Matthew Steckler Film Music: Aesthetic Perspectives

Prof. Sadoff December 10, 2008

An Eclectic Methodological Analysis of Jeunet’s Delicatessen (1991)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed a masterpiece over a decade before his commonly prized work Amelíe ever touched a heart. In Delicatessen, comedy, psycho-horror and romance are interwoven with such technical bravado, narrative coherence and absurd creativity that the film heralded many innovations to come in the post-1990 world of film. Set in a fictional 1950’s small town in France, a population is devastated by the effects of famine and must resort to rationing and, unofficially… cannibalism. Circus clown Mr. Louison, who has fled from another town where people killed and ate his chimpanzee partner Livingstone, happens upon a Delicatessen at the foot of a building where many boarders reside. The butcher Dreyfus offers him a flat in return for handiwork, but his true motives are uncovered at night whenever a boarder is enticed to the dark, isolated confines of the stairwell. The butcher’s daughter Julie Clapet discovers feelings for Louison, and madness ensues as the two plot to escape. Jeunet, in his infinite quest for originality and Francophile predilections, is not without his American influences. His leanings are toward violence of the psychological over the physical (there is a noticeable lack of use of blood, for example), which puts him in deep debt to Hitchcock. He also cites Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Mission Impossible and Rube Goldberg as motivation behind several comedic scenes in Delicatessen. Yet his avoidance of Hollywood conventions in camerawork, photography and sound places Jeunet in an entirely new category. Particularly absent are the sweeping melodramatic scores of Golden Age or even 80’s Hollywood. Instead, Jeunet enlisted the understated talents of Carlos D’Alessio to score psychological and romantic moments in the film (his last before his death in 1992), leaving the areas of action and comedy to the sound design of collaborator Marc Caro and his assistant Jérome Thiault. After many struggles with the latest machines (for their time) in the pre-sampler age, Caro created a language for sound design, comparable in some ways to Walter Murch perhaps but extending his example to new heights. The result was a film with as much inter-textuality, imagination and multiplicity through sound as through the visual, a true landmark that in Jeunet’s view became a benchmark for other filmmakers since. Syntax D’Alessio composes two main non-diegetic themes in the film that pose an interesting contrast in juxtaposition with one another. One – first appearing when Louison demonstrates his bubble tricks to the boys in the stairwell - works independently as a complete “tune”, while the other – first heard when Louison unpacks and reminisces in his new flat - appears derived from the scene itself, and sculpted to suit it. Finally, the main diegetic theme - featuring the two protagonist lovers in a duet on cello and musical saw – is a “tune” in of itself and showcases D’Alessio’s South American-inspired approach to melody and rhythm.

The “bubbles” theme is a sentimental waltz much reminiscent of sad circus clown routines from the old days. This theme in particular, emerging first on solo piano, is so simple in conception that it might err on the side of childish were it not for some not-obviously clever twists in the writing. For instance, the alternating I and V root per chord in the bass plays as if more chords are passing than is actually the case. An augmented chord substitutes for a V7 en route to the tonic, which provides a sweet chromatic passing motion underneath the melody. The melody itself is very simply drawn, sticking to a 1-7-3 / 1-7-4 alternation, occasionally varying the scheme with a full arpeggio descent. The dotted feel in the right hand contrasts elegantly with the more anchored left hand, in a tradition more leaning toward European by way of South America rather than the former alone. A loosely jowled, reverberant trumpet doubles the right hand melody in the second half of the piece, underscoring this emphasis on a more open interpretation of the Western tradition. The version of the “pensive” theme shown here belongs to its second incarnation – when Julie Clapet tucks Louison to sleep and looks on at the belongings around his flat. It is built on a two-chord mediant progression – D minor to F# - and everything about it suggests a more filmic, psychologically bent use of materials (a nod to Hitchcock). The “Alberti middle” broken chord part in the right hand of the piano makes ample use of major sevenths in a minor key and augmented fifths over the major chord, and the woven double melody between the vibraphone and violins draws attention to these scalar degrees. Half steps and either rising or falling fifths characterize the melodic contours between them. The entrance points for each voice can be at any point in the measure (and the time signature is more flexible), in contrast to the strong-beat character of the “bubbles” theme. Their counterpoint together occasionally forms unusual vertical intervals which underscores the eerier character of the piece. Again, all instruments are thickly coated in reverb. The cello/saw duet is seen on screen as a live performance between characters and is therefore beyond the scope of my sound-in-filmic interest in this analysis. However, I will note it is a very sweet, lyrical theme that plays as a tango twice in the film - both in Julie’s apartment and in the epilogue scene on the roof - then rearranged in the closing credits as a bossa nova. The saw carries the melody for the first antecedent-consequent double phrase (the cello answers in canon for the first few bars before playing counterline), and the roles briefly switch for the start of the second antecedent. The song culminates with rhythmic propulsion in the cello that emphasizes the sixteenth-eighth-sixteenth pattern characteristic in classical tango writing. Sound-in-Filmic-Time Figure A freezes in time what shows to be a very elegantly choreographed scene in which Louison demonstrates his bubble skills to the children and others look on. It is a decidedly more surface-level underscore because the music could easily exist as accompaniment to the clown performing his tricks at work. The glance Louison gives in close-up to the boys starts off the piece (Cell 1), signaling something fun is to happen even though he won’t say what. The first chord shift (Cell 2) – to the subdominant – occurs while we see the tool of his trade, the soapy bucket, getting pushed across the floor. Over the first dominant (Cell 3) – a chord and a question at once that must be resolved - the boys scramble to get a closer look. The deliberate pacing describes the wonderment from their perspective. But resolution is delayed (Cell 4) as Louison takes his time orchestrating with exaggerated movements a sizable bubble. When resolution does occur, the camera catches an approaching Julie glancing at the goings on (Cell 5), a lovely augmented V chord ritarding into the satisfying I. The second pass through the melody lingers a bit longer on the tonic, and gives time to show a secondary neighbor character

