My Year in Film 2023

The ten new releases that either impressed me the most or stayed with me the longest in no particular order:

• TÁR (Field)
• R.M.N. (Mungiu)
• PAST LIVES (Song)
• AFTERSUN  (Wells)
• LA CHIMERA (Rohrwacher)
• ANATOMIE D'UNE CHUTE (Triet)
• THE ZONE OF INTEREST (Glazer)
• 20.000 ESPECIES DE ABEJAS (Urresola Solaguren)
• LE OTTO MONTAGNE (van Groeningen/Vandermeersch)
• SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (Dos Santos/Powers/Thompson)

Noteworthy Runners-Up: THE QUIET GIRL (Bairead), RETOUR À SEOUL (Chou), ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (Poitras), THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN (McDonagh), HOW TO HAVE SEX (Manning Walker), SHEN HAI (Tian), SAINT OMER (Diop), MONSTER (Kore-eda)

I do not usually break down my film list into numbers, but Olivier Samter’s statistics inspired me to superficially dabble in that. So I find that exactly half of the films mentioned above have been directed by women (one of them co-directed with a man). Judging from the sheer amount of films I liked within the past twelve months, 2023 was a very good year. Looking at it as a cinephile in the literal sense that I prefer to see movies in a theater, it was less so. I had even prematurely claimed that it might have been my lowest cinema attendance in over a decade. But in reality, I had not thought of 2020 when canceled film festivals and closed cinemas resulted in only 49 theatrical experiences (an average of less than once a week). In comparison, I have watched about a third of the feature films I have seen in 2023 and a total of 76 screenings (including short film reels in festivals) in cinemas. Of all the streaming services, I have watched the most films on Mubi, followed by Apple (no subscription, pay per view), Disney+, Netflix, and the Swiss public-law platform playsuisse. 31% of all the feature films I watched were directed (or co-directed) by women (37.5% of the films seen in a cinema), whereas animation made up 23% (18.75% of the films seen in cinemas).

In a year when the painterly CG look definitely went mainstream, the most famous company celebrated its 100th anniversary desperately wishing for inspiration. But since that didn't happen, here is a mashup of the six animated features that I enjoyed* the most in 2023, drawn in the style of Milt Kahl (ca. 1973)

Animated Features

The share of animated features was probably higher than ever because I was part of the feature film selection at the Fantoche International Animation Festival (here is a list of all the features/mini-series/medium-length-specials I have watched last year). My favorites among the new releases – those that I either enjoyed the most or that stayed on my mind the longest, in no particular order – are the following:
LINDA VEUT DU POULET (Laudenbach/Malta)
TMNT: MUTANT MAYHEM (Rowe/Spears)
SUZUME (Shinkai)
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (Dos Santos/Powers/Thompson)
DEEP SEA / SHEN HAI (Tian)
THE BOY AND THE HERON / KIMITACHI WA DÔ IKIRU KA (Miyazaki)
Miyazaki’s (latest) swan song also prompted me to read “How do you live?” by Genzaburo Yoshino, a touching pre-WWII novel I wish I’d had when I was a teenager.

Special Mentions go to Pablo Berger’s ROBOT DREAMS (a gentle ode to friendship without dialogue), Jaebeom Park’s MOTHERLAND (the first Korean stop-motion feature in decades, unhurried, small-scale, tactile), KNIT’S ISLAND (a documentary by Barbier/Causse/L’Helgouac’h shot inside a virtual online community), and Marjolaine Perreten’s PEBBLE HILL (a charming tv special that never talks down to its target audience of young children).

Coinciding Restorations
I have also had the pleasure to seeing two brand-new restorations of Cinderella adaptations made in 1950, both of which adhere more or less closely to Perrault’s source material (not the Grimms’ version that is more popular in German speaking countries), embellishing the narrative in their unique ways. While the Disney restoration (4K, no less) pleasantly corrected some blunders of the previous digital releases by going back to the wonderful original colors and grain structure, the uncanny image stability and the lack of an original mono mix still make it look and sound a bit frankensteiny. It’s definitely the best thing next to an IB Tech print, though.

With the Catalan version ÉRASE UNA VEZ… (Escobar/Pellicer) the pleasure was more in seeing this rarity at all, especially after an insightful introduction by one of the researchers involved in a restoration process that took eight years because all they had to work with was a beat-up black and white 16mm print. Thanks to some surviving fragments, artworks, and photograms, they attempted to digitally reconstruct the cinefotocolor version that was shown at the Venice Film Festival.

Japanese Film History
During summer, I immersed myself in the works of Satoshi Kon all over again, re-evaluating his four features and the tv series PARANOIA AGENT for two lectures one of which was part of an extensive retrospective that also included film that inspired Kon and some that were most likely inspired by his films. A special focus on the mostly fictitious film history of MILLENNIUM ACTRESS gave me a reason to finally watch genuinely Japanese classics like TWENTY-FOUR EYES (Kinoshita, 1954) with Hideko Takamine and revisit some of my favorite Ozu films, among them LATE SPRING (1949) and LATE AUTUMN (1960) in which Setsuko Hara graduates from the unmarried daughter to the mother of an unmarried daughter within only eleven years. The relationship between parents and their grown-up children had been on my mind in real life a lot in 2023, so it was only natural that this theme also stood out to me in films as diverse as KING CREOLE (Curtiz, 1958) or TALK TO ME (Philippous, 2022).

