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 8220057

McKay, Frances Thompson

MOVEMENT IN TIM E AND SPACE: THE SYNTHESIS OF MUSIC AND

VISUAL IMAGERY IN LUCHINO VISCONTI’S "DEATH IN VENICE" AND
STANLEY KUBRICK’S "2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY"

Peabody InsL of the Johns Hopkins Univ., Peabody Consv. of Music D.M.A. 1982

University
Microfilms
International 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M I 48106

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 Movement in Time and Space:

The Synthesis of Music and Visual Imagery

in Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice

and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey

by

Frances Thompson McKay

A disserteition submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Musical Arts
in The Peabody Conservatory of Music
Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, Maryland

1982

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 PEABODY CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC

STATEMENT OF ACCEPTANCE

Be it known that the attached document, Movement in Time and Space: The

Visual Imagery in Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice and Stanley K ubrick’s

2001: A Space O d y s s e y , has been accepted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Doc t o r of Musical Arts.

Dissertation Advisor

7
- ^
Date
- 10, ( ‘j gX

Reade^

x.o

^ R clu
-a
Date I

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 1^-
ts*
Oe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

P R E F A C E ......................................................... ii

CHAPTER I:THE FUNCTION OF FILM M U S I C .......................... 1

CHAPTER II: STANLEY KUBRICK'S 2001:A SPACE ODDYSEY . . 61

CHAPTER III: LUCHINO VISCONTI'S DEATH IN VENICE ......... 120

CONCLUSION......................................................209

BIBILOGRAPHY ................................................. 211

APPENDIX A (2001) ....................................... 221

APPENDIX B (DEATH IN VENICE) .............................. 233

Copyright, Frances Thompson McKay, 1982.

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 PREFACE

The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of mus­

ic in two films in which it has played a role of equal im­

portance to the visual portions: Luchino Visconti's Death

in Venice (1971) and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odys­

sey (1968).

There are important similarities between the two films.

Both are films of grand scope in terms of audio-visual ges­

ture. Scores of both films were selected from the classical

repertory, consisting mainly of orchestral or large scale

choral works. The visual portions of both make use ‘of" the

sweeping breadth and additional depth of focus offered by

Super Panavision and Technicolor. Completed within several

years of each other, each deals with the disintegration of

individuals within materially comfortable, yet morally bank­

rupt, societies which would seem to be on the verge of col­

lapse. With Death in Venice (a setting of Thomas Mann's

novella) this has turned out to be true, although there was

no way for Thomas Mann writing in 1910 to know how prophetic

his novella would be. The accuracy of his premonition, how­

ever, is an important element of Visconti's film.

ii

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 The first chapter will deal with the problem of analyz­

ing the use of music within film. Four broad categories are

set forth, formulated on the basis of function: structural,

narrative, descriptive, and incongruous. There have been

numerous treatments of the analysis of film music, many of

them dealing with it in terms of function. This chapter

does not purport to offer a definitive solution, but only to

provide a basis of terminology to be used in the chapters

which follow.

The selection of Death in Venice and 2001: A Space

Odyssey was based on several factors, most important of

which was the central role of music in both films. In both

there are extended sections in which the music and visual

imagery combine to create a product of equal artistic merit

but of changed quality from either of the component parts.

Not only have the directors used the scores descriptively as

sumptuous and elegant adjuncts to period settings, they have

also employed the music for characterization, as well as

choreographically.. For instance, the use of leitmotifs,

both visual and musical, is an important feature in Death in

V e n i c e , as is the use of dance in 20 01.

Availability has limited the scope of this study. Some

films have not been treated either because they have been

unobtainable or because it has been impossible to view a

print using the necessary equipment (such as a Steenbech, an

indispensable aid to a study of this nature).

iii

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 C H A P TE R 1

FUNCTIONS OF FILM MUSIC

Shared Elements of Film Music

Music is a temporal art, focusing upon the organization

of aural movement through time. Film is also a temporal

art, focusing upon the organization of visual movement

through time. Both media, therefore, deal with movement

through time and space. The movement of music through aural

space utilizes the elements of pitch and timbre, which it

does not share with film. The movement of film through vis­

ual space utilizes the elements of light, shape, and per­

spective, which it does not share with music.

Both music and film possess rhythm, defined as the d iv­

ision of movement through time. In film, structural move­

ment is achieved by editing as well as by visual movement

within a shot. Musical movement is defined by successive

aural events. Music and film also share the element of

texture, that is, the blending of individual elements, such

as the construction of the simultaneous movement of indepen­

dent melodies in music, resulting in a contrapuntal texture;

or the manipulation of color and shape in film, resulting in

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 ?.
/» - r j8

areas of greater or lesser concentration. An abundant tex­

ture, for instance, resulting in richly contrapuntal music

or a series of densely detailed shots in film would render

an analogous effect in both cases--that is, heavy and opu­

lent.

In addition to rhythm and texture, both media possess

the element of intensity, controlled by dynamic level in

music and light intensity in film.

Origins of Film Music

Film has always been provided with musical accompani­

ment. Richard Beynon, writing in 1921, explained that the

custom of accompanying film began as exhibitors employed a

pianist to play for spectators as they entered and exited

from the theater. Musicians soon began to improvise during

the course of the film.'*' The music, initially, was not

played continuously. Sometimes actors might be placed be­

hind the screen to provide dialogue for the film, a practice

2
which soon led to a greater appreciation of the music.

As the use of the cue sheet evolved, there were occa­

sions of unintentional humor, as, for instance, in the case

of a print that had been cut by a censor or a previous

iRichard Beynon, Musical Presentation of Motion Pic­

tu res , (New York: G. Shirmer, 1921), p. 4.

2ibid., p. 9.

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 exhibitor, who might have wished to retain a portion for his

private collection. If these changes were not indicated in

the cue sheet when the film was passed on, the musician

would be forced to make an impromptu adaptation, which was

not always within the means of the artist (especially if the

performer was not watching the screen at the crucial mo ­

ment) . ^

Music in the silent era filled varying needs; as Roy M.

Prendergast has recently pointed out, an important

one was
4
merely to drown out the sound of the projector. Kurt

London, writing in 1936, speculated that the music served a

choreographic function:

The reason which is aesthetically and psycho­

logically most essential to explain the need of
music as an accompaniment of the silent film, is
without a doubt the rhythm of film as an art of
mo ve me nt . We are not accustomed to apprehend
movement as an artistic form without accompanying
sounds, or at least audible rhythms . . . It was
the task of the musical accompaniment to give it
auditory accentuation and p r o f u n d i t y . ^

Music and Film as Temporal Media

Film, a spatiotemporal art, came into being at the turn

of the present century, a period which evidenced a particu-

3ibi d., p. 102.

^Roy M. Prendergast, Film Music: A Neglected Art

(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977), pp. 3-5.

^Kurt London, Film M u si c, trans., Eric S. Bensinger

(New York: Arno Press, 1980, reprint of 1936 edition), quo­
ted in Prendergast, p. 4.

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 lar interest in the perception of time. Numerous works dat­

ing from this era deal with varying conceptions of time, an

interest which has persisted throughout the twentieth cen­

tury. Einstein's theory of relativity (1905), for instance,

deals with the unity of time and matter. Coincidentally,

Camille Saint-Saens composed the first score to be written

for a specific motion picture, L'Assassinat du Due de G u i s e ,

£
in 1908, three years after Einstein's postulation.

The century's most extensive literary treatment on the

unity of time and matter was begun in 1909 by Marcel Proust.

In & la Recherche du Temps Perdu, which was to occupy Proust

7
until his death in 1922, the hero recalled sensations

through association. The taste of his now famous madeleine

dipped in lime tea, for example brought back sensory recol­

lections of his childhood world; a windy day removed him to

O
the beach resort, Balbec, of his youth. As Phillip Kolb

pointed out: "Time is the novel's great theme, as the title

indicates. Proust explained when his first volume appeared,

that he wanted to isolate 'that invisible substance of

^Prendergast, pp. 5-6.

^Marcel Proust, A Centiennial Vol u me , ed. Peter Quin-

nell (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p. 3.

^Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: The Past

Recaptured, trans., C. K. Scott Moncrief (New York: Vintage
Books Editions, 1970).

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 5
0
Time.'"'' In a sense, Proust's concluding volume antici­

pates the film technique of montage, entire sections of the

work being recalled within the space of a word or phrase.

Works dealing with the physical manipulation of time

have been characteristic in twentieth century literature,

lending themselves readily to film adaptation. In H. G.

Wells's Time Machine (actually written in 1895, in the early

days of motion pictures) , the protagonist moved through time

by stepping in a device of his own invention, a "time ma-

1n
chine." In Kurt Vonnegut's recent novel, Slaughterhouse

F i v e , and George Roy Hill's film adaptation, the hero, Billy

Pilgrim, also moved through time, experiencing his life un-

sequentially. For instance, he witnessed his own death on

repeated o c c a s i o n s . ^

Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain was published in 1927,

which was coincidentally the same year that A la Recherche

du Temps Perdu first appeared in its entirety. It was also

the year in which Abel Gance's Napoleon vu par Able Gance

with a score by Honegger was premiered at the Opera in Par-

9phillip Kolb, "The Making of a Novel," Marcel

Proust, A Centennial Volume (New York: Simon and Shuster,
1971), p. 34.

10H . G. Wells, The Time Machine, an Invention (New

York: H. Holt and Company, 1895).

11-George Roy Hill, d i r . , Slaughterhouse F i v e , 1972.

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 6

is, a film whose conclusion, like that of Proust, utilizes

montage to encapsulize years within a few moments. Thomas

Mann addressed the question of individual perception of time

in the chapter entitled "By the Ocean of T i m e " :

Can one tell--that is to say, narrate--time

itself, as such, for its own sake. That would
surely be an absurd undertaking. A story would
read: "Time passed, it ran on, the time flowed
onward" and so forth--no one in his senses could
consider that a narrative. It would be as though
one held a single note or chord for a whole hour,
and called it music. For narration resembles mus ­
ic in this, that it fills up the time. It "fills
it in" and "breaks it up," so that "there's some­
thing to it," . .. For time is the medium of
narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are
inextricably bound up with it, as inextricably as
are bodies in space. Similarly, time is the me d­
ium of music; music divides, measures, articulates
time, and can shorten it, yet enhance its value,
both at once.

a narrative, which concerned itself

with the events of five minutes might, by extra­
ordinary conscientiousness in the telling, take up
a thousand times five minutes, and even then seem
very short, though long in its relation to its
imaginary time.12

Mann's interest here in meter (the division of time

through accents) and tempo (the speed at which events occur)

was contemporary with both Igor Stravinsky's Sacre du Prin-

temps (1913) , in which the composer experimented with chang­

ing meters, and Claude Debussy's Jeux (1913), in which the

composer experimented with an on-going, non-repetitive form

in which events could not be grouped according to the

12Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (New York: Vintage

Books Edition, 1969), pp. 541-2.

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 strictly reiterated phrase structures of the Classical and

Romantic periods. Both pieces, which were concerned with

what Mann would have called the "filling in" and "breaking

up" of time, were premiered by Diaghilev within weeks of

each other in 1913 (the same year as the appearance of

Proust's Du Cote de Chez S w an n, the first volume of A la

Recherche du Temps Perdu) .

Between 1911 and 1915 a number of films used newly com­

posed scores as directors and composers confronted the prob­

lem of synchronizing the music with film. Most notable

among the early scores were Walter Cleveland Simon's music

for Arrah-Na-Pough (1911), Guiseppe Becce's Richard Wagner

(1913), and Joseph Briel's The Birth of a Nation (1915), a

score whose fame, however, according to Prendergast, rests

not so much on its musical value as on its technical innova­

tion:

It is a pastiche of original compositions,

quotes from Liszt, Verdi, Beethoven, Wagner,
Tchaikovsky, as well as a number of well-known
traditional tunes from the United States such as
"Dixie" and "The Star-Spangled Banner." Despite
the score's lack of musical value, it did set
standards of orchestration and cueing techniques
that remained throughout the silent e r a . 13

Other important scores of the silent era include Edmund Mei-

sel's music for Eisenstein's Potemkin (1925) and Honegger's

scores for Abel Gance's La Roue (1923) and Napoleon vu par

Abel Gance (1927) .

13pnendergast, p. 13.

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 8

Movement Through Time

In both music and film the perception of time is de ­

fined by movement. Movement both "fills in" and "breaks

up" — it articulates time, as Mann might have put it. In

Film: Space, Time, Light, and Sound, Lincoln Johnson ela­

borated on this concept: "Movement can be considered the

concretization of time." He described movement in which

actions in space have been made almost entirely subservient

to time, in which change alone gives thrust and impetus to

the filmic experience and propels the film and the spectator
14
through time."

