Sunday, March 27, 2016

Post #6- An Analysis of Casablanca's famous La Marsillaise scene, or Diegetic vs non-diegetic music

Diegesis is a Greek word meaning the interior of a narrative fiction. In other words, the part of a story that is within the story and known to the characters of the story. 

When it comes to film music, diegetic music is music that comes from a source seen on the screen, such as a song playing on a radio or a character singing. Non-diegetic music on the other hand would be a score or a song played over a scene that is from an outside the scene source.

A terrific example of the two is in the film Casablanca. In the following, extremely famous, scene both diagetic and non-diegetic music is present:




At around the 20 second mark  we hear German soldiers begin to sing the song Die Wacth am Rhein while Rick and Laszlo are talking upstairs. Clearly disgusted by this, Laszlo comes downstairs and has the band play La Marsillaise, which the rest of the club join in and begin to sing and drown out the Germans. All of this music is diegetic as it is coming from a source directly shown on screen, the instruments playing and the people singing. At about the 2:12 mark we hear the orchestra playing part of the score. Starting here we are hearing non-diegetic music, as the orchestra is off the screen and not a part of the space of the story.

Hopefully this post has helped you understand the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic music.

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