Sunday, April 10, 2016

Post #10- Woody Allen and Awkward Silence, or Films Without a Musical Score

This blog is all about music in film. But there is another dynamic in the film world in which to look at: movies with very little to no music.

Usually this tool of using no music is used for dramatic films and thrillers. Hitchcock's The Birds is one example of this as it employs mechanical bird sounds instead of a traditional musical score. More recently and famously was the Coen brothers film No Country for Old Men which does have music, but that music is only ever used for 16 minutes of the entire 122 minute long film.

One very different use of this tool is in the classic, Academy Award for Best Picture winner Annie Hall. This 1977 Woody Allen film is one of the very few comedies to not employ the use of a musical score. Many of Allen's films feature a lot of older music such as George Gershwin and also, very frequently, jazz music, as Allen is a very big fan of jazz. This film however has very little music outside of a few diegetic songs. This gives the film the realism and cerebralism it has. Many view the film as a psychoanalysis as Allen's character Alvy seems to narrate much of the film like a therapy session. The quiet moments of the film make it awkward for the protagonist and the audience alike.

Here is an example of one such awkward scenes with a lot of silence:

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