In film, the combined effect c£ music and the visual

imagery may be manipulated in the same way that Mann envi­

sioned in his discussions of narrative: "five minutes

might, by extraordinary conscientiousness in the telling,

take up a thousand times five minutes." For instance, in

1R
Solaris, by presenting the same musical phrase repeat­

edly in conjunction with an involved, circuitous plot, An­

drei Tarkovsky achieved such a stasis, one, however, which

would appear to have been unintentionally exaggerated. In

spite of the film's fluid and bizarre visual appeal, the

frequent recapitulation of the same sight and sound rendered

l4Lincoln Johnson, Film: Space, Time, Light, and

Sound (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974), p. 58.

15Andrei Tarxovsky, dir., Solaris (distributed by

Sci-Fi Pictures in the U.S.), c. 1970.

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 the overall effect soporific. The obvious intent was leit-

motivic; the entangled plot, however, left some confusion as

to what successive repetitions were meant to signify.

Audio-visual ritardandi may be effectively employed,

however, as in the case of Bo Widerberg's Elvira Madigan,

another film which suffers from narrative deficiency, in

this case the plot being overly simple. The less compli­

cated use of Mozart's Piano Concerto in C, K. 467, however,

(taken in conjunction with the film's unusual visual appeal)

redeems the otherwise tedious plot, the music serving to

illustrate the deepening love of the soldier and the tight­

rope walker.16

Yet, if the tempo of Elvira Madigan is somewhat slug­

gish at points, there are other elements which compensate.

Eric Rhode has noted Widerberg's "ability to evoke exquisite

17
contrasts in color, texture, and shape," a talent which

lends itself particularly to Mozart's concerto since the

principal elements in the concerto genre are analogous:

timbre (color), texture, and formally structured dialogues

between soloist and orchestra (shape). It is not only in

concept but in mood as well, moreover, that the music com­

plements: the lush, pastoral settings are elegantly paired

with the sensuous appeal of Mozart's wealth of melodic in-

16B o Widerberg, dir., Elvira Madigan, 1967.

l^Eric Rhode, A History of Cinema From its Origins to

1970 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), p. 588.

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 10

vention. And, in this film, unlike Solaris, there is no

question of the intent that the music is meant to have.

Another slowly-paced film of rare audio-visual appeal

is one of the subjects of this dissertation, Luchino Vis­

conti's Death in Venice (1971). Set to the Adagietto of

Mahler's Fifth Symphony, the film opens with a fade to a

steamer approaching Venice, a sequence in which most of the

film's leitmotifs are introduced. Attention is bound not

only by the fusion of the score's timbral luminosity with

the ocean light at dawn, but also by the combined effect of

Mahler's lilting, arpeggiated texture and the kinesthetic

fluidity of the seascape's gentle swells. Mahler's envelop­

ing orchestration— legato string melody in the tenor regis­

ter accompanied by harp arpeggios— is reinforced by the wide

angle and added depth of focus offered by Super Panavi-

18
sion.

Perception of tempo may be manipulated in varying

ways. Events which cover a larger span of real time, to

pursue Mann's concept, may be condensed into a smaller

amount of narrative time. For instance, either an acceler­

ando or ritardando may be introduced within a series. ?r.

example of the former is found in Jean Mitry's Pacific 231

(1949), set to Honegger's score of the same title, in which

Mitry employs a combination of increasingly shortened cuts

ISLuchino Visconti, dir., Death in Venice, 1971.

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 11

with Honegger's increasing use of accents, and movement in

toward the train's pistons effected by a series of succes­

sively more extreme close-ups, thus intensifying the overall

*1 Q
effect. Kubrick's setting of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna in

the "Dawn of Man" sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey offers

an example of the opposite, or ritardando, effect. Time is

suspended as Moonwatcher reaches out to touch the monolith,

20
accompanied by a screaming crescendo in the score.

Choreographic Uses of Film Music

Many of the most successful combinations of music and

visual imagery have occurred in passages in which the action

has been suspended, as, for example, in the "Space Waltz"

sequence of 2001, corresponding to the use of aria in bel

canto opera, a point at which the plot is suspended (the

narrative being continued in the recitative passages). The

raison d'etre of numerous short films has been the setting

of visual imagery to music or vice versa--for example, Mit-

ry's Pacific 231 (1949) and his 1951 trilogy, En bateau,

Images pour Debussy, and Reverie pour Claude Debussy; Ken­

neth Anger's Ean d'Artifice (1965), to the music of Vival­

di's Seasons; Tom Palazzolo's 0 (1968), set to Berio's

highly charged V i sa g e; Alain Resnais's eleven minute film

19Jean Mitry, dir., Pacific 231, 1949.

20f(ubrick, 2001.

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 12

Gau gui n, with a score by Milhaud; and Night Mail, a setting

of D. H. Auden's poem with a score by Benjamin Britten.

Works of this sort being closely related to dance, it

is noteworthy that Maya Deren, whose film Meshes of the Af­

ternoon contains long stretches which may be included within

21
this category, has described her films as choreography.

In fact, Meshes was conceived as dance, the score being ad-

22
ded later. The "Diving Sequence" in Leni Riefenstahl's

Olympiad (1936), with a score by Herbert Windt, is similarly

balletic, the cuts as well as the motion of the divers being

synchronized with the score. The divers are successively

presented in formally conceived motions--filmed from below,

from above, in reverse--in a rhythmically cut series accom-

23
panied by music of matching and reiterated phrasing.

Use of the Classical Repertory

Many films in which music plays an important role have

used scores chosen from the classical repertory (known as

"stock music"), unfortunately mirroring the museum mentality

21-Maya Deren, "A Statement on Dance and Film," Dance

Perspective, No. 30, 1967, pp. 10-13.

2 2 "Choreography for Camera," Dance, October, 1943.

23Leni Riefenstahl, d i r . , Olympiad, 1936.

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 13

which has dominated concert programming during the latter

half of this century.

Aside from negative prejudices which characterize the

choice of composers— film is such an expensive venture that

it is a rare director who, when making a "music™ film,

chooses the music of an unknown composer, particularly a

living one— there are justifications for selecting clas­

sics. One may simply be a director's preference for a par­

ticular piece, as was the case with Kubrick in his choice of

"The Blue Danube"; he ran his rushes to the music in which

he was currently interested. It is greatly to his credit

that he had the initiative also to select Ligeti. When the

commissioned score arrived from Alex North, Kubrick's con­

cept of the film had already crystalized, so he returned

24
North's score.

Pacific 231 is an instance in which Honegger's music

gave rise to the film's creation, another instance of a dir­

ector selecting a score by a contemporary, a piece which was

25
by that time, however, an acknowledged classic.

In the case of Death in V e n i ce , in which one of the

characters upon whom the movie role of Aschenbach is based

is Mahler, it would seem almost obligatory for Visconti to

24je rome Agel, The Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001

(New York: American Library, 1970), no pagination.

25jean Mitry, "Musique et Cin§ma," Revue d'Estetique,

Vol. 26, pp. 311-28, 1973.

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 14

choose Mahler's work for the score. In Ludwig (1972), it

follows that Visconti would have wanted to use the music

contemporary with the film's setting, especially that of

Wagner, in view of the close relationship between the com­

poser and Ludwig II of Bavaria, a friendship which is de-

picted on the screen.

Functions of Film Music

Music in film serves a variety of functions. Although

these may be isolated and classified separately, their role

in most instances is a complex one, in which several of

these functions are combined.

The following categories will be used to define the

functions of music at a given point within a film:

Structural Music

Music functions structurally when it is used for its

rhythmic value. It may be either rhythmic, in which the

rhythm of the music and the visual portion are synchronized,

or anti-rhythmic, in which the rhythmic style of the music

and that of the visual portion differ.

Narrative Music

This is music that functions within the narration of

the film, as, for instance, when the orchestra enters into

26Luchino Visconti, dir., L u d w i g , 1972.

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 15

the action in the operas of Wagner. The use of leitmotif

falls within this category.

Narrative music may be complementary/ in which it

matches the emotional tenor, or contrapuntal, in which it

contrasts with it. Music that supplies information to the

audience, such as the cliche use of a dissonant chord to

identify a villain or signal approaching danger, is informa­

tive . Symbolic music, such as a national anthem, is em­

ployed for its associative v a l u e . .

Descriptive Music

Descriptive music may be decorative (describing a

place) or characteristic (describing a person). The func­

tion of decorative music is analogous to an establishing

shot, identifying the setting according to time, place, and

mood. The use of the "Merry Widow" waltz in the first Lido

sequence of Death in Venice not only identifies the period

ofthe film, but also reinforces the air of fashionable,

restrained frivolity in the resort setting.

Descriptive music which serves as psychological de­

scription, being used for characterization is characteris­

ti c. Fellini's use of the Ride of the Valkyries to accom­

pany a match between women wrestlers in The Clowns is an

example of characteristic music. The satirical nature of

this choice defines the use of music as incongruous, placing

this example in the next category as well.

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 16

Incongruous Music

Music that is incongruous with what occurs on the

screen is often employed for satire or irony. (Of course,

sometimes it is just plain inappropriate.)

Two other terms which will be found in this study are

internal music, that is, occurring within the context of the

action on the screen, and external m u si c, that is, not pre­

sent within the action, colloquially known as "background

27
music." Kracauer's term, "commentative music," is mis­

leading for the purposes of this study since it implies a

narrative or informative function which may not always be

the case. "Background music" is also inadequate since this

term has also been applied on occasion tomusic that is tak­

ing place within the setting of the film, such as an orches­

tra or radio playing in the background.

Since internal music occurs within the context of the

action, it is in a position to affect the narrative of the

film. An illustrative juxtaposition of internal and ex­

ternal music occurs with the use of the song "As Time Goes

By" in the two films Casablanca (1943) and Play it Again,

Sam (1975). In both films the song is used narratively. In

the earlier film it affects the action as internal music,

27siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film, the Redemption

of Physical Reality (Oxford University Press, 1960), pp.
139-144.

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 17

serving to bind two lovers in a lover's triangle. In the

case of the later film, it is employed symbolically as ex-

28
ternal music, in reference to its use in the earlier one.

There have been a number of discussions on the taxonomy

2Q
of film music. The purpose of the preceding classifica­

tion according to function is to provide a basis for analy­

sis of the use of music in the two films to be treated in

the succeeding chapters. It is based in part on the collec­

tive writing of others in the field. Since the purpose of

this study is the discussion of music as it functions in two

films, this classification is not intended to be a defini­

tive one. There is some doubt as to whether the compilation

of such a list, one which would deal with the entire reper­

tory of film, lies within the realm of possibility. Such an

undertaking, in any case, is not the intent or within the

scope of this study.

28Michael Curtiz, dir., Casablanca, 1943. Woody Al­

len, dir., Play it Again, S am , 1975.

29a number of writers have classified film music ac­

cording to function. Among them are Douglas Gallez in
"Functional Taxonomy of Film Music," Cinema Journal, 1970;
Aaron Copland, What to Listen For in M u si c; Prendergast,
Film Music, A Neglected A r t ; Win Sharpies, A Primer for
Film-Making; Lincoln Johnson, Film: Space, Light, Time, and
S ou nd; Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Fi lm; Marian Hannah
Winter, "The Function of Music in Sound Film," Musical Quar­
terly, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, April 1941; Paolo Milano, "Music
in the Film: Notes for a Morphology," Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism, Spring, 1941.

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 18

Before turning to the use of music within the indivi­

dual categories, perhaps there should be some discussion

about the role of the composer within the production of fea­

ture length films today. One of the most serious problems

which composers face is that they frequently lack the power

to dictate where and for what purpose the music that they

have submitted will be used. It is not uncommon, for in­

stance, for music that has been written for one sequence to

be placed in another instead. Other noises on the sound

track, such as conversation, might take precedence over the

score, drowning out important effects at critical moments.

Another conflict, one which is inherent in any multi-

media work, is created by the problem of having two expres­

sive artists at work on one product, in this case the com­

poser and the director. (In film, the final product is, in

fact, the work of many creative artists.) Composers and

directors have often disagreed on the role which music is

meant to serve in an given situation. Film composer Richard

Rodney Bennett says, for example, that when scoring for a

film, instead of trying merely to mirror what is on the

screen, he tries to add something that is not already

30
there. In some cases, this may be exactly what a

director demands of the composer; in others, of course, one

can imagine that the added element may be unwelcome.

30interview with Richard Rodney Bennett, February 9,

1982.

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 19

While one can understand the necessity of holding one

individual ultimately responsible for the success or failure

of a venture as costly as a feature length commercial film,

the present system of purchasing scores before the film is

completed, thereby leaving composers no rights if they dis­

pute the way in which their music has been used, has worked

to the detriment of film music. Unfortunately, the music

found in feature length films has often been distinctly less

adventurous and perhaps not as well-structured as contem­

porary concert music. In the opinion of some composers, the

current system seems to preclude the emergence of a master­

piece within the idiom.