Coincidental Selectrospectives
Apart from a deliberate retrospective of Wong Kar-Wai’s partly re-cut Criterion releases, I also happened to watch quite a big chunk of Sofia Coppola’s work in 2023, seeing SOMEWHERE (2010) and PRISCILLA (2023) for the first time. The latter turned out to be a total delight, confirming Coppola as the chronicler of isolation and loneliness in a golden cage: muted, told in a mostly non-verbal style with close attention to surface details, a star-turning lead performance, and the best Elvis impersonator I have seen in a long time (maybe ever?).

After being floored by ANATOMIE D’UNE CHUTE, I finally watched some of Justine Triet’s back catalog and was surprised how interconnected these partly messy, campy, or hilarious films feel regarding recurring themes and relationships. Lawyers or analysts who are personally involved with the people they represent or meet in court, flashbacks with asynchronous dialogue, piano pieces that are abrasively cut on the soundtrack, and in the midst of it all complex, imperfect, sometimes gloriously annoying female protagonists. The parts often seem to be tailor-made for actresses like Laetitia Dosch, Sandra Hüller, Laure Calamy, Virginie Efira, or Adèle Exarchopoulos whose intriguing presence I enjoyed in PASSAGES (Sachs, 2023), LES CINQ DIABLES (Mysius, 2022), RIEN À FOUTRE (Lecoustre/Marre, 2021), and SIBYL (Triet, 2019) last year.

Of all the older films I have seen for the first time in 2023, this dozen left a lasting impression for various reasons.

As far as retrospectives go, I also tried to catch up with some of the more well-known adaptations of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” I had never seen:
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Marin, 1938): The ghosts of Sliding, Feasting, and Setting Things Done Swiftly.
SCROOGE (Neame, 1970): The Campy Ghosts of Shepperton, West End, and Modern Santa.
THE MUPPETS CHRISTMAS CAROL (Henson, 1992): The Ghosts of Jim Henson, the Creepy Kid, and the American Way.
As someone who cannot see any charm in the lifeless eyes of Muppets, the humbug levels in that last one outweighed the blessings by far. I still liked it better than Damien Chazelle’s BABYLON, a film that peaked pretty early: it was hard not to see that elephant crapping incessantly on the protagonist (and the camera) as a metaphor for what this three-hour concoction was doing to its audience (ok, me!).

Onscreen Singing
But cast members singing (in the rain or otherwise) also remained relatively popular beyond big budget love/hate letters to Hollywood or Mattel. From PEARL’s mom to the girls in EL AGUA to Tomas and Agathe in PASSAGES, the vulnerability and purity of singing a cappella created intimate connections, not unlike singing along at the top of one’s lungs in the safe environment of a car as in TALK TO ME and L’IMMENSITÀ or engaging in hilariously off-key karaoke in AFTERSUN and HOW TO HAVE SEX. In accordance with an overall “embodiment turn”, the trend of recent years to include voices (material and synthetic) into film scores (e.g. MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, THE FAREWELL) seems to here to stay with examples ranging from LA NUIT DU 12 and BEAU to GIRL GANG and ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED.

Engaging with films hands-on
Speaking of embodied sounds, my video essay “Sensuous and Affective” was not only published by the Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft but also turned up in the Sight & Sound Video Essay Poll 2023, many thanks to Barbara Zecchi, Thomas Genevicius, Miklós Kiss, and Kevin B. Lee! 

Sensuous and Affective from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

In connection with my work as a researcher I got to teach a seminar on video essays in which we engaged with Alice Rohrwacher’s LAZZARO FELICE (2018) in many different ways. It proved once again that establishing a personal relationship with a film, book or piece of music opens up one’s initial perspective on it in ways that often reveal new insight into the themes, structures or stylistics of films, books or media in general. Besides, my emotional engagement deepens with every viewing, at least before I get too used to it, like when I revisit a favorite work. 

Putting together a teaser for the 100 year anniversary of our local cinema, I had the opportunity to re-evaluate quite a few such films. The major discovery came with the restored theatrical international cut of Leone’s THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. I had never been completely convinced by the extended cut that had been the only way to see the film for a few years (after 35mm fell out of fashion). So when Kino Lorber finally released a 4K version of the original international cut, I found that, beyond the "re-inserted scenes" and the new sound mix, the extended cut added redundant shots of a few seconds here and there to classic scenes that worked far better in the theatrical cut.

In a similar way, making the fan art posters illustrating this post turned out to be a satisfying mode of engaging with the films that lingered in the back of my memory, especially as most of them have already been written about too often.

Looking forward
In terms of movies, 2024 looks promising. I have already been twice to the Marcello Mastroianni retrospective at the filmpodium where in February, I will introduce THE LONG DAY CLOSES (1992) in honor of the recently deceased Terence Davies, one of my favorite directors. Besides, there are still a lot of films that I have not seen yet either because I missed them in theaters or because they are still waiting for a release around here, among them KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, POOR THINGS, EARTH MAMA, MAY DECEMBER, WAR PONY, GODLAND, ALL OF US STRANGERS, THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER, ORLANDO MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY, LOVE LIFE, AMANDA.

The Age Of Emptiness

My contribution to lockdown culture:


The Age Of Emptiness - Video Essay from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

Video essay based on Martin Scorsese's 1993 adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel "The Age Of Innocence" and Bernard Herrmann's score for TAXI DRIVER (Scorsese, 1976).

"The Age Of Emptiness" takes a look at how we might also read Scorsese's film in our current situation of "Social Distancing". After all, the voice-over narration mentions people ("even young people") dying from pneumonia.

