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7/31/2019 Grey Sighs of the Fog, Liaison of Pitch and Celluloid by Payman Akhlaghi, Film Music Graduate Paper 2007 UCLA
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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
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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
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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 3 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 5 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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?
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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 6 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 7 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 10 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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]
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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 11 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 12 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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.
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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 13 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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,
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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 14 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 20 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 21 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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.
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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 22 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 23 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 25 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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.
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Grey Sighs of the Fog: The Liaison of Pitch and Celluloid
A Graduate Level Independent Research Paper, Submitted Toward Degree of PhD in Composition
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Page 26 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 27 of 28
www.ComposerPA.com 2007, 2012, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.
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
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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 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.