Structural Music

Music functions rhythmically when the visual portion

and the music are synchronized so that the accents and

phrasing of each part more or less coincide. Examples of

this abound throughout the repertory. When the accents are

exactly matched, the term "Mickey Mousing" has been ap­

plied— referring to that character's famous ability to mime

the rhythms of the score (as in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice"

sequence of Fantasia) . Although this technique may quickly

become either tedious or unintentionally comical outside of

the cartoon genre, there are sequences in which it has been

used effectively, such as the previously mentioned "Piston

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 20

Sequence" in Pacific 231. A notable example occurs in the

"Space Waltz" sequence in 200 1.

Anti-Rhythmic Music; Fellini's Orchestral Rehearsal

Structure is anti-rhythmic when the visual and aural

movement are in opposition. There is an involved use of

this in Fellini's Orchestral Rehearsal# which will be dis­

cussed here at length for the purpose of illustration.

At the film's beginning, during the ensemble's initial

session with the conductor, while the musicians rehearse

Nino Rota's "Gallopade," a synchopated work composed of

short, rhythmically disjunct phrases, Fellini employs a

series of long takes, slowly panning from side to side

across the orchestra, occasionally cutting to shots of the

31
conductor in which the camera remains stationary. In

spite of an enormous amount of activity on the part of the

players and the conductor, the overall visual effect, when

contrasted with the music, is a static one, particularly in

the case of the extended, stationary takes of the con­

ductor. The result is grating: the accelerated musical

movement and the slowly-paced visual movement, defined here

by the camera movement and the length of the cuts, are op­

posed .

The reasons for this opposition are not immediately

clear. Orchestral Rehearsal is a concise and somewhat enig-

SlFrederico Fellini, dir., Orchestral Rehearsal, 1979.

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 21

matic film. (Its duration is slightly over one hour.) Al­

though Fellini's intention is not easily conjectured, sever­

al interpretations come to mind. For instance, it is pos­

sible that by reducing the camera movement and using long

takes, he actually wanted to concentrate the viewer's at­

tention on the action of the players and the conductor. On

the other hand, it is possible that he deliberately meant to

minimize all the movement on the screen. Shorter cuts and/

or a series of changing camera angles would have produced a

tremendous amount of visual movement when taken in conjunc­

tion with the necessary movement of the players and the ges­

turing of the conductor as well; and, perhaps, this would

have generated more activity than Fellini wished to have at

this point in the film.

Another possibility may be based upon the structure of

the film as a whole. Technically, the form of Orchestral

Rehearsal is a very simple one, analogous, to borrow a musi-

co-architectural term, to an arch. The film begins, as it

ends, quietly and slowly. It builds to a long, sustained

climax, and returns, close to the end, to a slow, quiet

pace. The arch is therefore not symmetrical (and here the

analogy ends since the term usually denotes a symmetrical

fo rm ): the climax is placed about three quarters of the way

through and sustained until nearly the end of the film.

Since movement is such an important formal element in

Orchestral Rehearsal, its use within the film would seem-

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 22

ingly be carefully calculated. It would appear, for in­

stance, inconsistent with the overall structural plan to

place an active series of shots near the beginning of the

film. Therefore, in the sequence under consideration here—

since it is found at the beginning of the film— it would

seem that Fellini's intention was to minimize the movement

on the screen, in spite of the large amount of activity (the

playing of the orchestra and the gesturing of the conductor)

with which the film is concerned at the time.

The unsettling effect, which results from either the

stationary or the gliding motion of the camera in conjunc­

tion with the energy displayed by the characters, is very

probably intentional, since one of the movie's themes con­

cerns rebellion, specifically that of the orchestra against

the conductor. The lack of camera movement in the conductor

shots is jarring when taken in conjunction with the shots of

the orchestra and the lively score: the tempo and rhythms

of Rota's "Gallopade" emphasize the dichotomy, serving to

draw attention to the ever widening gulf between the conduc­

tor and the players. From the viewpoint of characteriza­

tion, one intention is clear: the behavior of the conduc­

tor, at once controlled and tyrannical, stands in contrast

to that of the high-strung and capricious instrumentalists.

The music here functions in two categories: structural

(arhythmic) and descriptive (characteristic).

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 23

The resulting grating effect of this early sequence

goes beyond structure and characterization/ however. It

serves a narrative purpose (symbolic and informative) as

well, by anticipating the chaos which will directly ensue.

Since theme shots tend to be static, the use of an active

series of shots in a thematic (or symbolic) function il­

lustrates an important element of Fellini's style: that is,

tha: the medium has become the message, i.e., conflict.

Moreover, the sequence is composed musically on a ser­

ies of cross-rhythms defined by the conflicting tempi of the

musical movement, the camera movement, and the subject move­

ment. In this complexly conceived synthesis of aural and

visual movement, sight and sound have been integrated struc­

turally, narratively, descriptively (characteristically),

and obviously incongruously.

One may carry this analysis even further, if one is

willing to admit, for the sake of analogy, that the film as

a whole is cast in a broad sonata form (which is, after all,

a type of arch based on the idea of returning key areas and

the recapitulation of thematic statements). During the ex­

position of the film, to pursue the analogy, one finds the

conventional presentation of two main theme areas, in this

case represented by the character of the conductor on the

one hand (controlled, condescending) and the collective

character of the orchestra on the other (capricious and con­

frontational). This is followed by a development section

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 24

in which the eruption of total anarchy on the part of the

orchestra leads to a climax which occurs immediately before

the recapitulation. The high point of this occurs when one

wall of the church in which the rehearsal is taking place is

unexpectedly demolished by a large wrecking ball, an exter­

nal interference signaling the termination of the anarchis­

tic aims of the players. In the recapitulation there is a

restatement of the two themes in their original form— that

is, the conductor regains control of his capricious charges,

remaining as arbitrary as ever. The return is complete;

nothing has changed; nothing has been accomplished except

the desecration of the lovely old church by the musicians,

this in turn becoming a meaningless act since the building

was apparently slated for demolition anyway. The conductor

and the players return to the same roles which they dis­

played at the beginning of the film; only the players have

had a lesson in the futility of revolution.

The analogy to sonata form is symbolized in the res­

olution of the conflict since the recapitulation of the

themes at the end of a sonata also signifies the resolution

of the tension generated in the development section. The

main thematic statement of the film, therefore, is concerned

with the idea of the futility of revolution since the res­

olution of the action leads the characters right back to the

same situation presented in the first section of the film.

Even the original underlying tension generated by the con-

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 25

flict between the conductor and the orchestra remains un­

resolved: the whole cycle seems destined to play itself out

again and again.

That Fellini would use a musical form for a film is not

surprising. For one thing, the film is, one one level,

about music. Also, Fellini is a director for whom imagery

is very important. He often sacrifices traditional narra­

tive in his films to his visions, composing for the camera

in the same rhythmic and nonverbal manner that a composer

writes for the orchestra. This can be seen, perhaps, most

vividly at the end of 8-1/2, where significantly, it is a

musical image which reconciles the numerous conflicts of the

32
film. His clowns and circuses seem to leap from the

subconscious onto the screen in those rare instants when the

visionary worlds of both the viewer and the director become

momentarily enmeshed. It is for this reason that Nino

Rota's nostalgic carnival tunes fit these films so well,

being so completely entwined with the images as to render

32prederico Fellini, dir., 8-1/2, 1963. In the con­

cluding sequence of the film, the conflicts of the numerous
characters are resolved in a fantasy image in which they are
all led together in a circular dance by a small circus
band. Rhode elaborated: "Its central character, a film
director, imagines himself once more a child, leading those
he loves and fears in a procession around a circus ring.
Although the child does not abandon his desire for power
over these figures— he controls them in much the same way as
his adult self will control actors and will be unable to
think of reconcilation in other than theatrical terms— the
concluding image of this fantasy, of the solitary child
playing a piccolo against the encroaching darkness, formu­
lates well the wish to take on the responsibility for all
that we fear." Rhode, p. 577.

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 26

them significantly less vivid without their rollicking ac­

companiment .

Fellini's special interest in the music of his films,

as well as the unique nature of is collaboration with Rota,

has been documented by Ross Care:

Fellini apparently helped to compose some of

his own scores, humming or suggesting tunes to
Rota who noted or adapted them. This may account
for one of the really unique aspects of the Fel­
lini/Rota oeuvre: that certain themes, like leit
motifs, keep turning up from film to film, until
one is ready to make a thorough musical reading of
the complete Fellini, the exact significance of
this loose system of motifs will have to remain
vague at b e s t . 33

Eisenstein: The Synthesis of Film and Music

The writer who has contributed the most detailed study

to the aesthetics of film music with regard to the relation­

ship between the visual and the aural movement was Sergei

Eisenstein. In Film Sense he introduced the concept which

he called "vertical montage."'*4

For Eisenstein the term "montage" denoted the abrupt

juxtaposition of diverse images, which would generally give

rise to a different interpretation if seen individually, not

in immediate succession. Eisenstein's usage of the term

extended to images that might occur within a frame as well

33 r 0 ss Care, "Scoring: Nina Rota." Take One, May,

1S 79 , p. 46.

34sergei Eisenstein, Film Sense, trans. and ed., Jay

Leyda (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1947), p. 74.

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 27

as those in a series. In general usage, however, the term

"montage" has come to refer to the grouping of disjunct im­

ages in a series, as, for example, at the beginning of Ing­

mar Bergman's Persona (1966).

Since the effect of the whole differs from that of each

of the parts, then when taken in series, each image conveys

a different meaning than it would individually. In a simple

example for the purpose of discussion, if one is shown a

shot of a worried woman, followed by a scene of a soldier in

battle, followed in turn by a shot of that same woman weep­

ing at a graveside, one might conclude that the woman is

weeping beside the grave of her husband or lover who was the

soldier depicted in the second shot, after he has died in

battle.

In fact, the viewer's imagination has filled in the

story. Three isolated shots have been shown on the screen

which are not necessarily connected. Eisenstein, illustra­

ting how a director might manipulate such deductions, quoted

the following story, "The Inconsolable Widow," from Ambrose

Bierce's Fantastic F abl es;

A woman in widow's weeds was weeping upon a

grave. "Console yourself, madam," said a Sympa­
thetic Stranger. "Heaven's mercies are infinite.
There is another man somewhere, besides your hus­
band, with whom you can still be happy."

"There was," she sobbed— "there was, but this

is his g rav e."35

35Ibid., p. 5.

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 28

The joining together of such a series of shots would be

an example of "horizontal" montage (a term which was not

employed by Eisenstein). If a musical score is added, a

"vertical" montage results, the term based upon musical no­

tation in which pitches which are sounded simultaneously are

vertically aligned. Eisenstein used the musical analogy to

denote the contrapuntal interaction between visual imagery

and music.

To continue the previous example, let us say, for the

sake of discussion, that the woman is shown as clock chimes

strike, the ensuing battle scene being accompanied by a

lovers' leitmotif introduced earlier in the film, and the

graveside scene being projected in silence. Sound has il­

luminated the series' interpretation: the clock chimes

might symbolize that the urgency of the moment; the contra­

puntal use of the lovers' leitmotif in the second scene

focuses the viewer's attention through the woman's viewpoint

in the first scene upon the the second scene, the viewer

thus empathizing with her fears; the silence of the third

scene reinforces this empathy and sense of isolation.

Eisenstein's discussion of vertical montage in The Film

Sense essentially centers on its structural applications (as

opposed to narrative ones). Using twelve shots taken from

the beginning of the "Battle of the Ice" sequence in Alexan­

der N e v s k y , Eisenstein hypothesizes the manner in which the

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 29

movement and structure of shots on the screen might have

been reflected in Prokofiev's score. il'his analysis was

initiated after the film's completion; the composer and dir­

ector did not discuss the structure implied in this analysis

during the film's production/ at least, Eisenstein does not

give us reason to suppose that they did.)

Looking at Eisenstein's diagram on the following page,

one finds the twelve shots printed across the page. Below

this the music with an accompanying structural analysis is

printed (between the shots and the score). A diagram of the

shots and an analysis of the movement within the shots fol­

lows. At the left hand top of the page, one finds the music

reprinted in groups of two measures. The letters on the

right hand side of the music indicate the motifs presented

in that bar. On the right hand top of the page, an enlarge­

ment of the shots is included.

Eisenstein's analysis reveals a rhythmic structure, in

the sense that it is defined by movement; camera movement

toward or away from a subject, light movement within a

frame, musical movement, the movement of the eye as it reads

the individual shots.