Loneliness has always been present in Scorsese's films, especially in TAXI DRIVER. But in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, out of 130 minutes (excluding credits) there are 8 minutes of shots completely devoid of human characters. Especially during voice-over passages, these always remind me of INDIA SONG (Duras, 1975).

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE is exceptionally rich in visual motifs like hands, food, flowers (real, painted, embroidered...), cigars, fire, gloves, writing, paintings and lamps. So instead of another Scorsese-supercut, I attempted to tell a short story highlighting some of these motifs without showing a single human face (which meant I had to ditch the long shots of people sitting at a "social distance" of several feet from each other). No split screen, no explanatory voice-over, just images, music and text.

When Michael Ballhaus once visited our university and talked specifically about THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, he emphasized that his main concern (in general) had always been "capturing the subtext" by way of camera moves and that the excessive use of dissolves in this film had partly been the result of having to trim tracking shots that went on for too long. Thus, my video essay "The Age Of Emptiness" is also a tribute to Ballhaus' cinematography and the editing of Thelma Schoonmaker.

For study and educational purposes only.

Musical Patterns in the Films of Christopher Nolan

Never say never... There were three filmmakers (Christopher Nolan, Stanley Kubrick, Wes Anderson) I vowed never to do a video essay about - not because I wouldn't admire them, on the contrary, but because there is already much too much out there about their work. And now, there are only two (I don't plan to break the promise on Kubrick and Anderson anytime soon). Since this video already had more positive feedback than anything else I made, I can't say it was a bad decision. Right now I am working on a video about some aspects of the synth score of STRANGER THINGS 1. But after that, I will return to Nolan because I still got a broadly outlined essay on some of his more unobtrusive crosscutting techniques waiting to be finished.

Musical Patterns in the Films of Christopher Nolan from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

Music in Nolan's Films

Christopher Nolan strives to make his films the most immersive experience possible. So he prefers the score to support the atmosphere and the pace of his films and not elicit emotions by way of sentimental melodies. While this is very obvious in DUNKIRK (2017), Hans Zimmer's lauded score follows some of the same basic patterns that can be found in all of Nolan's prior films - regardless of the composer. He even said that it basically "is Chris Nolan’s score" (nytimes.com/2017/07/26/movies/the-secrets-of-the-dunkirk-score-christopher-nolan.html).

So here is a tour d'horizon on these musical patterns and their evolution from FOLLOWING (1998) to INTERSTELLAR (2014). Of course, this is only a broad, subjective overview. It is impossible to do justice to the many complexities of each individual score within 10 minutes. Make sure to watch it full screen and loud (preferably on head phones)!

For educational purposes only!

German version for filmbulletin.ch: vimeo.com/239957027

Video Essays: The Music of LA LA LAND in Context

Final moments of GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH (Chazelle, 2009)

Final moments of WHIPLASH (Chazelle, 2014)

Final moments of LA LA LAND (Chazelle, 2016)

For the last few weeks, Barry Jenkins' masterpiece MOONLIGHT and its inspirations from THREE TIMES (Hou, 2005) and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong, 2000) to KILLER OF SHEEP (1977) were heavily on my mind. And I urge anyone who still has not seen MOONLIGHT to give it a try (around here, it only just hit theaters, in the US it is already available on blu-ray and Netflix, so no excuses there)!

But now to the other greatly deserved - aside from the rather complex issues of whitewashing both L.A. and jazz-saving - awards season darling LA LA LAND, aspects of which I analyzed from mid-December to February: I have finally put together three clips for a soundtrack analysis in Swiss German magazine filmbulletin.ch. The German text (which you can find here) goes far beyond the aspects analyzed in the videos. But since LA LA LAND is still in theaters I have limited myself to officially available tracks and clips. 

I/III A Lovely Night 

The Music of LA LA LAND in Context I/III: A Lovely Night from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

Mia and Sebastian cross paths twice before they finally meet cute like Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Donen/Kelly, 1952) at a pool party. Despite superficially despising each other, Seb walks Mia to her Toyota Prius. On their way through Griffith Park, Seb subtly segues into a singing about how nice this view at dusk would be if only they were "some other girl and guy" who could appreciate the moment together. After a few seconds, this turns out to be an homage to the mating ritual of Mark Sandrich's RKO musicals with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. The only difference being that when Astaire woos Rogers in their so-called "integrated" (i.e. off stage) musical numbers we accept them to be world class dancers (and suave singers) because we know about their meta personae. LA LA LAND on the other hand follows all the same moves while celebrating the "authentic" by keeping the protagonists' singing and dancing abilities within reach of what these characters (i.e. rehearsed and well-trained amateurs) would be able to do.

Nevertheless, "A Lovely Night" is the only swing induced song and in the "Summer Montage" version also serves as an ideal example of how Damien Chazelle stages jazz performances. In all his films, Chazelle depicts jazz as an extension of his male protagonist's mindset. And for nonverbal jazz dialogue scenes he likes to use the "jazz whip", a whip pan back and forth between musical dialogue partners.

II/III The Melancholy of Michel Legrand 

The Music of LA LA LAND in Context II/III: The Melancholy of Michel Legrand from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

Writer-director Damien Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz have repeatedly expressed their adoration for Jacques Demy's French new wave musicals LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG (1963) and LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT (1967). Apart from direct references to the overarching structure of PARAPLUIES and the opening dance sequence from DEMOISELLES, Hurwitz' music is very much influenced by Michel Legrand whose scores for Demy are impregnated with his trademark cheerful melancholy. Legrand usually builds his easy listening arrangements out of a tight jazz rhythm section with piano and vibes that is overlaid with a romantic orchestra, woodwind solos and sometimes a big band. In this second video I focus on some of the more straight forward influences on Hurwitz' music*. 