looking on from above (Cell 6). Cells 7 and 8 witness Louison with an even better trick, in two stages - preparation and outcome. The trumpet enters just at the moment of fulfillment of this outcome. In the final two cells the story becomes about Louison and Julie and their new interest in one another, the awkward hello as she makes her way upstairs and the music slows to a bass-less (and therefore “unresolved”) right hand resolution. The “pensive” theme as illustrated in Figure B is by contrast situated much deeper in the psychological recesses of the character whose scene is brought to light by it. In this second enactment of the theme, Julie is discovering the past Louison left behind after his monkey partner Livingstone was killed by the hungry, noticing the things around his room as he sleeps, and at the same time worried that he will befall the same fate under current circumstances. Her glance at him sleeping in Cell 1 begins the music (she has just carried him to his room). The vibraphone melody starts one bar later (Cell 2) as she pulls his shoes off. It is an ascending motive, and is answered in Cell 3 by a descending mirror motive as she turns right to notice the clown uniform hanging. Julie next finds the curled clown poster (Cell 4) just as the violins echo the vibraphone upward motive for the first time. Her close-up reaction synchronizes with the return of that motive in the vibes and a high, plaintive F sustained in the violins (Cell 5). A variation in the counterline, brisker in motion, complements her hand flipping through the pages of a scrapbook with memories of his performances (Cell 6). The final three cells follow Julie’s return back upstairs, her shutting the door as the lines weave (Cell 7), her tip-toes up the stairs (Cell 8), and the final fermata as she drops the key into the pipe that sends it back to his room by his bedside (Cell 9). The heightened intensity in the climax of the final action scene (Figure C) is orchestrated with an array of sound effects, strewn in linear hodge-podge, that were regarded as experimentally pioneering with then state-of-the-art technology. Its “music” cannot be notated in the traditional sense, but draws upon source music from both outside and inside the film (including the military fanfare blasting from Potin’s frog-infested flat) that is then processed with a variety of techniques, including time-stretching, reverse playback, layering, looping, sweeps and filtering, creating a new language for tension and release in the post-modern era. Director Jeunet mentions that “action” sequences were never D’Alessio’s strength, and so Caro and Thiault take the helm to a very successful end. Figure C plots the key points along this complicated climax. Particularly impressive is that several of these effects are hinted at in 2-3 second long fragments during scene transitions and punctuated moments throughout the film, creating an overarching narrative that foreshadows and makes sense of the longer climactic sequence at the end.

Musical and Filmic Representation

In the two examples of traditional scoring above, codes and conventions figure heavily into painting the correct emotional portrait over the surrounding context within the story. The choice of “waltz” imbues the bubble scene with an ease and simplicity characteristic of child’s play, rendering a magical sensibility to a mechanically difficult trick. Louison’s sweeping gestures with the wand are pantomime of a conductor feeding a piece of music with instructions for expression. The lilt and elasticity in the tempo help the score to demarcate moments of immense poignancy, a blossoming love between strangers, a sense of wonderment in youth, a distant admiration from an onlooker. All these characters are aware of the fate that befalls newcomers to the building, but their anticipation is suspended momentarily as a world of innocence and purity is created in the hands of a technical master with a buoyant personality. The jowly trumpet doubling is important in creating a sense of walking down