Trained as an architect, Eisenstein wrote, "the motion­

less whole of a picture and its parts do not enter the per­

ception simultaneously. . . . The art of plastic composi­

tion consists of leading the spectator's attention through

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 30

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 31

the exact path and the exact sequence prescribed by the

*3 £
author of the composition." The validity of this belief

is crucial to his analysis.

According to Eisenstein, when looking at Shot III, the

viewer first encounters the plateau on which the two figures

are standing, followed by a sharply rising arching line

traced by the rainbow in the sky. This is represented in

the corresponding pictoral diagram below, as well as in the

music for this shot: a chord (the plateau), followed by a

rising bass line (the rainbow). In Shot IV, the eye's move­

ment back and forth (twice, presumably) between the two

37
flags in the distance is marked by four eighth notes.

Here the theory begs the question in its assumption

that the viewer will glance back and forth twice. (Why not,

for instance, four times, or once?) Is this meant to be

caused by or merely accompanied by the four eight notes? In

this case is the reading of the picture choreographed by the

composer or the director? These are questions which Eisen­

stein does not address.

In Shot V, the sharp line of the cliff is mirrored in

the descending notes of Motif C. In contrast, the rising

line of music which accompanies Shot I does not correspond

to the eye's movement through the shot, but rather to the

36ibid., p. 190.

37ifc>id., P» 178.

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 32
38
increasing level of light (the shot is lit from within).

Obviously, there are serious flaws in Eisenstein's the­

ory, which was formulated after the completion of the film.

Pr endergast's point is well taken when ne notes that "while

it is possible for the film director, through the composi­

tion of his shot, to control somewhat the direction of the

viewer's eye movement across the frame, there is no way to

control the rhythm or pace of that movement." He explains

that "recognition of the metaphorical picture rhythm of Shot

IV is instantaneous, while the musical rhythm that Eisen­

stein claims corresponds to the picture takes 6-1/2 seconds

39
to be perceived. (Prendergast's deduction of 6-1/2

seconds is based on Prokofiev's tempo marking, J - 48, indi­

cated in the upper left hand corner.)

Prendergast's reasoning, however, discards the role of

the composer (a question which, as has been noted, Eisen­

stein does not clearly treat, either). The tempo at which

this shot might be read, could be entrusted to the composer,

as implied by Eisenstein. It is the director's failure to

adequately explain his deduction that the viewer will glance

back and forth in rhythm to the score that adds weight to

38I b i d . , p. 180.

3 9 p r e n d e r g a s t , P* 213.

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 33

Prendergast's argument that the director cannot control the

rhythm or pace of the viewer's eye across the frame.

Eisenstein's most glaring fallacy is to credit the

viewer with to much prior knowledge. While Eisenstein's

vertical montage might be appreciated on a subliminal level,

it would seem to be a structure conceived with the cogno­

scenti in mind. Once informed of its workings, it is not

difficult to perceive instances of vertical montage in suc­

cessive sections of the "Battle on the Ice" sequence, a fact

which argues the intuitive origins of the structure in the

first place. Repeated viewings of small portions of the

film, however, are a necessary requirement to the discovery

of further instances of vertical montage.

This is a technique which is analogous to Schoenberg's

twelve tone structure. Schoenberg expected the row to prov­

ide a work with thematic and harmonic unity; he did not

expect that each presentation of the row would be recog­

nized. Nor did he believe that it was necessary or even

desirable for a listener to notice each presentation of the

row. Such a statement might be made about the Eisenstein-

Prokofiev use of vertical montage in Alexander Nevsky: as

with the tone row, if one searches out obvious presentations

of vertical montage, they may be found; knowledge of their

existence enhances but is not necessary to an appreciation

of the film's integration of music and visual image.

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 34

Eisenstein claimed that the structure of the film was

realized in various ways, there having been sequences in

which the music is set to film, sequences in which the film

is set to music, and sequences which Eisenstein and Proko-

40
fiev planned together.

In the silent film tradition, the film relies heavily

on the score. As a sound film, though, Alexander Nevsky

appears primitive at points, strongly relying on operatic

and choreographic techniques (excessive gesturing and mug­

ging) which are more often associated with silent films than

with talking pictures. These features are also present in

the later Eisenstein-Prokofiev film, Ivan the Terrible,

Parts I and I I . The dialogue in many instances seems to be

delivered by the actors as if they were projecting to the

last row of a large theater instead of standing immediately

in front of a camera. There is a strong preference for ora­

tory, as in the Novgorod and Pskov sequences as well as in

the prince's address to the Russian people at the conclu­

sion. The role of Nevsky as a propaganda film somewhat ac­

counts for the emphasis on oratory.

The reliance in Nevsky on music, movement, mood, and

gesture, establishes a close relationship between this film

and dance, as well as opera. It is significant that the

musical numbers are only rarely interrupted by the spoken

40Eisenstein, p. 158.

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 35

word. In fact, when speech is called for at such a junc­

ture, it is sung, as in the case of the moving scene in the

snow when the women search for their wounded kin, which is

set to a hauntingly beautiful alto solo.

Eisenstein had the very highest regard for Prokofiev's

ability to integrate mood and movement:

He is the perfect composer for the screen.

. . . [His music] never remains merely an illu­
stration but reveals the movement and the dynamic
structure in which are embodied the emotion and
the meaning of an event. Whether it was the March
of the Love of Three O ra ng es , the duet between
Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, or the
galloping of Teutonic knights in Alexander N e v s k y ,
Prokofiev has grasped before anything else the
structural secret that conveys the broad meaning
of the subject.

[Prokofiev] . . . having grasped this struc­

tural secret . . . clothes it in the tonal "camera
angles" of instrumentation, compelling the whole
inflexible structure to blossom into the emotional
fullness of his orchestration. The moving graphic
outlines of his musical images which thus arise
are thrown into our consciousness just as, through
the blinding beam of the projector, moving images
are thrown onto the white plane of the screen. ^

There has always been a rhythmical and emotional con­

nection between the plastic arts and music, as Yon Barna

pointed out in his biography of Eisenstein:

For Beethoven, as Czerny once wrote, "sound

or movement of any kind became music and rhythm,"
while Romain Rolland commented that Leonardo di
Vinci "reacted in a similar way when he saw in the

^Eise ns tei n, quoted in Prendergast, p. 50.

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 36
cracks of a wall or in the flames in the hearth
smiling and grimacing f a c e s . "42

This connection between music and visual movement has

historically been forged by dance and opera. It was even­

tually bridged by musically accompanied film as well. Dance

works have very often made successful film scores. Proko­

fiev was a ballet composer of the first rank, and it is sig­

nificant that some of the works which Kubrick chose for 2001

were originally dance music: Khatchaturan1s Gayne Suite and

Johann Strauss's Blue Danu be. Both works are essentially

"choreographed" into the film— that is, they are set to se­

quences which contain no dialogue and which are more or less

preoccupied with the presentation of movement. The choice

of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna is also a significant one since Li-

43
geti is a composer who conceptualizes m graphic terms,

which is documented by the proportional notation for his

score, Volumina. It is interesting to note that Ingmar

Bergman has said that for him a piece of music is often the
44
germinal point for a film.

42yon Varna, Eisenstein (Indiana University Press,

1966), p. 11.

43cyorgy Ligeti, interviewed by Adrian Jack, *Ligeti

talks to A dr ia n Jack." Music and M u s i c i a n s , vol 22, pp.
24-30.

44j0 hn Simson, Ingmar Bergman Directs (New York:

Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972), p. 15.

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 37

Yet, in conclusion, Alexander Nevsky (as well as Ivan

the Te rri ble ) remains unique in the sound era in its exten­

sive use of operatic features, which in the opinion of Doug­

las W. Gallez, were not employed in a consistent fashion,

thus leading to confusion regarding the director's inten­

tions:

It is important in coming to grips with the

two films [Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Ter­
rible 3, but particularly with N evs ky , to remember
this notion of cinematographic opera; for part of
the problem in assessing the achievement and fail­
ure of the Eisenstein-Prokofiev collaboration lies
in one's predilection for realism or for styliza­
tion. It seems that Eisenstein could not quite
make up his mind in Nevsky whether he wished to
project one or the other. By the time he under­
took Ivan the Ter rib le , his purpose was clear: he
would present "the grandeur" of his subject by
"monumental means."45

This inability of Eisenstein to sort out the use of

epic and realistic presentation in Alexander Nevsky led to

many weak moments in the film, which Gallez has discussed at

length. Neither the film's deficiencies in this respect nor

the errors in Eisenstein's theories as presented in The Film

S e n s e , however, should obscure the significance of Eisen­

stein's and Prokofiev's contribution to the genre, as Gallez

concluded:

45Douglas W. Gallez, "The Prokofiev-Eisenstein Col­

laboration: Nevsky and Ivan Revisited," Cinema Journal,
Vol. XVII, No. 2, Spring, 1978^ pp. 13-35, p. 16.

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 38

Although Eisenstein1s reasoning has been cri­

ticized as a posteriori and false, even fanatical,
it is remarkable because few other theorists be­
fore him had concerned themselves with musico-
cinematic relationships prior to publication of
The Film S en se . Moreover, the fact that Eisen­
stein's overly enthusiastic rationalization was
self-serving does not negate its utility as a
frame for others to ponder when attempting to de­
velop a sounder theoretical basis for an aesthetic
of film music.

Narrative Music

Narrative music may be complementary, that is in agree­

ment with the mood, or contrapuntal, in contrast with the

mood. Bernard Herrmann's opulent, Wagnerian score comple­

ments the final sequence of Citizen Kane, its large, rest­

less chords magnificently reflecting Gregg Toland's dark,

47
expressionist cinematography. The impudent, rising in­

terrogative of Henze's score for the end of The Lost Honor

of Katharina Blum reinforces the film's satirical conclu-

48
sion.

An example of contrapuntal music occurs at the end of

Les Enfants du Paradis, which is set to a carnival song. As

the hero, Baptiste, futilely tries to overtake the heroine,

Garance, he is pushed further and further away from her by

46Ibid., p. 29.

47Citizen Kan e, dir., Orson Welles, 1941.

4^The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, dir., Volker

Scholondorf and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975.

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 39

the festive crowd. The festival air of the music and the

crowd cruelly contrasts with his desperate frustration as he

49
is engulfed by a mass of swirling clowns.

Narrative music may be informative, as, for instance,

the use of dissonant chords to identify a villain. Hitch­

cock and Herrmann used this cliche in Psych o, which marked

50
the beginning of their long partnership. This device is

found at the film's beginning when Marion first sees the

Bates motel. The music builds to a sudden climax, prophe­

sying her fate at that establishment. In the famous shower

sequence.: informative music anticipates the murder. When

the Anthony Perkins character appears at the top of the

stairs brandishing a butcher knife, the audience is as

startled by the screaming sforzando as by his sudden en­

trance; the viewer responds as much to the music as to the

image here.5'1'

The Use of Leitmotif

The leitmotif, which is an informative technique, has

been indisputably overused. It has been a flaw in numerous

films, this especially being the case in a certain class of

lavish melodramas where production values have dominated.

49Les Enfants du Paradis, dir., Marcel Carne, 1945.

SOprendergast, p. 133.

51Ps yc h o, dir., Alfred Hitchcock, 1960.

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 40

An example is found in Barry L yn do n, in which the phrase

from the Schubert Piano Trio, Opus 100, is heard so often

and in so may different situations that it is rendered mean-

i.

52
ingless. The same can be said of "Laura's Theme" in
53
Doctor Zhivago. Hans Eisler's observation that "more

than anything else the demand for melody at any cost and on

every occasion has throttled the development of motion pic-

54
ture music" has proven true all too often.

Eisler would have liked to have seen a more subtle and

varied handling of the leitmotif:

The leitmotif was invented essentially for

. . . symbolism. (Wagner using the Valhalla theme
to indicate not merely Wotan's castle, but sphere
of sublimity, cosmic will, and the primal prin­
ciple as w e l l .)55

He was correct in concluding that in many cases "the leit­

motif has been reduced to the level of a musical lackey, who

announces his master with an important air even though the

eminent personage is clearly recognizable to everyone."5 ^

It is also important to realize that the use of leitmotif in

Wagnerian opera is at once subtle and informative, as

52sarry Ly ndo n, dir., Stanley Kubrick, 1976.

53Poctor Zhivago, dir., David Lean, 1965.

54Hans Eisler, Composing for the Films (Freeport,

N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1947), p. 9.

53Ibid., p. 5.

3®I bi d.