III/III Internal Monologue 

The Music of LA LA LAND in Context III/III: Interior Monologue from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

The deliberate artificiality of movie musicals allows for storytelling devices that go beyond dialogue scenes. Instead of voice-over monologuing, characters often sing about their innermost feelings and worries. One particular genre convention is the interior monologue after a protagonist has fallen in love. In WEST SIDE STORY, Tony belts out Maria's name in expectant ecstasy, for example. In many movie musicals, however, these songs feel like guarded introspective questions brought forth in a seamless transition from dialogue to song, often in a solitary or indifferent environment. By means of a clip from Stanley Donen's FUNNY FACE (1957, a film that LA LA LAND literally references in the epilogue) where Audrey Hepburn sings in her own natural voice - as opposed to the trained voice of Marni Nixon who dubbed all her singing in MY FAIR LADY (Cukor, 1964) - we see how Chazelle and Hurwitz adapt this musical staple into "It Happened at Dawn" (GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, 2009) and "City of Stars". Despite the superficially obvious difference between Sebastian's "City of Stars" and Mia's "Someone in the Crowd" the two interior monologue songs share surprisingly similar structural elements. And considering the duet version of "City of Stars", both songs express a solitary as well as an exuberant collective version of the same interior feeling. 

* In my opinion, Hurwitz' personal style of arranging and orchestrating is also heavily influenced by Danny Troob's orchestrations of Alan Menken's 1990s Disney scores.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - Soundtrack Analysis - Video Essay

My following soundtrack analysis including the three clips was first published in the Swiss film magazine filmbulletin in German. Since voice-over narration would have obscured the very object of sound analyses, the video essay is broken down into three segments that are each preceded by written text. It was originally written and edited in February 2016, shortly before the crew of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD received their well-deserved Academy Awards for best achievements in "Sound", "Editing" and "Sound Editing" among others.

Creation of a Sound World

The illusory effect of modern blockbusters is often rather based on a close sound-image relationship than on realism of content. Thus, in George Miller's MAD MAX: FURY ROAD sounds, voices, even music appear to be organically anchored within the visual world we see, when in fact they were created as far away from the images as the initial car engine sound compared to the Warner Bros. logo it accompanies. As long as audiovisual synchronicity is preserved, we (the audience) accept quite absurd sounds as realistic depictions of a fictitious world.

To me, Miller's post-apocalyptic action film is fascinating exactly because of its virtuosic and single-minded audacity in sketching such a world by means of a gigantic two-hour car chase. According to supervising sound editor Mark A. Mangini, the fact that the soundtrack (that was carefully constructed over a period of two years) is every bit as rich as the film's much lauded visual language, is due to the unusually collaborative atmosphere under the septuagenarian director.

Although because of engines and wind machines, almost none of the meticulously recorded production track made it into the finished film, Ben Osmo's gargantuan miking concept was necessary for Miller to monitor the acting. Apart from that, every phrase of dialogue had to be reconstructible in post production. The actual performances were later created in a lengthy ADR process during which the dialogue was cobbled together word for word from different takes by Kira Roessler and her team.

Acoustic Subjectivity
While the voice of Charlize Theron's rebellious Furiosa sounds authentic for the most part, Tom Hardy's booming mumble appears strangely detached from the image. This highlights how the tonal integration of a voice into its sonic surroundings shapes our impression of filmic reality. Especially during the sparse conversations with Furiosa, Max's highly compressed baritone becomes irritating precisely because the soundtrack tries to force us into accepting Max as the hero protagonist by focusing on his subjective perception, when in fact we consider him as a stowaway in Furiosa's story.

Sharing Max' visions

And yet, in their scenes together, we clearly share the point of view of Max who has been degraded from "road warrior" to a war boy's "blood bag". This is particularly evident during his flashing visions that are accompanied by loud undefined sound objects. Equally effective if considerably subtler, manipulations of ambient noise communicate Max's subjective perception during his gradual unshackling.

The "resurrection scene" after the sand storm is a real masterpiece of sound design by David White*: After a moment of total silence, Max slowly rises while the grains of sand vividly trickle past his - and our - ears, until a swelling droning noise that vaguely resembles the sound of emerging from water grows into irregular pulse beats. The tension is finally released in an alleviative hissing sound when the blood hose is pulled out of his neck.

Although many approaching noises would long be audible in the open desert, time and again, we only hear them when Max notices them. The firing of guns next to Max's head results in momentary deafness and a piercing ringing in our ears while the same action does not affect our perception when it happens close to Furiosa's head. But instead of telling us that she is a tougher character, this simply tells us that we do not share her perspective to the same degree as we share Max's.


Rhythmical Punctuation
Subjectively fading ambient sounds are skillfully utilized to increase shock effects as well as already anticipated explosions. Likewise, the soundtrack accentuates individual cuts with striking sounds and drum beats. When war boy Nux is "struck" by Immortan Joe's glance, for example, a meaty rattle emphasizes the very jump cut that visually conveys Nux's excitement.

The extent to which sound editor Mangini collaborated with the Dutch composer Tom Holkenborg aka JunkieXL is especially evident in a seemless transition from beating noises to drumbeats: Furiosa first hits her war rig with a wrench. Imperceptibly, these beats are then picked up by extradiegetic drums the speed of which was retroactively adjusted to the sound design by the composer. Later, Holkenborg's synthetical "Brothers in Arms" - itself composed of samples that blur the line between music and noise - is triggered by an abrupt arm-gesture of a furious motorcycle warrior.

