executed by the main character, herself a singer and played by a

real-life singer, so much as the work becomes in effect a realistic take on the

musical fable genre, without yielding into its numerous constraints.

Yet, the sophisticated musical understanding of Lelouch is best in display

in his 1981 three-hour poetic epic, Les Uns et les Autres, literally, The Primary

and the Secondary People, but better known in the United States as Bolero. And

there is good reason for this alternate title.

True to Lelouchian fashion, Les Uns opens with a poetic quotation to

the effect that all life stories are variations of a single story. A mans voice,

presumably the directors, also adds that all the characters of the film are based on

real personalities, who once lived more- or less-known lives. The story spans

approximately 45 years across the globe, from the beginnings of WWII in Russia

and the reception of the news of the war in the United States, to a humanitarian

festive gathering, organized by the United Nations in the 1980 Paris. Many of the

characters are artistssingers, instrumentalists, dancers, or conductors. All

characters are related to each other through the war, and their parallel or

intercepting stories culminate quite effortlessly in that climactic celebration.


26/28




Page 26 of 28


Despite their surface differences, they all have one thing in common: they are all

victims of the war, even strangely true in the case of a German conductor, who

falls in love with Paris and with French music. In their relation to the war, their

stories grow to appear as varied repetitions of a single theme. And in their

convergence toward the symbolic celebration of humanity, they appear all

ascending toward the glorious dnouement of a symphonic variation. Motives

repeat, slowly come together, gradually add up and finally blast into an exuberant

outburst. It is Shostakovich in the first movement of his Symphony No. 7. More

closely, however, it is the Bolero.

Viewed from this angle, the script is actually designed according to the

formal strategies of Ravels Bolero. The world is the orchestra, the instruments

are the characters, and the melody is the endless story of their sufferings and their

hopes. Not only the film does not hide this relation in disguise, but it presents

Ravels music in full display. Les Uns begins its tale in a cold Soviet

conservatory, as a young ballerina auditions for the role of her lifetime to the

sound of the Bolero on the piano accompaniment. And it arrives at the climax of

the work, four decades later, in a pleasant Parisian evening, by a French orchestra,

conducted by a German maestro, sung (sic) by the soaring voice of an American

singer and a French youth, attended by many of the victims and survivors of the

war, and danced to by the son of that very young ballerina.

While the overall arch of the film and the details of the script are based on

the Bolero, Les Uns also employs a large arrary of other musics and musical


27/28




Page 27 of 28


events. One of the most succinct instances in musical contribution takes place

early on in the film, during a live concert. A middle-aged pianist is playing along

with the orchestra. A young violinist notices his smiles and fixes her eyes on him

beyond the music-stand. But as she gazes at him across the stage, her face

becomes increasingly alarmed. The pianist is now prespiring and uneasy. His

demise and eventual death off-camera is reflected not only on the face of the

woman in shock, but more amazingly, by the increasingly erroneous pitches

coming out of the piano, until they stop. We do not see the death of the pianist;

we hear it through the death of his sound. (Compare to the epilogue of the 1956

George Sidney film, The Eddy Duchin Story.)

At the climax of the film, that very Jewish woman violinist, having been

lost to dementia after years of war, suffering and the search for his lost son, is

now sitting next to his son in the audience, recently reunited, together listening to

her grandson, singing the theme ofBolero.

Given the above, Les Uns appears to be a rare accomplishment in

cinematic use of pre-music, although it also offers an extended use of original

music by both Francis Lai and Michel Legrand. It is a film that has used the music

as the basis of its structure, as the conceptual core of its theme, and as the major

cohesive element between its numerous characters, underlying a still

independently viable narrative. Such close association of the picture with the

music requires a genuine insight into both mediums, in addition to a true


28/28




Page 28 of 28

understanding of the particular piece at hand. And the film succeeds in this not in

a more or less fantastic setting such as an animation or a fable, but in a fully

realistic environment. As such, with all likelihood, Les Uns is bound to remain

a singular achievement.

NOTE regarding Chapter 2: Titles, Names and Dates were primarily

checked against, or retrieved from the reliable www.us.imdb.com, with occasional

consultation ofwww.google.com or www.amazon.com.

The films cited have all been screened, at least once, by the author, either

in a theatrical setting or on the small screen.

(*) Complete Bibliography pending completion of the projected book.

Documents

Grey Sighs of the Fog, Liaison of Pitch and Celluloid by Payman Akhlaghi, Film Music Graduate Paper 2007 UCLA