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 41

well as a necessary narrative device. Such an instance is

found in the First Act of Die W a l ku re , occurring at Sieg-

mund's mention of his father while Valhalla's theme is in­

troduced in the orchestra, Siegmund being unable to inform

the audience directly of the important fact that Wotan is

his father since he is not aware of this himself. This in­

formation is provided, however, by the orchestra's playing

of the appropriate leitmotif, Valhalla's theme, at this mo-

57
ment. Another instance occurs when Sieglmde is rescued

by Brunhilde, who tells her that she is with child, the

identity of this child being announced through the use of

Siegfried's leitmotif in its initial appearance in the Ring

of the Nibelungs.^

The significance of leitmotivic technique is that it

allows the music itself to assume a narrative role. In most

operas before Wagner (Weber being the most notable excep­

tion), the orchestra's chief function was as an accom­

panist. With Wagner, however, the orchestra takes on an

informative role, providing an intricate psychological un­

dercurrent, thereby offering an immense, new potential to

any musically accompanied drama.

Although, historically, film is not rooted in opera,

the influence of opera, particularly those of Wagner, has

S^Richard Wagner, Die Wa lk ur e, Act I.

58Ibid., Act III.

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 42

been an important one (as already seen in the works of

Eisenstein and Prokofiev). Aside from their reliance on

leitmotivic technique, film composers have also borrowed the

full blown late Romantic orchestra. Bernard Herrmann's

string orchestra for Psycho, for instance, was considered

59
unconventional, even as late as 1960.

Max Steiner's score for Gone with the Wind illustrates

the expressive potential of leitmotivic technique, coupled

with a large Wagnerian orchestra. The idyllic image of

Tara's windswept, blossom-laden knoll is well matched by

Tara's gushy theme. The continual metamorphosis of "Dixie"

offers an example of thematic dramatization. It is first

heard as a high-spirited march at the Wilkes' barbecue, ac­

companying the whirl of activity precipitated by the long-

awaited announcement of the declaration of war. Narratively

transformed, it next appears as a slow, mournful dirge,

played in the minor mode, as the film's famous crane shot

backs away to reveal Scarlet picking here way through the

wounded filling the Atlanta railroad yard immediately pre­

ceding the city's fall. As a tattered Confederate flag

moves into the foreground of this extreme long shot, symbol­

izing the South sinking to its knees (as Rhett observes soon

thereafter), a cliche "Taps" is superimposed over "Dixie on

the sound track. Later "Dixie" is heard a final time,

59prendergast, p. 133.

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 43

allegro and agitato, as Rhett leads a blindfolded horse

through towering flames in the "Burning of Atlanta" sequence

(the glaring red sky and dense orchestration perhaps sug­

gesting the burning of Valhalla).60

In Jules et J i m , the waltz leitmotif contrasts with the

intense relationships represented on the screen; its use is

therefore contrapuntal, on one hand. On the other, it is

complementary, portraying the Bohemian-Belle Epoque climate

of Jules', Jim's, and Catherine's young years in Paris. In

the bicycling scene, it sets a holiday mood as Catherine

leads the three men who are her lovers throughout the film's

duration; symbolically, this quartet is shown cycling down­

hill. Used informatively at the conclusion of the film, the

music bursts onto the sound track expressing Jim's relief to

have escaped from the entangling world of Catherine, in

spite of the death of Jim as well. Its energy and optimism

reasserts the joie de vivre legacy of Jules, Jim, and

C *1
Catherine, which it is now left to Jim to perpetuate.

Symbolic Music

Music used for its associative value is symbolic.

There are varying examples of symbolic music, some quite

SOGone with the W i n d , dir., Victor Flemming, 1939.

6-*-Jules et J im , dir., Frangois Truffaut, 1961.

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 44

complex. In Blume in Love, Paul Mazursky's film about the

turbulent reconciliation of estranged spouses, the pair re­

unite, approaching each other from opposite ends of San Mar­

co square in Venice as a small orchestra in the center plays

Wagner's Liebestod. Though tongue-in-cheek, the gesture is

nonetheless rendered all the more touching by its scope: as

the music reaches its climax, the pace of the two figures

accelerates. Her advanced pregnancy counters the score's

air of fated tragedy: instead of dying together, Mazursky's

62
lovers are about to give birth together.

Symbolism in Bernardo Bertolucci's Spider's Stratagem

is, as the title implies, intricate. The hero, Athos Mag-

nani, returns to investigate his father's death, which oc­

curred outside the opera house during a performance of Rigo-

letto. He finds that his father, remembered as a war hero,

was actually executed by Italian partisans whom he had be­

trayed. At the elder Magnani's suggestion, the killers have

blamed the Fascists, thus raising his status to martyrdom.

The reason for his treason is never explained.

As the web thickens, the identity between father and

son, both played by Guilio Borgi (wearing the same costume)

becomes confused. Cuts back and forth between past and pre­

sent are so frequent that the two eventually become indis­

tinguishable. On the night of the murder it is no longer

62Blume in Love, dir., Paul Mazursky.

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 45

ascertainable whether it is the father or the son who is now

the intended victim. This question, moreover, is never re­

solved. When the son goes to the train station in an at­

tempt to escape, he finds escape now to be impossible.

Grass growing over the tracks reveals that trains have not

used this station for years, presenting an enigma to the

audience who have seen the younger Magnani arrive by train

at the film's beginning. In Verdi's opera, Rigoletto is

inadvertently responsible for the death of his child,

Gilda. The implication here is that Athos Magnani, the

father, similarly, is going to be responsible for the death

of his s o n . ^

The use of Mozart's Piano Sonata in D, K. 576, in Jean-

Luc Godard's Weekend is still more complicated. Set to a

series of three successive 360° pans, the music is, once

again, presented internally. Performing alone in the middle

of a barnyard, a pianist laments the loss of the great mas­

ters of the past (especially Mozart), and despairs of what

he considers to be the disgraceful state of contemporary

. 6 4
music composition.

Like so much of this unsettling film, the significance

of the barnyard sequence remains enigmatic, its incongruity

63The Spider's Stratagem, dir., Bernardo Bertolucci,

64Jean-Luc Goddard, dir., Wee ke nd , 1967.

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 46

obviously being part of its raison d'§tre. Several explana­

tions may be suggested, however. One is that the music here

has a structural as well as a symbolic function, the two

being intertwined in this case: the closed form of Mozart's

sonata is reflected in the circular motion of the camera,

the 360° pan around the barnyard, which in turn reflects the

closed world and the provincial attitudes of the performer.

It may also mirror the fact that Mozart himself, like the

present day composers of the pianist's soliloquy, was to an

extent rejected by his contemporaries. Mozart never found

the position he sought; he died in poverty and was buried in

a pauper's grave. The irony here is that the pianist, while

defending Mozart, likewise rejects the composers of his

time. One might even deduce that, had the pianist been a

contemporary of Mozart, or were Mozart alive today, this

barnyard musician would have rejected Mozart's music as well.

Seen in the formal context of Weekend, the Barnyard

sequence serves as a caesura, offering a moment's respite in

the midst of the most anarchistic chaos. Like so many of

the film's enigmatic scenes, it may also contain a reference

to another film, or another work of art— such as the book-

burning scene's tribute to Fahrenheit 451, or the telephone

booths dialogue's reference to Bed and B oa rd .

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 47

Descriptive Music

Decorative Music; Last Year at Marienbad and

Cries and Whispers

Decorative music establishes the period and place of

the drama. The thickly textured polophony of Last Year at

Marienbad complements the rich and formal opulence of the

heavy Baroque place in which the film is set. The music's

ceaseless motion and strong reliance on the diminished

seventh chord, as well as a large degree of dissonance serve

to intensify the vertigo produced by tracking shots down

seemingly endless hallways, the glimpses of ornate molding

and intricate detail embellishing every available inch of

wall and ceiling space, the lengthy shots of rooms of for­

mally dressed people who stare without blinking, and the

slow pans across vistas of topiary which stretch into the

horizon: Last Year at Marienbad is a kinesthetically dis­

turbing movie.65

Significantly, it belongs to a genre of film which is

closely related to dance, and the camera movement here is

choreographed to the music. Citing what he considers to be

a lack of "substance," Rhode says that "it celebrates a

semi-abstract exercise in which the camera movement and

editing conspire to create a splendid mystification."66

S^Last Year at Marienbad, dir., Alain Resnais, 1961.

66Rhode, A History of Cine ma, p. 537.

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 48

Yet what a gift is it that Resnais displays here. Rhode

appears to have missed the point: this celebration of sound

and movement would seem to be of sufficient substance on its

own.

Also, Last Year at Marienbad displays a depth ignored

by Rhode, a content which is reinforced by its style. The

dreamlike quality, for instance, is an important element of

the film's main thematic statement, which is concerned with

the confusion of fantasy and reality. This sense of con­

fusion is heightened by the endless, unresolved progressions

and the labyrinthian shots of seemingly endless corridors

and garden walks accompanied by strings of unresolved dis­

sonances. The ornately symbolic card games throughout the

film, and especially at the film's conclusion, offer yet

another evasion of the film's ultimate question, which like

the endless sequencing of seventh chords, remains enigmatic

and not clearly stated or resolved. In charging that the

film lacks substance, Rhode seems to have missed the p ro ­

verbial forest for the trees. Resnais's technical tour de

force in Last Year at Marienbad, while dazzling in its own

right, serves to intensify the film's elegant and mysterious

narrative.
67
In Cries and Whispers the music provides a tonal

period setting for the film, which takes place atthe fam-

67cries an(^ Whispers, dir., Ingmar Bergman, 1973.

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 49

ily's country house in turn-of-the-century Sweden. The

enveloping interiors are colored in deep reds, a color which

dominates the film visually, the numerous fade-ins and

fade-outs, for instance, beginning and/or ending in red.

The story concerns three sisters who have gathered in their

childhood home to await the lingering death of one of their

number. The sound track is punctuated by the persistent

ticking and chiming of myriad clocks which embellish each

room of the house: time is running out. The film deals

with each woman's attempt to come to grips not only with the

impending death of her sister and the relationship of each

with the invalid, but also with the difficulty of each to

come to terms with death itself. Chopin's mournful Mazurka,

Op. 17, No. 4, is played as internal music by one of the

sisters. Like Chopin, the dying sister has fought a life­

long battle with consumption, to which she eventually suc­

cumbs within the course of the drama.

In a particularly moving sequence, the dead woman, upon

refusing to leave (after dying), begs to be comforted, and,

upon being rejected in turn by each of her sisters, is cra­

dled like a child in the arms of her compassionate maid, so

that she may sink peacefully into eternal sleep. This scene

is accompanied by a movement from one of Bach's suites for

solo cello (external music). As the sisters each in turn

seek absolution, one recalls Schweitzer's tributed to Bach:

"For him the tones do not perish, but ascend to God like

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 50
co
praise too deep for utterance."

At the beginning of a sequence, music may function as

an establishing shot, as for instance, the calypso dances in

the beginning of Black Orpheus.^ The fantastic primal

rhythms and timbres of the music accompanying the planting

sacrifice at the beginning of Pasolini's Medea transport the

70
viewer to the ancient Mediterranean world. The opulence

of Imperial Russia is revived in the wedding feast sequence

in Ivan the Terrible, Part I, as much by Prokofiev's exotic

score as by Eisenstein's extravagant imagery. In the color

sequence of Part I I , the music's swirling motion vividly

parallels the choreography of the richly costumed dan­

cers. 71

Characteristic Music; Ludwig and Death in Venice

Characteristic music may also be descriptive. There

are several examples in Visconti's film Ludwig, based on the

life of Ludwig II of Bavaria. In one scene, for example,

the bride's horrendous rendition of an excerpt from Wagner's

Lohengrin serves not only to emphasize the impossibility of

^ A l b e r t Schweitzer, J.S. Ba c h , Vol. I, trans., Er­

nest Newman (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966), p.
167.

S^Black O rp h eu s, dir., Michael Camus, 1965.

70M e d e a , dir., Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972.

71lvan the Terrible, Parts I and II, dir., Sergei

Eisenstein, 1946.

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 51

any communication between the ill-matched pair, but it also

externalizes Ludwig's inner disintegration. In another ex­

ample, Ludwig's adoration and love of the fantastic is do­

cumented as he is pulled through a grotto in a swan-shaped

boat to music of the same composer (external music).

In the initial meeting of in the film between Ludwig

and Elizabeth of Austria, the use of several of Schumann's

Kinderscenen pieces emphasizes the childhood origins and

childlike nature of their friendship. It also serves as a

subtle commentary on the appalling immaturity of the two

72
monarchs.

Death in Venice is primarily based on the novella by

Thomas Mann of the same title, as well as his later novel

Doctor Faustus. The character of the protagonist in the

film, Aschenbach, is drawn from the central characters of

both of these works and from Proust's Baron de Charlus as

well. The film, like both of the Mann works, deals with the

artist's attempts to wrestle with the Dionysian and Apol­

lonian elements within himself. In the film the Dionysian

attraction is personified by the seductive boy, Tadzio.