When Holkenborg joined the production of MAD MAX, the director only wanted to have diegetic music that emanated from the Doof Warrior's mobile battle band. Yet, the composer argued Miller into using an external score by submitting his ideas as musical sketches that could be used as a temp score. Thus, the Doof Warrior's guitar riffs (composed and added in post-production) are indeed remixed to match the spatial position of the fire-breathing guitar. However, they are also interwoven with the continuous rhythms of the action scenes.

Multi-instrumentalist Holkenborg creates his rhythm-based tracks by layering self-made sounds and drum samples directly in a three-dimensional sonic space**. His brand of repetitive rhythm patterns, multiplied bass lines and a general preference for sound modulation over melody and harmony reveal his former association with Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions.



Leitmotif Sounds
While Max's survival instinct to which he seems to be reduced in the first act is expressed by a brute cello note, Furiosa's determination is accompanied by a kind of heartbeat the elements of which suspensefully drift apart when the war rig enters the canyon. Hence, Furiosa's initial fight against Max feels like a tuneless ballet choreographed and edited to a rhythm of tonally varied drum beats and synchronous hitting sounds.

Only after Furiosa discloses the motivation for her rebellion to Max, a music-box-like Adagio emerges from the viola section. Holkenborg orchestrates this melancholy theme for strings with added bass in a chordal*** way and brings it into full bloom as "Many Mothers". Where musical sounds distinguish the human characters, the cars are stylized into organic creatures by sounds recorded and created by Oliver Machin and Scott Hecker.

When the Russian speaking "Buzzards" attack Furiosa's war rig with buzz saws, their spikey vehicles buzz metallically. The war rig itself is provided with a leitmotif sound that resembles the take off of a helicopter. The truck's engine noise, however, always conforms to the mood of the passengers. Occasionally, it is hardly audible during quiet dialogue scenes.

As a reference to Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, Mangini synchronizes Immortan Joe's self-destructive hunt for the war rig with whale sounds. For instance, when milk is squirting from harpooned holes, we hear fountains from a whale's blowhole. Eventually, the destruction of the war (accompanied by the pathos of "Walhalla Awaits") is dubbed almost exclusively with animal sounds instead of engine noises. At this point, we are so immersed in the story, that we never even question the origins of those sounds and accept them as purely diegetic.


* however difficult it may be to credit specific people within this team effort, the "resurrection scene" has been ascribed to David White in more than one interview (SoundWorks Collection).
** see Holkenborg's detailed process in a series of official videos.
*** "melody with chords" as opposed to "counterpoint".

Credits: 

Music: Tom Holkenborg aka JunkieXL
Production Sound Mixer: Ben Osmo

Vehicle Effects: Oliver Machin

Supervising Dialogue Editor: Kira Roessler

Sound Designer: David White

Supervising Sound Editor: Mark A. Mangini, Scott Hecker

Sound Re-recording Mixer: Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff

External links:
Ben Osmo interview (videoandfilmmaker.com)

Mark A. Mangini interview (scpr.org)

Interesting aspects of MAD MAX on my companion blog

The Sound of the Samurai

Donald Richie calls YOJIMBO (1961) "the best-filmed of any of Kurosawa's pictures". But the sound track is worth studying as well. I have compiled two videos that demonstrate the interaction of sounds and music.

Even though Japanese sound tracks at the time often suffered from fidelity issues, Kurosawa was very conscious of the power of sound design (a term that was yet to be invented). In YOJIMBO there are several percussive sounds that fulfill important narrative functions:

In the beginning, when Sanjuro meets the angry farmer and his son in a tele-photo close-up, the only indication that there is some sign of civilisation around are the steadily repetitive sounds of a hand loom. Kazuo Miyagawa's camera then follows the farmer to the nearby house where his wife is weaving equanimously. This rhythmic sound is accompanying the whole scene (which I have shortened) and gets across the subtext that this is a monotonous life.

Later, the inn-keeper Gon tells Sanjuro about all the people in the village. Some of them are introduced by sounds: We only meet the coffin maker by the sound of his hammer which annoys Gon considerably. The sake brewer who rarely leaves his home is characterized by the drumming of his prayers.

Finally, the town crier Hansuke announces the time by beating two xylophone-like sticks. You can hear all four of these sounds in the clip below:

Masaru Satô picks up many of these sounds in his jaunty and rumbling score. Reportedly, Kurosawa did not want a chambara score in any conventional sense and asked for music in a voodoo idiom.

Satô, a composer who liked to incorporate western popular music and jazz in his film scores, wanted to pay homage to Henry Mancini. Miles away from the lightness of "Moon River" or "Meglio sta sera", his succession of short cues was most likely inspired by Mancini's score for Orson Welles' film noir TOUCH OF EVIL (1958). Given that YOJIMBO is partially based on film noir characters, this assumption is not so farfetched.

In the following clip I have juxtaposed excerpts from both soundtracks:
1. "White Horse Lodge" (YOJIMBO): Here the percussive sounds are easily recognizable within the music
2. "Main Title" (TOUCH OF EVIL): There are similar percussion patterns and low brass and woodwinds.
3. "Ronin Arrives" (YOJIMBO): This is a good example of another characteristic trait that might have been influenced by TOUCH OF EVIL - melodic lines arranged in a very low register throughout.

Miyazaki's homage to an imperturbable St. Bernard

Now that Miyazaki's retirement plans seem to be more definite than ever (unlike the three times before), it is a good point in time to dig deeper into what made his storytelling so different from mainstream animated features and yet so universally appealing.