“memory lane” – this is, after all, Louison’s past catered to the present moment. When the theme appears again in the epilogue scene, it accompanies the film’s one and only crane shot toward the roof (and only outdoor daytime shot), after “order” has been restored to the universe. This is the type of placid feeling a simple theme is capable of bestowing. By contrast, our “pensive” theme never moves toward resolution. It represents a number of things to a number of people: the moving to an unknown place and first appraisal of the horror that had taken place prior (Louison), the discovery of that past in someone and the inner dread that anticipates a horror awaiting him (Julie), the recognition of a pair of lovers’ plot to escape and calculation of how to adjust his plans (Dreyfus), and the lovers in an underwater embrace, uncertain if they can come out alive (Louison and Julie). Thus, the aforementioned syntactic devices are appropriate because they code un-reconciled thoughts. The orchestration with tremolo vibes and wet violins are conventions that symbolize mystery and eeriness. Had the theme been more prevalent throughout the film it would certainly leave a mark of heaviness on the viewer, but because of all the other juxtapositions elsewhere the film is still overall a comedy, albeit with elements of black humor. As challenging as it can be for traditional music listeners to appreciate sound design on the same level as traditional music, in this film it is easy to notice the savvy architecture of narrative created by an assembly of discrete, processed sounds. The thick inner sound of pipes is used in the pastiches because the building and the underground are built around an interconnected network of pipes, which as channels for communication, transport and eavesdropping figures heavily into plot development. Using source music recycled from earlier in the film (as in Potin’s fanfare) and then transforming it to its distorted state for the climax is an ingeniously clever way to tie together seemingly disparate threads of subplot (when in reality all members of the building share in the same fate) with a new sonic syntax. In another example, representation of the reverse flight of the “Australian” boomerang weapon back towards the villain’s head is portrayed “musically” by reverse playback of source material, layered with other sounds. Generally, processed sound design codes as “future”, but using organic sources as raw materials it quickly becomes more about “dream world” in 1950’s France. The Filmic World Music figures deeply into the lives of all characters in the building on many levels, from the diegetic - variety programs playing on TVs in each flat, the duet theme, monkeying around with clown toys, the big rhythm “joke” in the bedspring scene, etc. – to the surface and deep-level subconscious states depicted in the underscore, and moments of terror and tension inherent in the soundscapes created with effects. The latter in particular plays an important role in playing the absurdity of the situation: while we clearly are looking at a 1950’s world gone awry with famine and cannibalism, we also are confused as if in a dream world. The high-contrast, desaturated yellow monochrome of the camerawork, surreal depth of field in the detail of the photography, caricature expressiveness of the actors, and the aforementioned sound effects together work to create this ambiguity of reality and dream. The diegetic musical examples point to the humanness in all the characters, a France of a certain time that values culture and entertainment and likes to have fun, even though famine has driven the majority of them to great extremes. Through the source music on TVs and phonographs we are privy to each flat’s tastes, likes and dislikes, many of which are international in flavor (due in no small part to the expatriate composer D’Alessio himself). The

source music is far more than background fodder, it provides the impetus for one of the two best gags in the film (fixing the bedspring to the rhythm of the Hawaiian luau playing through the TV), and introduces levity and the expectation of anything and everything emotionally henceforth. The “rhythm” in everyone’s inherent nature drives the biggest gag (the sex scene that broke the bedspring in the first place, which synchronizes with other mundane activities) and brings to surface a biological interconnectedness beyond the piping network. This is a real coup as evinced by the surreally tall, thin quality of the building, and distance between flats, far exaggerated from its true reality – a trompe l’oeil by Jeunet. Nowhere is interconnectedness more accurately represented than in music performance, and so the duet between lovers on cello and musical saw – for all its mirth – is really a touching commentary on why we humans are drawn to each other in the first place.

Fig. A – “Bubbles” Theme

Fig. B – “Pensive” Theme

,m.,11:30:17 – Tuba Sample 1:31:16 – Cello Ostinato

1:30:22 – High Pipe Clank 1:31:27 – Fanfare Reverse Playback

m,.,j11:30:28 – Low Pipe + Time-Stretch Chord 1:31:36 – Slow Time-Stretch Chord Sweep jkkj

fdsfd1:30:53 – Fanfare Brass Sweep 1:31:53 – Layered Time-Stretch Chord + Pipe Effect + Reverse Playback

Fig. C – SFX Finale 1:31:09 – Modern Chord Sweep + Underground Pipe