Describing a flashback, in which Visconti used Beetho­

ven's Fur Elise to define Aschenbach's relationship with

Tadzio, Alexander Hutchison wrote:

72i,udwiq, dir., Luchino Visconti, 1973.

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 52

. . . a tune picked out by Tadzio on the hotel

piano is taken up by a ragged ensemble as a flash­
back shows Aschenbach sitting ill at ease beside a
blue-gartered, stein-bibbing whore while the madame
announces his arrival to Esmeralda. As Aschenbach
walks to the door of her room and peers in, Esmer­
alda continues playing— the tune is Beethoven's Fur
Elise— and, though partially hidden by the upright
piano, she twice moves her head slowly to stare at
him standing in the doorway. We have the strong
impression that he has visited b e f o r e . ' 3

The rest of the scene is ambiguous; we are unsure of exactly

what transpires between Aschenbach and Esmeralda; however,

as he leaves she makes an effort to draw him toward her,

which he resists. As Hutchison points out, Aschenbach has

tried to resist "the temptation of the girl and the bro­

thel."74 (Likewise, he makes a strong effort to resist

Tadzio.) As he leaves the brothel, she begins playing Fur

Elise again. The tune has been used for characterization,

75
Tadzio being thus equated with Esmeralda.

The simplicity of the piece itself is also important

here. Its harmonic language throughout is elementary, being

limited for the first half of the piece to the tonic chord

(antecedent phrase), and the dominant chord (consequent

phr as e). The same rhythmic motif permeates every bar of the

73Alexander Hutchison, "Luchino Visconti's Death in

V e n i c e , p. 35.

^^Hutchison, p. 35.

75peath in Venice, dir., Luchino Visconti, 1971.

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 53

composition. The tune's appearance here is analogous to

that of a country cousin in this film that is dominated by

the subtle, complex Adagietto of Mahler's Fifth Symphony.

Fur Elise is vulgarized in its presentation here, both

in Tadzio's and Esmeralda's unmusical readings of it, as

well as its continuation by what Hutchison calls quite aptly

76
a "ragged ensemble." Its use also makes a significant

statement about Aschenbach. In the film he is, like Lever-

kiihn of Doctor Faustus, established as a composer of some

rank. His interest in both Tadzio and Esmeralda here (given

their apparent lack of musical sensitivity) then is perhaps

implied to be of a predominantly Dionysian nature. The Dio­

nysian pull has tipped the balance; and, while it is the

case that Aschenbach is attracted to them for their somewhat

shallow physical reflection of the ideal beauty which he

seeks to possess, as a musician perhaps, he should have been

appalled by their primitive sense of artistry.

Incongruous Music

Music that is incongruous with the visual portion of

the film provides very effective humor or satire. The Twyla

Tharp ballet Push Comes to Shove offers an example of this

in the section in which jarring and inelegant gestures, such

76Hutchison, "Death in Venice," p. 34.

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 54

as those which dancers use to teach one another a new series

of steps, are choreographed to a movement from a Haydn sym-

77
phony. Both the rhythm and the mood of the dance are

incongruous with the score.

Stanley Kubrick arranged a similarly incongruous dance

in A Clockwork Orang e, when a gang fight is set to the

polished strains of a Rossini waltz. VJhile the mood of the

music and the image are contradictory, the rhythm matches.

His use of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, however, in the same

film is puzzling. Beethoven seems such an unlikely hero for

Alex, the thug who is the central character of the film,

that the use of the Choral Symphony throughout, both inter­

nally and externally, seems paradoxical. A possible expla­

nation is that the bully Alex is enthralled with the power

of the piece. In this context it is important to note the

inherent contradiction between Beethoven's theme of univer­

sal brotherhood and Alex's aggressive criminality. It is

also possible, however, that its use here might be symbolic,

Beethoven as a romantic hero being an object of worship for

the anti-social Alex, a complex personality who, despite his

hostile behavior, is nonetheless the only hero in the film.

This might be more plausible, though, if Kubrick had used

78
some other score of Beethoven.

77pu sh Comes to S h o v e , chor., Tw y l a Tharp, 1976.

78stanley Kubrick, dir., A Clockwork O r a n g e , 1972.

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 55

In Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove the satire is more ob­

vious. The love song which accompanies the end of the film

stands in marked contrast to the nuclear holocaust that is

79
depicted on the screen: it is, indeed, "strange love."

The Problem of Appropriate Music

Previous Associations

A familiar musical work may provide certain associa­

tions for its listeners. That this may be turned to advan­

tage has already been shown. Of course, it may also be a

disadvantage, as Ernest Lindgren points out:

The use of well known music is . dis­

tracting and has the additional disadvantage that
it often has certain associations the producer
wishes not to establish in his film. The most
painful case of this kind in my experience was
Disney's treatment of Beethoven's Pastorale Sym­
phony in Fantasia, which was so destructive of my
feelings for this music that for a long time I
feared I should never be able to efface Disney's
images from my mind and my enjoyment of it would
be permanently marred.80

It may happen that a piece that is perfectly suited to

a sequence for one reason, for instance, structurally, is

inappropriate for another, for instance, narratively. Such

is the case of Griffith's use of Wagner's Ride of the Val­

kyries, which is heard during the final sequence of The

79stanley Kubrick, dir., Dr. Strangelove, or How I

Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bo mb, 1963.

S^Ernest Lindgren, The Art of the Film (New York:

Collier Books, 1963), p. 190-191.

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 56
81
Birth of a Nation. Rhythmically it is well suited to

the galloping horsemen; the urgency of the moment is also

well matched to the score. However, it raises other images

to those familiar with Die Walkiire, which conflict with

those on the screen. The pre-existing program of this par­

ticular piece, then, works to its disadvantage. An addi­

tional problem comes from Griffith's bigotry; The Birth of a

Nation displays indisputable racist overtones. The Wagner­

ian score brings up the unfortunate issue of Wagner's own

racist views.

It should be pointed out that this question of previous

associations is an important reason why famous works do not

often appear as film scores. Even absolute music calls

forth certain associations over which a director has no con­

trol. A piece may remind a person, for example, of a par­

ticular performance, or of certain events which occurred at

the time of that performance (or another filml ) . A new

score presents none of these difficulties.

These previous associations, however, can be handled

originally. Kubrick sought to manipulate these through his

use of the Blue Danube for the "Space Waltz" sequence in

2001. Viewers familiar with the sight of rockets fired from

83-The Birth of a Nation, dir., D. W. Griffith, 1915.

The score mentioned here is one which has been played as a
soundtrack with this film on the two occasions which the
writer has viewed it (once at the Circle Theater in Washing­
ton, D.C., and once on public television in Washington,
D . C . ).

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 57

a launching platform at Cape Kennedy might be surprised to

find them whirling around in space accompanied by a Strauss

waltz. The very cleverness of this idea calls attention to

itself. It is partially this cleverness that is so appre­

ciated; and Kubrick perseveres in his ingenuity. Instead of

crashing through the atmosphere like a blazing meteorite,

Kubrick's ship docks at the moon terminal as weightlessly as

a ballerina, culminating a spectacular pas de deux, which is

as courtly and refined as the accompanying Viennese

waltz.82

Inappropriate Music

Music that is unrelated to the visual portion of the

film can be inappropriate. (It calls to mind London's

statement that was cited at the beginning of this study:

"We are not accustomed to apprehend movement as an artistic

83
form without accompanying sounds.") The final sequence

of The Bride of Frankenstein is a case in point. The apo­

calyptic vision of the mad scientist infusing life from

Frankenstein (Boris Karloff) into his bride (Elsa Lanches-

ter), shooting towers of sparks into the sky above his moun­

tain laboratory, is set to music better suited to a Hawaiian

luau.

822001: A Space Odyssey, dir., Stanley Kubrick, 1968.

88Prendergast, Film Music, p. 3-4.

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 58

The music must be there to fill an aural void; no reasonable

explanation suffices.8^

This need of "filling in" (to borrow Mann's concept)

goes back to the silent days. Silent films with their exag­

gerated style of acting are in many respects a form of

dance; that is, they are movement which is choreographed

with music, which was often provided after the fact. The

music did not always suit, though, as Gerald Cocks'nott

points out here:

Throughout the period of the silent cinema it

was customary to accompany films with music, the
general assumption being that the emotional impact
of the film on the spectator was thereby in­
creased. It was felt moreover that music could
contribute to the realism by imitating or suggest­
ing sounds of natural objects that appeared on the
screen. Though occasionally a score might be com­
posed or compiled under the supervision of the
director, most film music was a somewhat fortui­
tous potpourri of light music, with atmospheric
interludes (like the "Heavy Descriptive Agitato
No. I" listed in Erno Rapee's Encyclopedia of Pic­
ture Music, 1925) and themes borrowed, often some­
what gratuitously, from the better known clas­
sics. Film music generally revealed a naivetee
rivaling even the content of many silent films.®5

Jerry Goldsmith, a contemporary film composer, would

like to see less music in films. Addressing this problem of

music being used to "fill in" an aural void, he explains:

I think that we are trying to be a little

more selective about where the music goes in a

84Bride of Frankenstein,

85cerald Cockshott, Incidental Music in the Sound

Film (British Film Music, 1946), p. 1.

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 59

film. In the days gone by there seems to have

been a liberal sprinkling of music. My preference
is that the music be used as sparingly as pos­
sible. I feel that if there is constant use of
music or too much music, it will eventually viti­
ate the needed movements. The music becomes like
white sound. It's like living in an area that has
a high density of traffic noises. Your ear even­
tually tunes out those frequencies.8 ®

Contemporaneity

The question of whether music should be contemporary

with the film's setting is an important one. Many directors

and composers have felt that this was not necessary, as can

be illustrated by Jerry Goldsmith's score for Roman Polan­

ski's Chinatown, for which Goldsmith chose to compose music

that was not in the style of the period. Prokofiev came to

the same conclusion with Alexander Ne vs ky . In both films,

there are so many other factors which serve to integrate

the music into the film that this discrepancy is not a prob­

lem. Both composers, nevertheless, did choose to mimic cer­

tain features of period style.

Goldsmith explained his decision, noting that the vis­

ual portion had already established the film's period and

that, in any event, what the film dealt with "are characters

and that the time was of little significance. It could be

now or 1933 . . . so that the music in the film is dealing

with the relationship of the two people as well as providing

86jerry Goldsmith, quoted in Prendergast, Film Music,

p. 158.

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 60
87
a certain suspense element." At times Goldsmith did

attempt to bridge the temporal gap in the film. Although

portions of his score are atonal, he said that he "tried to

write a tune that could have been written during the 1930's

although . . . I orchestrated it differently than they would

88
have during those days."

Conclusion

Although there are numerous and varying ways that music

may function in film, they may be grouped into four broad

categories: structural, narrative, descriptive, and incon­

gruous. In the following chapters, the synthesis of music

and visual imagery in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Death in

Venice will be analyzed within these categories.

Mann's description of music may be just as aptly ap­

plied to the presentation of visual images in film:

time is the medium; music divides,

measures, articulates time, and can shorten it,
yet enhances its value at o n c e . 89

When moving visual images and music are joined, they

generate structural and emotional cross-rhythms resulting in

a product which is, like montage, significantly changed from

the sum total of its individual parts: this product has

become, for the twentieth century, a new expressive genre.

^Go ld smi th , quoted in Prendergast, p. 159.

88ibid.
89fiann, The Magic M o u n t a i n , p. 541-542.

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 CHAPTER II

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

BY STANLEY KUBRICK

The Work of Stanley Kubrick

Of the three late films of Stanley Kubrick in which

music plays an integral role, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A

Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon, it is most important in

2001, a film whose cinematic structure is closely related to

music. As Kubrick pointed out:

2001 . . . is basically a visual, nonverbal

experience. It avoids intellectualization and
reaches the viewer's subconscious in a way that is
essentially poetic and philosophic. The film thus
becomes a subjective experience which hits the
viewer at an inner level of subconsciousness, just
as music does, or painting.

Actually, film operates on a level much

closer to music and painting than to the printed
word, and, of course, movies present the opportun­
ity to convey complex concepts and abstractions
without the traditional reliance on words. I
think that 2001, like music, succeeds in short
circuiting the rigid surface cultural blocks that
shackle our consciousness to narrowly limited re­
gions of its experience and is able to cut direct­
ly through to areas of emotional comprehension.
In two hours and forty minutes of film there are
only forty minutes of dialogue.1

istanley Kubrick, interviewed by Josephy Gelmis in

The Film Director as Superstar (New York: Doubleday &
Company, 1970), p. 302.