His 1989 children's book adaptation KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE is a film that grows on me everytime I see it. Recently I have started to compare it to another blockbuster that came out in 1989: THE LITTLE MERMAID (Clements/Musker). As soon as I have figured out how to organize my thoughts and analyses, I will write a series of articles about these two films. But more on that later.

For the moment, I would like to guide your attention to a significantly more superficial observation that always makes me smile: The imperturbable St. Bernard.

If you have ever seen Takahata's ARUPUSU NO SHOJO HAIJI (HEIDI - GIRL OF THE ALPS, 1974) you will remember the grandfather's sleepy St. Bernard called Josef (or "Josefu" in Japanese). In the beginning the five year old girl does not know what to make of him as you can see in the following clip from episode 2:

I have chosen this clip because Josef's musical leitmotif (more like a fully rendered theme) is heard for the first time. To me, the dog's character is as much defined by this lumbering tune as it is by his cumbersume and phlegmatic appearance.

In episode 4, after it is implied that Josef is naturally chasing birds, he unexpectedly saves Heidi's pet bird Pitchi:

St. Bernards used to be called "Saint Dogs" because they were traditionally used for Alpine rescues and often depicted with a barrel of brandy around their necks in contemporary paintings. It is therefore only natural for Josef to be in the life-saving business as well.

Most often however, we see him dozing somewhere (see below).

St. Bernard Josef does not seem to be attentive but never misses anything that goes on around him.

15 years later, Miyazaki pays homage to Josef in KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE: Kiki's sidekick Jiji is forced to substitute for a stuffed cat that Kiki lost on the way to a boy called Ketto. Now Ketto not only has a pet bird that goes by the name of Pitchi, there is a sleepy family dog as well. Of course, the black cat Jiji is instantly afraid to be alone with the large dog. But Ketto's dog does not seem to be interested in following its instincts to chase the cat.

Ketto's family dog in KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE shares most of Josef's characteristics.

Although this dog is drawn much more realistically and does not really look like a St. Bernard, it shares most of Josef's characteristics in personality and appearance. Joe Hisaishi even paraphrases the recurring musical theme albeit more sophisticated as you can hear in the following montage of the three dog scenes:

Josef's reincarnation finally (1:11) saves the heroine's pet in a similar way. Here, however, it is not played for suspense but for laconic humor that derives from the dog's imperturbable motion.

Morricone Bits And Pieces [UPDATED]

It's been some time since my last post and I didn't find time yet to write about any of those subjects I've had on my mind a few weeks ago.

After giving introductory lectures on Quentin Tarantino's DJANGO UNCHAINED and Sergio Leone's THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, I am currently preparing one for a screening of Clint Eastwood's THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (March 26, 2013).

So before this here becomes a ghost blog with tumbleweeds drifting by, I like to direct your attention to three clips (only one of which was part of my Leone introduction) about some themes and motifs of Ennio Morricone's music for the dollar trilogy (aka "man with no name" trilogy):

Deguello

"'For my first Western, I asked for a score which was like the deguello which Tiomkin used in Rio Bravo and The Alamo. It's an old Mexican funeral chant.' [...] But it didn't have the lineage Leone ascribed to it. The deguello was specially written and arranged by Tiomkin for Rio Bravo, as a dirge to Sheriff Chance (John Wayne) and his raggle-taggle team of deputies standing guard over the town jail.[...]
Morricone recalls: 'I had to say to Sergio, "Look, if you put that lament into the film, I won't have anything to do with it." So he said to me: "Okay, you compose the music but do it in such a way that a bit of your score sounds like the deguello." I didn't take very kindly to that either, so I took an old theme of mine, a lullaby that I'd written for a friend, [...]. Make no mistake, the theme was certainly far removed from the lament. What brought out a resemblance was its performance in a semi-gypsy style on the trumpet, with all the melismas - the flourishes played around single notes of the tune - which are characteristic of that style. But the theme itself was not, repeat not, the same thematic idea as the deguello.'" (Christopher Frayling: Sergio Leone - Something To Do With Death, 153f)

The following clip includes both Tiomkin's "Degüello" (literally a cut-throat song) from RIO BRAVO and Morricone's sound-alike arrangement of his theatre lullaby that became the main theme of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS:

Motifs
Sergio Leone liked to "complete" his characters with short musical motifs that more often than not sound like an ironic commentary on the action. While Morricone's music for all three dollar films was based on whistling as an expression of the loner's solitude, Clint Eastwood's motif in the first film was a short descendent line played by flute (00:00).

In the second film (00:20), his motif has developed into something reminiscent of a recorder and his bounty hunter father figure rival Lee Van Cleef's piercing glare is reflected in a jew's harp twang (that is sometimes substituted by the metallic sound of an electric guitar or a purely electronic sound).

In the third and final film (0:40), there is only one single motif for all three characters which are supposed to represent three aspects of a single person. That motif is based on a coyote's howl and imitated by different instruments for each character.

The short motifs are followed by a sample of how they are incorporated into the respective theme track:

Demanded Re-Use

"The piece, a Woody Guthrie song called 'Pastures of Plenty', was arranged by Morricone in 1962 for American tenor Peter Tevis, and released in Italy as an RCA single in 1962. [...] The chorus is identical to the Fistful of Dollars theme (barring the latter's incromprehensible lyric), as are the strange instrumental sounds. 'Leone wanted that exact arrangement with a melody put over it,' says Morricone. [...] Leone remembered, 'I was absolutely smitten. [...] That's what I want. Just get hold of someone who is good at whistling.' The man for the job was thirty-nine-year-old Alessandro Alessandroni [...]. So Alessandroni provided and prepared the choir, played the guitar and did the whistling." (Christopher Frayling: Sergio Leone - Something To Do With Death, 156f)

In the final clip you hear Morricone's original "Pastures of Plenty" arrangement (00:00) followed by the same arrangement featuring various instruments played and whistled by Alessandroni for A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (01:00). It's intresting that even Eastwood's iconic flute motif (see clip above) is already part of the Woody-Guthrie-arrangement.

