Have you ever heard a piece of music that instantly takes you away from reality and flies your body up with emotion? If so, you are not alone and have already experienced the power of music. Music has played such an integral role in movies since its introduction after an era of silent film. By drawing from the two films, and more specifically a sequence from each, I will learn how greatly they rely on music, regardless of them being fundamentally very different. 1952’s Singing in the Rain and the 2000’s Gladiator are perfect examples of the large spectrum music can play in films. In this essay, I will be discussing the differences between the two films. Additionally, I will describe how music is used in the two films to captivate the viewer and why I believe the non-diegetic music in Gladiator triumphs that of Singing in the Rain, a musical. I will be analyzing how the music in these films contributes to character and plot development, along with an overall atmosphere and spectatorship.
Gladiator narrates the story of a one man’s journey back home. The film starts with Maximus as a soldier battling in Germania, and it ends with Maximus fighting as a triumphant gladiator. Following a brief historical context, a man walking through the barley welcomes the viewer to the film.[1] Additionally, a haunting and non-diegetic female vocalist leaves the viewer feeling intrigued by the man’s identity and what he is doing. The man has a ring on his finger, which illustrates to the viewer that he could be a married man and he has a certain amount of wealth that can enable him to buy the ring.
Nevertheless, the clothing on his body does not look like that of a married man. He is clothed like a warrior, which demonstrates to the viewer that he has multiple roles in his life. Diegetic sounds of laughing children can also be heard from a distance. The children could be his kids or his imagination about his childhood phase before he started facing the horrors in his life. Gladiator revives the Roman epic era with several references to the genre’s glorious past.[2] However, the non-diegetic music by Lisa Gerrald and Hans Zimmer deviates from the musical conventions established during the 1950s and 1960s’ ancient epics.[3]
The first thing that one notes about the music in Gladiator is that the music deviates from the conventional musical sounds of ancient Rome. The soundtrack to Gladiator entails a modern reworking, both in semiotic and style encodings, of the classical Hollywood music’s symphonic soundtrack as it advanced in the 9140s and 50s.[4] Based on history, the music is entirely anachronistic content in the film and out of its genre as a historical epic. Based on Timothy E. Scheurer‘s ideas,[5] I argue that compared to the historical content, a genre that governs the musical style that accentuates the setting, character, spectatorship, and narrative development within Gladiator and that the film’s use of the ” heroic” French horn for the opening sequence signals genre.
Gladiator starts with a picture of a hand moving over the top of wheat in a field, encoding the heroic. The music at the start is also unspecific: the atmospheric sounds of the guitar, flute and duduk resolve into a low (dominant) pedal, above which the viewer hears the sound of a woman’s voice. The wordless humming voice of the woman hums against a foregrounded figuration of the guitar, and the viewer is shown the first view of Maximus, a Spaniard. Although, as a viewer, one cannot tell it yet, the music and picture set up the link to the themes of death and the afterlife; visually via the link between goddess Proserpine and the wheat, sonically via Lisa Gerrard’s voice. The association with death is later made concrete within the film when the same vocalization accompanies Maximus in his discovery of the hanging dead bodies of his child and wife. However, as the viewer’s view of Roman encampment in Germania develops, the French horn produces a noble Mahlerian melody.
Scholars agree that music conveys culturally encoded information in the film, with ingrained conventions and associations that derive from the traditions of orchestral and theoretical practice that spans centuries, predominantly those of the late 19th century on which classical Hollywood symphonic draws from[6]. Therefore, the instrumentation would be enough to signal the movies’ heroic topic with this theme. In this case, the key and motivic content are the main reinforce of the instrumental colour.[7] Although the melody is not necessarily typical of the genre, it is conventional to the genre. The inward-turning falling contour of the minor key contrasts the heroic themes, based on fanfares that entail the open intervals of octaves and fifths and the rising gestures and convey energy and enthusiasm.[8] Rome and Maximus may be anticipating victory within Germania; however, the theme infers at more intricate outcomes.
Singin’ in the Rain is a turning point for musicals, from the backstage musical to the narrative type of musical. The opening sequence of this film starts with Donald, Gene and Debbie clothed in a yellow raincoat, singing and dancing to the “Singing in the Rain” song. This scene was also used as the advertisement for this film.[9] First of all, music and dance can aid the viewer in picturing the image of the characters, which is the guiding and informative role, with an enormous emotive descriptive background. The music rhythm, the lyrics and the protagonist’s dancing movements within the backstage musical movie can convey the mood in Singin’ in the Rain.