61

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 62

The lack of dialogue, a feature which has been dis­

cussed by many critics, has, as Kubrick noted, placed a

greater emphasis on the visual portion of the film. It has

also served to make the music more important, since much of

the visual action takes on, in the absence of verbalized

narrative, a dancelike character.

Many parts of the film are painstakingly synchronized

with the accompanying score, a trait which 2001 shares with

Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, Eisenstein's in­

fluence on
Kubrick being a debt which Kubrick has freely
2
acknowledged. It is of interest to note that, while he

found Eisenstein's plots and dialogues the weakest elements

in his films, he particularly admired the composition of his

shots as Well as his editing. Like Eisenstein, Kubrick has

managed to maintain control over the editing of his films,

an accomplishment which he discussed in an interview with

Joseph Gelmis:

Nothing is cut without me. I'm in there

every second, and for all practical purposes I cut
my own film; I mark every segment, select each
frame, and have everything done exactly the way I
want it. Writing, shooting, and editing are what
you have to do to make a film.3

2Carolyn Geduld, Filmguide to 2001: A Space Odyssey

(Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1973),
p. 9. According to Alexander Walker in Stanley Kubrick Dir­
ects (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), "One ear­
ly memory of a film that impressed him because of a marve­
lous combination of mucic and action was the "Battle on the
Ice" sequence in Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky— a display he
has often alluded to in later interviews." pp. 15-16.

3Kubrick, quoted in Gelmis, p. 312.

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 63

Since the editing of 2001 plays a particularly impor­

tant structural role with regard to the music, it is signi­

ficant it was handled by Kubrick, the choice of the music

and its synthesis in the film also having been his responsi­

bility.

In keeping with his role as auteur, Kubrick extended

himself into other areas of filmmaking, as well. Upon grad­

uating from high school, he spent five years as a photo­

grapher for Look magazine, using the skill thereby gained in

his early films, where he served as cinematographer as well

as writer, director, producer, editor, and sound editor.

With the exception of Spartacus, a film which he later con­

sidered an embarrassment, he has succeeded in controlling

all aspects of his films, motivated in part, according to

Alexander Walker, by his frustrating experience in directing

Spartacus. Walker's comments on Kubrick's insistence after

Spartacus on managing every aspect of his films, "from in­

ception to the last shot, and then on through the promo­

tional publicity to the premiere,"^ are illuminating:

Kubrick stuck out the difficult months that

followed [referring to his work on Spartacus]
unable to have any say in the script, but fearing
that if he quit, someone else might make it worse,
and vaguely hoping that at some stage, perhaps in
the editing, it might be made better. He regards
it as his most difficult and fruitless period. A
couple of years later he permitted himself a

^Stanley Kubrick quoted in Alexander Walker, Stanley

Kubrick Directs (New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich,
1971), p. 27.

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 64

rather sarcastic reference to his powerlessness

when Peter Sellers, in the character of Quilty in
Loti ta , lisps, "I am Spartacus; set me free." The
experience had an annealing effect on Kubrick. He
henceforth never relinquished the power of decision
to anyone— "a simple matter if it's in your c on ­
tract, a great deal of trouble if it's not."5

Special Features of 2001

2 0 01 , a film which required five years to complete at a

cost exceeding ten million dollars,® reflects the indepen­

dence of its director. As a science fiction drama, it dis­

plays an attention to realistic detail previously lacking in

other films of this genre. Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke,

Kubrick's co-author on the script as well as the author of

The Sen tin el , the story from which the film derives, sought

the professional advice of numerous consultants, including

scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Adminis­

tration, as well as additional individuals with aeronautical

7
and medical expertise.

^ibid .

^Gene D. Phillips, Stanley Kubrick: A Film Odyssey

(New York: Popular Library, 1975), p. 131.

7The Making of Kubrick's 2001, ed., Jerome Agel (New

York: The New American Library, Inc., 1980. See unnumbered
pages in the middle section of the book which describe the
production of the film (hereinafter referred to as "mid-
section" ) .

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 65

Kubrick employed various innovative procedures, some of

which had been developed by the avant garde filmmakers of

the 1960's, such as Jordan Belsen for Allures (scan de­

vice) . The "Stargate Corridor" sequence used several tech­

niques, such as the scan device and a split screen, which

were not commonly employed in commercial filmmaking prior to

2001. Another technique, the now famous "matte" process

used in the moon landing sequence, featured small insets of

film placed within shots (literally a film within a film),

which camouflaged the size of the model sets: although the

landing station was miniature, the portrayal of human fig­

ures moving at various windows

station gave of the the im-
O
pression that it was built to actual scale.

Kubrick's carefull attention to special effects was

noted by Gene D. Phillips:

Sibid. It should be noted, as Kevin Brownlow has

pointed out, that there are very few new techniques in film
making. The split screen, for instance, was first used by
Abel Gance, most notably in Napolfeon. Brownlow noted:

Film-making techniques today are little fur­

ther developed than they were at the end of the
silent era. Startling innovations excite critics,
but any capable historian can point to the intro­
duction of hand-held cameras, wild cutting, and
abbreviated narration: it was all being done in
the twenties. Film makers are generally less im­
aginative, less daring, and less skillful than
their silent era counterparts. This is under­
standable: production costs are astronomical, and
the financial risk is daunting.

Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By (New York: Bal-

lantine Books, 1969), p. 670.

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 66

Each special effects shot might include sev­

eral elements, each of which had to be photo­
graphed separately. For example, one shot might
include a scale-model spaceship sailing through
the atmosphere with drawings of the various plan­
ets in the background which would be visible at
this point in its flight. The shot of the space­
craft would be superimposed on the shots of the
planets in order to create a single image on the
screen.9

Other effects include a flight attendant who walks up­

side down, created by placing the camera in a revolving

module (reminiscent of Fred Astaires's "Dancing on the Ceil­

ing" sequence in Royal W e d d i n g ). As the camera turns, the

viewer's point of view remains fixed, an illusion which is

reinforced by the stewardess who mimics walking— she appears

to be walking up the walls. A pen (suspended on a wire and

filmed in slow motion) floats in mid-air; astronauts swim

about in the zero-gravity of outer space. ^

Kubrick spent a year and a half after completing the

shooting with the cast working on the 205 special effects

shots that make up half of the film."*"^ These are the main

cause of the film's enormous budget, and it was an extra­

ordinary tour de force on Kubrick's part that he was able to

delay the film's release for such a long time, enabling him

to complete these elaborate displays. Although Kubrick has

acknowledged the production chief at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for

9Phillips, p. 133.

l^The Making of 2001, midsection.

^-Phillips, p. 133.

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 67
12
making this delay possible, in the long run it is the

director himself who deserves most of the credit, by engen­

dering the faith which made this possible.

2001 is perhaps the most expensive "underground" film

ever produced, if one defines "underground" to mean work in

which the director is able to enjoy freedom from studio

pressures. Although rare in the field, it does occasionally

happen (increasingly so today, in fact) that a director will

assume fiscal responsibility for an expensive production,

two notable examples being D. W. Griffith with Intolerance

and Francis Ford Copola with Apocalypse N ow . In each case,

the director invested a substantial personal fortune into

the film.

In advising young filmmakers, Kubrick has stressed the

necessity of having the capacity to deal with all areas of

production, including fundraising, in which Kubrick, judging

from 200 1, must be a master.

Kubrick's Use of Music

The importance of music in Kubrick's films can be

strikingly illustrated. For instance, a memorable use of

incongruous music is found at the end of Dr. Strangelove, in

12it>id., p. 133. Robert O'Brien was in charge of

production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at that time.

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 68

which nuclear blasts are set to a love song, "We'll Meet

A g ai n. "

A Clockwork Orange provides a particularly complex use

of music. In "Kubrick and his Discontents," Hans Feldmann

referred to 2 0 0 1 , A Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon, as a

"trilogy on the moral and psychological nature of Western

13
man and on the destiny of his civilization." (The music

in all three films reinforces his view.)

Feldmann explained that A Clockwork Orange is "grounded

14
in a Freudian view of the dynamics of civilization,"

pointing out that Freud had believed that civilization would

"progress" only in direct relation to its ability to develop

means of sublimation for unacceptable drives of the "primal,

15
asocial, instinctual id." Kubrick, he explained, agreed,

l^Hans Feldman, "Kubrick and his Discontents," Film

Qua r te rl y, Vol. XXX, No. 1, Fall, 1976, p. 12.

1 4 Ibid., p. 16.

l5 Ibid. Freud said in Civilization and Its Discon­

t e n t s , authorized trans. , Joan Riviere (London: Leonard and
Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1930):

I take the standpoint that the tendency to

aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual
disposition in man, and I come back now to the
statement that it constitutes the most powerful
obstacle to culture, (p. 102)

The fateful question of the human species

seems to me to be whether and to what extent the
cultural process developed in it will succeed in
mastering the derangements of communal life caused
by the human instinct of aggression and self-des­
truction. (p. 143-144)

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 69

arguing that the instinctual self being "intrinsic to man's

16
nature," only civilizations which took this into account

could function successfully. According to Feldmann, the

music in A Clockwork Orange symbolized this instinctual self:

Kubrick's discontents with civilization's

forms are not only because they frustrate the in­
stinctual man, but also because they deny that the
instinctual self is intrinsic to man's nature.
Kubrick insists upon this point of view throughout
A Clockwork Orange by juxtaposing the brutal en­
actment of instinctual urges with sublimated ex­
pressions of those urges. The popular song,
"Singin' in the Rain," for example, is a senti­
mental, sublimated expression of the same urge
that is compelling Alex to the act he commits
while singing it. Beethoven's music is a "higher"
expression of the same instinctual compulsions,
and when Alex attacks the health-spa proprietress
with the sculpture of a phallus, she counters by
swinging a bust of the great composer at him.
Political activity is no more than the sublimated
urge to overpower all that is outside the id. The
final scene of the movie, in which the government
minister attempts to win A l e x ’s endorsement and
frees him to the strains of Beethoven's Ninth Sym­
phony is perhaps overly contrived in its symbol­
ism: the minister is metaphorically feeding his
id as he is literally feeding Alex. Yet Malcolm
MacCowell's chewing performance in the scene pro­
jects all the libidinal energy that is Alex's
vital characteristic and that somehow marks him as
the healthiest individual in the movie.17

According to Feldmann's point of view, the music in A

Clockwork Orange was used for characterization. As will be

shown, some of the scores in 2001 are also used for

16 ibid.
i^Ibid.'

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 70

characterization, providing an insight into the society that

populated Kubrick's twenty-first century, a civilization

about which Kubrick expressed a point of view similar to

that of A Clockwork Orange. In 2 001 , it is the criminals,

like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, who are ultimately shown to

exhibit the most vital and healthy dispositions. In the

first sequence, the use of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach

Zarathustra presents, coming as it does when the ape first

uses his newly found tool as a murder weapon, an unmistak­

able reference to the Nietzschean concept of the will to

power. This ape, like Alex, also proves to be more "human"

(in the sense of being more lifelike and not as culturally

repressed) than the humans in the film, as does HAL the com­

puter, who commits mass murder. Kubrick's view of the

future, in both 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, is bleak.

His picture of the past in Barry Lyndon is no bright­

er. Yet in his portrait of Redmond Barry, he reveals a man

who eventually succeeds in dominating those same antisocial

instincts within him which had brought about his destruc­

tion. This is revealed, according to Feldmann, in the final

sequence in which, instead of killing his opponent at the

opportune moment in a duel, Barry fires his own shot away

and then, standing his ground, receives his opponent's fire,

a shot which leads to the amputation of Barry's leg and his

eventual submission. "In doing so," wrote Feldmann, "he

achieved the only meaningful victory in the movie, the

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 71
18
triumph over the savage in himself."

Music in this film is not as successfully employed as

in 2001 or A Clockwork Or ang e. The phrase from Schubert's

Piano Trio, Opus 100, heard throughout the film may, in its

native dignity, characterizes that portion of the hero which

will eventually triumph. Unlike Also Sprach Zarathustra,

however, its presentation carries no extra-musical meaning;

nor does it function with the same structural formality as

does the Mahler Adagietto in Death in Venice. Its excessive

repetition here is ultimately confusing.

Perhaps, however, in its slow deliberate manner it is

meant to signal the inevitable demise of Barry, just as Hut­

chison maintained that the Adagietto was indicative of the

19
"measured approach of death" in Death in Venice. This

interpretation suits its sense of tragic longing, especially

during the scene of the death of Barry's son. As in Death

in Venice, the music elicits empathy for the protagonist

and, as Feldmann noted, Barry does eventually merit compas­

sion. The problem with the comparison, however, is that,

while Aschenbach presents an image of suffering nobility

throughout the film's duration, viewers may find it dif­

ficult to even like Barry in spite of his final penance,

l®Ibid., p. 19.

l^Arthur Hutchison, "Luchino Visconti's Death in Ven­

i ce, p. 32.