As kind of a bonus I have added the beginning of Morricone's newly composed song "Ancora Qui" (02:00) from DJANGO UNCHAINED - which like the Leone films is based on cinematic myths rather than reality - that sounds like a slowed down reference to the repetitive guitar motif from A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS:

Bonus: The "Leone Close-Up" [UPDATE]
When people think of Sergio Leone, they think of the famous "Leone Close-Up" - a shot that fills the widescreen frame with only the eyes of an actor. Leone was able to induce his climactic confrontations in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST with an almost hallucinogenic quality through his use of extreme close-ups like the one below:

However, one of his heroes, the celebrated B-Western director Sam Fuller, had already experimented with such extreme close-ups in FORTY GUNS a few years earlier. Unfortunately, Fuller didn't seem to be to confident of this daring device and used the two shots (00:25) early on in the film and hardly to any effect that foreshadows Leone's confrontations:

German Summary / Deutsche Zusammenfassung [UPDATE]:

Deguello - Zusammenfassung auf Deutsch: 
Sergio Leone wollte für seinen ersten Western A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS ein Stück aus RIO BRAVO namens "degüello", das er für einen alten mexikanischen Beerdigungsgesang hielt. Es wurde jedoch von Dimitri Tiomkin extra für RIO BRAVO geschrieben und ist wörtlich übersetzt ein "Kehle-Durchschneide-Lied". 

Ennio Morricone weigerte sich, einfach ein Stück von jemand anderem zu kopieren und bearbeitete stattdessen ein Schlaflied, das er mal geschrieben hatte, und orchestrierte es für Mariachi-Trompete. Das Stück ist somit komplett anders, das Arrangement orientiert sich aber an Tiomkins "degüello".

Im Beispiel hören Sie beide Stücke, wie sie im jeweiligen Film verwendet werden. 

Motive
Sergio Leone "vervollständigte" seine Figuren gern mit kurzen musikalischen Motiven, die das Geschehen ironisieren. Morricones Musik für alle drei Dollar-Filme basiert grundsätzlich auf einer gepfiffenen Melodie als Symbol für die Einsamkeit des Einzelgängers. Im ersten Film steht ein kurzes Flötenmotiv für die Figur von Clint Eastwood.

Im zweiten Film (00:20) hat es sich zu einem Blockflötenmotiv verändert, während der stechende Blick seines Rivalen Lee Van Cleef vom metallischen Klang der Maultrommel (und später E-Gitarre) begleitet wird.

Im dritten und letzten Film (00:40) verwendet Morricone ein einziges Motiv für alle drei Figuren, die Leone als drei Seiten einer einzigen Figur gesehen hat. Das Motiv basiert auf dem Heulen eines Kojoten und wird von den entsprechenden Instrumenten imitiert. Im Fall von Eli Wallach von der menschlichen Stimme, die Morricone immer gern als Musikinstrument eingesetzt hat.
Nach den Kurzmotiven folgt der jeweilige Titelsong, wo sie eingeflochten werden: 

Wiederverwertung in eigener Sache:
Morricone hatte 1962 für eine Folkplatte des Tenors Peter Tevis einen Woody Guthrie Song auf seine eigene Art arrangiert. Leone war so begeistert von der Instrumentierung, dass er genau dieses Arrangement für seinen Film wollte und Morricone daraufhin zur identischen Begleitung eine neue Melodie komponierte. Pfeifen, Gitarre und Chor stammen vom 39-jährigen Alessandro Alessandoni.

Dieser Clip enthält Morricones ursprüngliches Arrangement (00:00) gefolgt vom Titelstück von A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (01:00). Interessanterweise ist sogar Eastwoods Flötenmotiv bereits Teil des Woody-Guthrie-Arrangements. 

Bonus: Die Leone-Nahaufnahme
Ein Markenzeichen von Sergio Leone war, dass er mit der Breitwandkamera ganz nahe an die Gesichter der Schauspieler ging und dadurch auf der Grossleinwand seinen Konfrontationen eine fast halluzinogene Wirkung verlieh.

Doch schon der experimentierfreudige B-Western-Regisseur Sam Fuller probierte die Extreme Nahaufnahme auf die Augen ein paar Jahre vorher in FORTY GUNS. Allerdings blieb es bei zwei kurzen Einstellungen (00:25), und leider hat er sie so früh im Film eingesetzt und nie mehr aufgegriffen, dass sie völlig "verschenkt" wirken. Doch Leone war ein Fan von Fuller und hat diesen Film gekannt.

Psycho Excess Leftovers [Updated]

Tonight I'll be giving my lecture on audience involvement and suspense technique in Psycho (1960). However, as usual I have aggregated far more information than I could possibly fit into half an hour. And since my lecture serves as an introduction to the screening of the full-length film, I'm careful not to reveal any twists and surprises.
So some of my excess research is turning up in this "compilation" post which also serves as a companion piece to my lecture and should not be read before seeing Psycho for the first time since it contains SPOILERS.

