Music In Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, And Out Of Africa

While music may sometimes play the role of brightening a mood or bringing people together, the role it plays in film is to let the audience know how they are supposed to feel. Music has a very dramatic effect on the way one watches and perceives movies, and many people believe we experience a film only through our eyes; however, we are also experiencing just as much of the film through our ears. Jaws, Star Wars, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, and Out of Africa are the some of the most glorified movies for music and would be unimaginable without their iconic scores (MacAulay). Without the use of music in film and especially horror films, the audience would not know what emotion they are supposed to be experiencing during a certain scene.

Music

The musical cue is a piece of music that signals that a certain act is going to take place. In horror films, the musical cue signals to the audience that the murder, serial killer, or demon is going to appear at a certain time and commit their horrific acts. It is likely that the musical cue will occur more than once in a movie, allowing the audience to recognize when a scary scene is going to take place. This repetition puts fear in the audience. For example, if one sees a girl walking in an abandoned house the audience is going to be frightened, knowing the musical cue is going to occur any second. Musical cues are put in place to scare the audience very quickly, rather than using a musical score to build up suspense during a scene.

One of the most common cues to heighten dramatic activity in film is foreshadowing (Fischoff, 15). Directors will use music to foreshadow before a dramatic event is going to occur. Musical foreshadowing can give the audience clues as to what is going to take place. It makes the audience pay close attention to what is about to occur and allows them to prepare for an upcoming event. For example in horror films, music starts playing right before the victim gets attacked, shot, or dies. The music allows the audience to prepare themselves for the gruesome images they are about to

Take Jaws for example, Jaws creates a feeling of suspense with its increase in intense chords. It uses a very simple double bass which first starts out in long heavy notes, it then gradually gets faster and faster, implying an attack is going to occur very shortly. Besides setting the mood, sound can introduce important elements of the plot. When you see the girl swimming and the music beings and you hear the Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh, you know that the shark is coming. If there was no Duh-Duh-Duh music played, the audience would never know when the attack would occur, thus the music in Jaws plays a major role in the audiences understanding of the plot.

Another example of a horror film that uses music to convey a sense of fear that runs down the spine of everyone in the audience is The Silence of the Lambs. As the villain is stalking the detective, the lights go out and the music gets louder and builds the suspense of what the stalker will do to his victim. The use of loud percussive sounds intensives the scene and the higher pitched music puts fear into the