Additionally, music and dance convey a scene of love development of the female and male protagonists in the film. Singing and dancing were used from when Kathy and Donald had a misunderstanding in the beginning to the good feeling that came with the understanding between them and finally to the expression of their feelings. The male protagonist first expressed his love towards the female inform of singing.[10] Pitch fluctuation while singing also adds a rhetorical role that promotes the release of emotions which guides the viewer on the theme and general mood of the given scene in a movie.
Classical music can be well explained in Singin’ in the Rain since it is a musical. The music reflects each inherent scene level, making music an identifiable character. Music adds irony to the plot, but it also adds comedic support to the film.[11]Singin’ in the Rain creates a parody of the earlier forms of films while also glorifying American entertainment. The whole film is dominated by some scenes which use music to balance what is happening on the screen and thus add some amount of comedic sarcasm.[12] For instance, at the start of the film, when Donald is narrating about how he had achieved stardom, a fiddle is played at the same time in the background to intensify the feelings of struggle and isolation. While Donald is narrating how he grew up in the impressive classical theatre and attended a famous and prestigious music conservatory, the viewer can see that Donald is snuck into the small and old theatres, where he plays in the local pub. This scene maintained the charming sarcasm since the upbeat or lightheaded music was not played over the sequence. Donald can be seen all through his earlier career days playing the fiddle. Compared to a violin, the fiddle is perceived as an informal and disrespected instrument. This fits the part where Donald went to Hollywood as a struggling musician before he was transformed into a star. When he gets his first job, he exclaims, “You might be trading in that fiddle for a harp” (Singin in the Rain).
In conclusion, in this essay, I have demonstrated how music is used in the two films to contribute to the character and plot development and an overall atmosphere and spectatorship. In comparing the two films, the non-diegetic music in Gladiator triumphs that of Singing in the Rain. I noted that Gladiator’s soundtrack is that its music composers did not reproduce the musical sounds commonly associated with ancient Rome and Roman epics, presuming these could be familiar. The soundtrack to Gladiator is a contemporary reworking, in both semiotic encoding and style, of the classical Hollywood symphonic soundtrack music as it advanced from the 1940s to the 50s. The music in Gladiator deviates from its genre, which determines its underscoring of setting, character, and narrative and spectatorship development in the film. The soundtrack to Singin in Rain sticks to its genre of romance and comedy.
Bibliography
Basinger, Jeanine. 2022. “Why ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ Is An Almost Perfect Musical”. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/11/singin-rain-jeanine-basinger-movie musical-excerpt/601363/.
Briggs, Ward. “Layered Allusions in” Gladiator”.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 15, no. 3 (2008): 9-38.
Burgoyne, Robert. The epic film in world culture. Routledge, 2010.
Genné, Beth. “Dancin’in the Rain: Gene Kelly’s Musical Films.” In Envisioning Dance on Film and Video, pp. 103-109. Routledge, 2013.
Huang, Chufan. “Singin’in the Rain in the Lalaland a Comparative Analysis of the Narratives in the Musical Film.” (2020).
Lehman, Frank, and Stephen Meyer. “Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle.” (2016): 2731.
Tan, Siu-Lan, Matthew P. Spackman, and Elizabeth M. Wakefield. “The effects of diegetic and nondiegetic music on viewers’ interpretations of a film scene.” Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal 34, no. 5 (2017): 605-623.
Timothy E. Scheurer, Music and Mythmaking in Film: Genre and the Role of the Composer (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2008).
[1] Lehman, Frank, and Stephen Meyer. “Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle.” (2016): 2731.
[2] Lehman, Frank, and Stephen Meyer. “Music in Epic Film
[3] Lehman, Frank, and Stephen Meyer. “Music in Epic Film
[4] Burgoyne, Robert. The epic film in world culture. Routledge, 2010.
[5] Timothy E. Scheurer, Music and Mythmaking in Film: Genre and the Role of the Composer (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2008).
[6] Timothy E. Scheurer, Music and Mythmaking in Film: Genre and the Role of the Composer
[7] Briggs, Ward. “Layered Allusions in” Gladiator”.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 15, no. 3 (2008): 9-38.
[8] Timothy E. Scheurer, Music and Mythmaking in Film: Genre and the Role of the Composer
[9] Huang, Chufan. “Singin’in the Rain in the Lalaland a Comparative Analysis of the Narratives in the Musical Film.” (2020).
[10] Huang, Chufan. “Singin’in the Rain in the Lalaland
[11] Huang, Chufan. “Singin’in the Rain in the Lalaland
[12] Genné, Beth. “Dancin’in the Rain: Gene Kelly’s Musical Films.” In Envisioning Dance on Film and Video, pp. 103-109. Routledge, 2013.
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