The Madhouse Motif
Personally I was most interested in Bernard Herrmann's experimental score, a piece of music I have known and liked for at least 16 years. It probably helped making me aware of modernist composing techniques in the same way as Stravinsky's "Rite of the Spring" to which I was introduced through Fantasia (1940).

So while I almost know the cues by heart by now, and I was delighted to discover the so called "madhouse" motif in Herrmann's Taxi Driver score last year. This connection has now spawned a whole branch of clips that even involve Star Wars and revolve around Benny Herrmann's Hitchcock scores.

Psycho's madhouse motif consists of two "unhummable" interval leaps - a seventh up followed by a ninth down. According to his biographer Steven C. Smith "it was one of the composer's favorite signatures for madness and desolation", two themes that were frequently on Herrmann's mind. It first surfaced in 1935, then in his "Moby Dick Cantata" and after that in the above mentioned films.

In Psycho's most memorable dialogue scene, Herrmann introduces the madhouse motif exactly when Anthony Perkins says "madhouse". From then on, Herrmann develops into an unsettling fugue that "echoes the third movement of Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, a piece alluded to in Bloch's novel" (Smith).

Even in classically invisible dialogue scoring Herrmann does not revert to simple musical expressions like "happy" or "sad" which would keep the audiences grounded.

And here are the two madhouse-moments in Taxi Driver (1976) which deliberately ends on the motif since Benny Herrmann and Scorsese wanted to tell the audience that Travis Bickle will be doing it again. In the first clip the motif is used only seconds before Bickle is committing his first murder.

And then a year later, practically out of the blue, the madhouse-motif turns up in John Williams late-romantic Star Wars (1977)! Since it absolutely makes no sense thematically where did this "homage" come from?

Well, Paul Hirsch was the editor on Brian DePalma's two Hitchcock themed films that Herrmann scored and thus personally got to know Benny. When they were putting together the temp track for Star Wars originally consisting of late-romantic classical music, there was a scene that seemed not to work with any of the Holst or Dvorak pieces. So Hirsch suggested using Herrmann's madhouse motif instead.

John Williams reportedly liked the idea and incorporated it into his score as you can hear here:

I've taken this scene from the Special Edition DVD and accidentally stumbled over one of George Lucas' improvements of the original trilogy. Isn't it convenient that we now don't have to trust the images since he has added dialogue to the mute stormtroopers searching the Millenium Falcon? Have we really become so stupid since 1977 that we now need to have voice-over telling us what we see?

Anyway, back to Star Wars: Originally John Williams was hired to re-arrange Holst's "The Planets" to match Lucas' space saga. While Spielberg and Williams convinced Lucas to use original music instead, Williams incorporated certain characteristics of Holst's Suite into his orchestration. This is most obvious right at the beginning in the cue called "rebel blockade runner" (essentially the introduction of the "Rebel Fanfare") on the 1997 soundtrack re-issue:

Since Benny Herrmann was also heavily into turn of the century English composers, his interest in Holst is not surprising. In the words of Steven C. Smith: "That Herrmann wished to record Gustav Holst's The Planets is not surprising; it was perhaps the single work to which Herrmann was most indebted as a composer."

To finally come full circle to Hitchcock, here is a comparison of the opening bars of "The Planets'" sixth movement "Uranus" followed by the opening bars of Herrmann's The Trouble with Harry (later retitled "A Portrait of Hitch"): 

Geometric Production Design
Another observation that didn't make it into my lecture simply because it had nothing to do with suspense technique or music was the visual theme of horizontal and vertical lines throughout the film.

Many critics have pointed out the contrast between the horizontal motel and the vertical house which seems to be adopted in Saul Bass' title sequence. In my opinion however, these contrasts structure the film right from the beginning in Phoenix and especially in the hotel room scene with Marion and Sam.

Saul Bass' geometrical metal bar animation...

...dissolving into the city of Phoenix itself full of horizontal and vertical lines.

The initial love scene in the first hotel room: all vertical.

Arbogast finally enters the Bates manor: all horizontal.

Norman looks at the mess mother has created in the place where horizontal and vertical lines finally met.

Further Viewing
Finally a list of films to see after Psycho:

• obviously Vertigo (1958) because there are so many thematic and musical elements that point towards and paved the way for Psycho, certainly the most symbiotic collaboration between Hitchcock and Herrmann.
• The Birds (1963) because it takes the "dominant mother / bird" theme into a totally different direction. Whereas Psycho only had extradiegetic music, The Birds features only diegetic music with Herrmann coordinating the electronic bird noises.
• Spellbound (1945) because more than Vertigo this is the mother of all movies about transfer of guilt.
• The Wrong Man (1957) because this was Hitchcock's first attempt at telling a true story.
• Les Diaboliques (1955) because Henri-Georges Clouzot's thriller with a famous surprise ending was one of the films Hitchcock regretted not having made himself.
• Touch of Evil (1958) because this was the first time Janet Leigh had to stay in an off-highway motel.
• Taxi Driver (1976) because Herrmann's approach of scoring another story about a lonesome psychopath is quite different yet familiar.
• The Tingler (1959) because it may be William Castle's most entertaining rip-off shocker and Vincent Price's most restrained mad scientist performance. The music is hilarious Herrmann-imitation.
• Sisters (1973) because Brian DePalma has been obsessed with Vertigo and Psycho so much that he re-imagined them throughout the Seventies (see also Dressed to Kill (1980)), here with the help of Benny Herrmann himself, later with Pino Donaggio filling in for him. Split screen meets split personality.

This may well be the first but certainly not the last post of its kind since I've always been looking for a container to "store" the excess analyses that didn't make it into straight essays and lectures.