<\/p>\n A primary aim of the book is to challenge what has been called the \u201cvisual chauvinism\u201d of much film analysis and give equal attention to a film\u2019s soundtrack. This yields some remarkable and challenging interpretations. For example, there is a detailed account of the way Max Steiner\u2019s score for John Ford\u2019s The Searchers<\/em> seems to run counter to the film, in the author\u2019s words \u201cobfuscating threat and emphasising reassurance\u201d in a way that adds yet another layer of complication to what is already one of the most troubling masterpieces of the American cinema.1<\/a><\/sup> (I would love to see a similarly forensic analysis carried out on Steiner\u2019s equally contentious score for John Huston\u2019s 1948 classic, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre<\/em>, which Huston claimed he only first heard at the film\u2019s premiere.) The soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch\u2019s Dead Man<\/em> is then used as a compelling visual and aural contrast to the Ford film. There is a similarly engrossing comparison and contrast between Rabbit-Proof Fence<\/em> (2002) and Ten Canoes<\/em> to show the different ways they voice the Aboriginal experience. The visual elements of Howard Hawks\u2019s To Have and Have Not<\/em> (1944) might seem to reinforce Laura Mulvey\u2019s influential description of the dominant patriarchal discourse of classic Hollywood film, but the author argues that aurally things are more complex, with Lauren Bacall\u2019s vocal performance (and, contrary to movie myth, it is her actual singing voice on the film) challenging and even countering the film\u2019s ostensible reinforcement of gender inequality. Conversely, a more overtly feminist film, Jane Campion\u2019s The Piano<\/em> (1993) \u201creveals some irresolvable mixed messages when it comes to the endurance of a female ‘voice’ in a patriarchal context.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Elsewhere the author demonstrates how David Raksin\u2019s \u201cconsistently alarmist\u201d score for Nicholas Ray\u2019s Bigger than Life<\/em> (1956) is \u201can important regulator of [the father\u2019s] power, since no one in the film world itself is able to exert clear-cut control of him\u201d;3<\/a><\/sup> the way Rebecca and Mrs Danvers, and not Maxim, \u201chold the primary aural power\u201d in Hitchcock\u2019s Rebecca<\/em>;4<\/a><\/sup> and how Peter Dasent\u2019s score in Peter Jackson\u2019s Heavenly Creatures<\/em> (1994) assists in \u201chelping us to understand the extreme and emotional multi-dimensionality of its subversive protagonists who were all-too-easily labelled monsters in their own time.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup> The implications of all these assertions are eloquently followed through. The result is to make you want to experience all these films afresh – and through new ears as well as new eyes.<\/p>\n Neil Sinyard<\/p>\n Two random afterthoughts, as stimulated by a couple of observations in the book:<\/p>\n 1) In the chapter on Rebecca<\/em>, the author notes that \u201cin placing emphasis on the mesmerizing power of Mrs Danvers\u2019s silent entrances in terms of her impression on us more than on ‘Fontaine\u2019s’ experience, we are reading against the grain of what the auteur said. Though recognizing the significance of Hitchcock\u2019s directorial role, we nevertheless explore meanings beyond the delimitations set out by him.\u201d6<\/a><\/sup> Although authorship is not one of the theoretical areas discussed in detail, the book cleverly intimates how consideration of the soundtrack inevitably complicates an auteurist approach to the cinema. John Ford\u2019s legion of critical admirers often cite his method of cutting in the camera so as to minimise the possibility of editorial or studio interference with his footage, but that same control did not seem to extend to the soundtrack, which makes the discussion of Max Steiner\u2019s score for The Searchers<\/em> all the more intriguing and important (Ford grumbled about the score in his book-length interview with Peter Bogdanovich, saying \u201cwith that music they should have been Cossacks not Indians\u201d). This issue of ultimate authorial control was surely partly behind Hitchcock\u2019s legendary falling out with Hollywood\u2019s most distinctive and original musical personality, Bernard Herrmann<\/a>. To Hitchcock\u2019s probable discomfort, Herrmann\u2019s \u201cvoice\u201d over the soundtrack was becoming too individual and insistent in its own right and competing for attention with Hitchcock\u2019s, and you can\u2019t have two auteurs in one film: not in a Hitchcock film, certainly.<\/p>\n 2) In the chapter on The Piano<\/em>, the author compares Michael Nyman\u2019s score with Georges Delerue\u2019s music for a roughly contemporaneous film, Steel Magnolias<\/em> (1989), and writes: \u201cthe whimsicality, light textures and delicate timbres of the Delerue score seem innocuous and clich\u00e9d in comparison with the exuberant energy and stridency in Ada\u2019s music as performed by [Holly] Hunter\u201d.7<\/a><\/sup> It is a curious comparison (the musical requirements of the two films are quite different) and also rather oddly expressed (Delerue\u2019s \u201cdelicacy\u201d is viewed negatively whereas Nyman\u2019s \u201cstridency\u201d is seen as a virtue). Anyone who knows Delerue\u2019s concert music as well as his film scores will readily appreciate that he would have been more than able to rise to the complexities of Campion\u2019s film if he had been offered the assignment. Indeed, for me, it is a pity he was not, for I always find Delerue\u2019s music infinitely more engaging, touching and beautiful than Michael Nyman\u2019s, which, to my ears (and even when acknowledging its dramatic effectiveness in a film such as The Piano<\/em>), invariably sounds like Philip Glass on an off day. But then: Benjamin Britten couldn\u2019t stand Brahms; Andre Previn\u2019s idea of musical torture would be having to sit through a Wagner opera; Leonard Rosenman described Maurice Jarre\u2019s much-loved \u201cLara\u2019s Theme\u201d from Doctor Zhivago<\/em> as \u201camateurish\u201d and with \u201cactual wrong notes\u201d etc. etc. There\u2019s no accounting for musical taste – even theoretically? Discuss.<\/p>\n Elsie Walker, Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 36. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li> Ibid, pp. 238-239. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li> Ibid., p. 285. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li> Ibid., p. 363. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li> Ibid., p. 388. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li> Ibid., p. 356. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li> Ibid., p. 216. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by NEIL SINYARD Book review: Elsie Walker, Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 435pp. This is a fabulous feat of film scholarship, both for the range of material it encompasses and the lucidity with which … Continue reading ![\"Sinyard_Understanding](\"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sinyard_Understanding-Sound-Tracks-review_bookcover.jpg\")
\nThis is a fabulous feat of film scholarship, both for the range of material it encompasses and the lucidity with which it handles complex ideas. The book is aimed primarily at undergraduate and postgraduate students of film; and, as a concise scholarly introduction to the thorny theoretical topics of Genre, Postcolonialism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Queer theory, it could hardly be bettered. The theory is then applied to a variety of film soundtracks, and familiar films are paired with less mainstream examples for purposes of analysis, comparison and contrast. In the process dazzling insights are offered into acknowledged classics such as The Searchers<\/em> (1956) and Rebecca<\/em> (1940) as well as less well known films such as Dead Man<\/em> (1995) and Ten Canoes<\/em> (2006). One of the most revelatory sections is devoted to Martin Scorsese\u2019s Shutter Island<\/em> (2010), where, through a closely argued commentary on the way in which the soundtrack reflects the hero\u2019s difficulty in pulling things together, the chapter offers a convincing critical rehabilitation of a film that was widely derided and misunderstood on first release. A coda combines all these theoretical approaches in a brilliant reading of Alfonso Cuaron\u2019s Gravity<\/em> (2013), which makes the film sound a lot more interesting to hear than I found it to watch.<\/p>\n