MUSICAL SUPPORT FOR FILMS

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 11 June 1932, Page 11

MUSICAL SUPPORT FOR FILMS

TS/AR has been declared in the studio ** camps over the uses (and alleged abuses) of incidental or “background 55 music in talkies. One side favours complete though subdued, orchestral accompaniments. The other declares that when dialogue starts music should stop. This is a subject, surely, on which hard and fast rules cannot be laid down. There are occasions when music is - enormously effective in dramatic talkies. It can create atmosphere and .work up suspense better than the most cunning bit of straight direction. But it must bo brought in unobtrusively and used with discretion. The effect of an unseen orchestra suddenly striking up in the middle of a murder scene (for example) is apt to be very disconcerting. There are moments in a talkie which cry out for music, and there are others which demand silence. The clever director knows just when to

Discretion Needed in Studios

summon the orchestra to his aid—and when to send the band out for a drink! Sometimes it is quite possible to have j a very restrained accompaniment played from beginning to end, so that the audience, while not actually noticing tho music, is subconsciously influenced by it. But when the orchestra interferes with the dialogue, music becomes a nuisance instead of an advantage. In a recently released comedydrama with a running musical accompaniment, one frequently could not hear what the characters were saying for the wailings of unseen violins. That was obviously wrong, especially as the music had no significance. It was neither emotional nor atmospheric. But in another new film, set in the East, the weird noises of native instruments gave the illuson that one was really looking at a scene in the Orient.