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 72

which, it should be pointed out, was effected in the face of

great humiliation. The success of the score in Barry Lyndon

may ultimately depend on its own ability to solicit the

viewer's sympathy for Barry, which may have been the purpose

for which Kubrick intended it. If it succeeds, then with

each presentation Barry's plight acquires increased poignan­

cy; if not, then the ceaseless repetition of the phrase be­

comes meaningless and pretentious.

20
2001; A Synopsis

2001; A Space Odyssey is visually and musically spec­

tacular, the rhythms of the visual portion and the music

having been meticulously choreographed. Verbal recounting

of the film's events cannot adequately elucidate those

themes which are ramified throughout by means of sight and

sound (verbalization about nonverbal language is a perennial

problem in both musicology and film studies) . In the fol­

lowing account, therefore, great attention will be allotted

to description of audio-visual details.

The film opens with a shot of the sun, moon, and earth,

a three-fold set of crescents, the sun eclipsed by the moon

with the earth in the foreground. Set to the opening bars

of Also Sprach Zarathustra, this vision may be interpreted

20since so little of C l a r k ’s story, "The Sentinel,"

has been used, it serves no purpose to discuss it here. For
a thorough treatment of the story, see Geduld, pp. 30-34.

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 73

as a symbolic view of Nietzsche's "multiple horizons." It

is the first presentation of what Kubrick called the "magi­

cal alignment."

Following this, the first of the film's four episodes,

entitled "Dawn of Man," begins. It opens with a series of

horizonal extreme long shots of landscape, sky, and sunrise,

situated in a harsh, isolated desert, which Carolyn Geduld

described in Biblical terms:

Shot in total silence and without a sign of

life, the vista has the Old Testament flavor of,
say, the third morning of creation, when the land
had been separated from the waters, but before the
"dawn" of even plant life. Already the vision of
a Godless, corrupted Genesis (a continuing theme
in the film) is balanced against Kubrick's scien­
tific idea of what the young and still geographi­
cally violent Earth must have looked like.21

Attention is first focused into the picture by the

simultaneous presentation of birdsong, the first specified

sound aside from primordial wind, and a large rock, the

first object pictured in the foreground. As the sounds of

birds and crickets accompany the ever-lightening series that

follows, the title of the first episode, "Dawn of Man," ap­

pears, confirming what one has already sensed.

Next follow the first shots in which the apes who in­

habit this primordial world are introduced: they are camou­

flaged, silhouetted against black rocks of which they appear

to be an extension: they grow out of the landscape.

2lGeduld, p. 36.

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 74

As they huddle in fear beneath the rocks, a leopard at­

tacks and kills one of their members, their defenseless sit­

uation underlined by the sight of an infant cradled in its

mother's arms. Succeeding shots in full daylight show the

apes leading what Geduld described as "a minimal existence

22
among a gentle herd of tapirs," centered around their

territorial watering hole.

One morning the apes awaken to find the film's most

startling symbol, a huge black, rectangular slab of granite

(often described as the "monolith") in their midst. Seen

four times throughout the film, always menacing and surreal,

it functions as a catalyst which, as Geduld pointed out,

23
"structurally unites all four episodes of the film." As

the sun rises over its top, directly below a crescent moon

in the sky, and the apes gather around its base, the boldest

of them (designated as Moon-Watcher in the script) reaches

out to touch it; the clustral strains of Ligeti's Requiem

for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra

rise from the soundtrack like a primal scream. The Ligeti

score sanctifies and mystifies the appearances of the mono­

lith.

At this point, presumably in response to the appearance

of the monolith, the previously vegetarian apes become

22Ibid., p. 5.

23ibid., p. 40.

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 75

carnivorous and murderous. Moon-Watcher/ foraging the next

day, picks up a bone from one of the skeletons that litter

the desert and smashes another skeleton with it, a series

which is intercut with accompanying shots of a falling

tapir. Set to Also Sprach Zarathustra, the reference to

Nietzsche's will to power concept is clear. Consequently,

the apes in the ensuing series are shown feasting on what is

presumably tapir meat.

The first of the film's several murders now follows.

A rival tribe of apes arrives at the water hole, a pond

which has been described as large enough to accommodate both

tribes; Moon-Watcher, using his newly found tool, routs the

rivals by murdering their leader. His tool-weapon, trium­

phantly tossed into the air, falls back to earth as a space­

ship, a match cut which traverses four million years within

the space of two frames. As Geduld pointed out, "'The Dawn

of Man' ends far from Ge nes is. . . . Bypassing Adam and

Eve, Moon-Watcher and his gang move from bosses of the turf

to kingpins of the world, with a brief replay of Cain and

Abel (or more precisely, Cain and Cain) at the waterhole.

As Clarke has noted, Cain goes unpunished this time, al­

though the smell of blood still lingers in the year

2001."24

24 ib id ., p. 43.

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 76

The second episode of the film begins with the famous

"Space Waltz" sequence, in which a spaceship's voyage to the

moon is choreographed to Johann Strauss's The Blue Danube.

The erotic imagery of this sequence should be noted because,

by allotting human attributes to machines in this portrayal

of this spaceship's interplanetary courtship, Kubrick anti­

cipates the character of HAL the computer. In both cases,

the machines are depicted as more lifelike than the people,

a situation that is further emphasized by the programmed

behavior of the humans in the film.

The "Space Waltz" is interrupted as the craft docks at

the Orion space station. Haywood Floyd, the protagonist of

this section of the film, disembarks, having slept through

breathtaking vistas en route. The Nietzschean reference in

this section becomes apparent in the scenes that follow, the

humans who populate the Orion space station (and presumably

earth as well) so tellingly matching Nietzsche's description

of the "Last Man," from the opening section of Also Sprach

Zarathustra, in which Zarathustra ominously prophecies that

"the time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow

of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will

have forgotten how to whir . . . when man will no longer

25
give birth to a star."

25 pr iedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, in

The Portable N i e t z s c h e , trans., Walter Kaufmann (New York:
The Viking Press, 1954), p. 129.

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 77

In 2 0 01 , that time has obviously arrived, being satiri­

cally depicted in the film's dialogue, much of which takes

place during this episode. After revealing himself as one

of the most painfully dull public speakers imaginable, for

instance, Floyd is congratulated by his unimaginative col­

leagues for his "fine speech."

In the scenes that take place in the Orion space sta­

tion, we learn that some unusual activity has occurred at

the American moon base, Clavius. In this sequence, well

known for its parody of American capitalism, the "Earthlight

Room" of the station displaying those names already familiar

to contemporary audiences, such as "Hilton," " Howard John­

son," and "Bell Telephone," Floyd uses a Bell "picturephone"

to send his daughter a birthday greeting. That the Cold War

has, predictably, been taken into space is revealed in

Floyd's chat with a Russian colleague, whose inquires as to

the mysteries at the Clavius base are rejected as a classi­

fied topic.

The "Space Waltz" now resumes as Floyd assumes transit

to the moon. Sights which intrigue the audience, such as a

flight attendant who walks upside down or a pen that floats

in mid air, are treated as commonplace by the director

here. As the ship lands, an establishing, extreme long shot

of Clavius reveals men in space suits in the foreground ex­

ploring the mountain range surrounding the base. In the

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 78

docking series, an awesome impression of scale is afforded

by the matte technique, as the ship glides into port with

the courtly grace which is apparently so indigenous to the

spacecraft in this movie and so totally lacking in its

humans.

As the shuttle carries Floyd to the site of the mystery

near the moonbase Clavius, another of the film's meals is

consumed (the first having been the apes' tapir feast).

Again the banality of Kubrick's twenty-first century exis­

tence is confirmed by the synthesized food prepared for in­

flight consumption, which elicits Floyd's remark, "They're

getting pretty good at it" (imitating real food, that is).

The external shots of the shuttle are accompanied by Lige­

ti's Lux Aete rn a, anticipating the monolith's appearance in

the following sequence.

It is at this point that we learn the reason for

Floyd's journey. An artifact, the monolith, has been un­

covered on the moon's surface ("It seems to have been deli­

berately buried"), which periodically sends strong radio

signals to Jupiter. As American scientists at the excava­

tion site (including Floyd) line up like tourists posing

before a local monument, the monolith emits a deafening sig­

nal, sending observers to their knees in pain. (Whether

they have been killed or merely dazed remains unanswered.)

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 79

The third section of the film, entitled "Jupiter Mis­

sion: 18 Months Later," begins at this point. It opens

with the Adagio from Khatchaturian1s Gayne Suite, a piece

whose mournful tone points up the isolation of space tra­

vel. The beginning shots show the Discovery, a space ship

of spermatozoan shape, gliding through interplanetary

reaches. Inside, astronaut Frank Poole jogs around a cir­

cular track which vertically traverses the inner rim of the

craft, like an experimental rat on a treadmill. Poole,

along with another astronaut, Dave Bowman, is in command of

the Discovery until it reaches Jupiter, at which point three

other astronauts who are presently in "hibernation" will be

awakened. Bowman and Poole share responsibility for the

flight with HAL, a super-computer, who "mimics" (to use the

film's term) all human thought processes except emotions,

which he has been programmed to imitate in speaking. As

will be shown later, HAL turns out to be one of the most

emotional characters in the film, the point at which he

stops mimicking and actually begins to experience feeling

raising one of the film's important questions about the

nature of being. HAL is in a powerful position, having con­

trol over all of the ship's mechanical operations, including

the life-support systems of the hibernating humans.

Bowman and Poole are comfortably accommodated on the

Discovery. Poole is shown lounging under the sunlight, run­

ning, and receiving a videotaped birthday greeting from his

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 80

parents on earth, a salutation to which he is singularly

unresponsive. Bowman draws pictures of the crew in hiber­

nation and plays chess with HAL, a contest which he inevi­

tably loses to the computer's superior intellect. The ex­

position of this section thus reveals a state of seeming

well-being aboard the Discovery.

HAL now announces, however, that he has found a minor

malfunction in one of the ship's communication units, which

must be retrieved by an astronaut going outside the craft.

Bowman, whose space-walk is uneventful, brings the unit in­

side, at which point the mechanism is discovered to be un­

damaged. HAL's competence is now called into question,

since the HAL-1000 computer series is supposedly infal­

lible. If HAL proves to be wrong, the entire mission will

be in jeopardy.

HAL is now revealed to be the Machiavelli of the com­

puter world. Realizing that his own existence is threat­

ened, HAL murders Poole by severing his oxygen supply when

he goes outside, on the advice of Mission Control on Earth,

to replace the unit. As Bowman attempts to rescue Poole,

HAL murders the hibernating astronauts as well, an act which

is chillingly revealed to the audience as the signs on their

coffin-like cocoons read, "Life Systems Terminated." There

is contrapuntal irony in HAL, the disembodied mind, murder­

ing the astronauts, whose bodies have remained alive while

their brains were switched off, a fact that his been docu­

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 81

mented by Poole who, when asked what it is like to be in

hibernation, responds that it is just like sleeping, "only

you don't dream."

The returning Bowman must now gain entry to the Dis­

covery in spite of the hostile HAL; and, at this point, for

the first time in the film, a human being ascends to heroic

status as Bowman not only outwits HAL but also resorts to

that remarkable adaptability which would seem to be man's

strongest evolutionary inheritance. Momentarily foregoing

his oxygen supply, he bursts back on board, taking advantage

of the ship's exploding doors, which were designed to pre­

vent this sort of illegal entry, to propel him through the

ship's oxygenless antechamber. He then proceeds to murder

HAL, a task he accomplishes by disconnecting the computer's

higher reason centers, lobotomizing the computer, which in

turn, in an unexpected display of genuine emotion, begs for

its life.

While Bowman "unplugs" HAL in the blood-red room that

is the computer's brain center, a prerecorded message from

Mission Control spontaneously begins to replay, revealing to

Bowman the purpose of this mission. The astronaut's isola­

tion is underscored by the announcer's assumption that all

the crew will have by now been revived, when in fact they

are dead. Bowman now learns of the discovery of the mono­

lith on the moon, of the radio signals which it sent to Jup­

iter, and of the reason for his journey to Jupiter. The

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 82

implication is clear: he may find extraterrestrial life

there.

In the ensuing final episode, "Jupiter and Beyond the

Infinite," we find Bowman boarding the ship's pod in pursuit

of the monolith, which now appears to him, rolling enticing­

ly through space in front of the Discovery as it descends to

Jupiter. As in each of the former appearances of the mono­

lith, Ligeti's Requiem is heard.

The sequence which follows, entitled by Clarke as the

"Stargate Corridor," is set to Ligeti's Atmospheres. Bow­

man, plunging headlong through what Clarke referred to as a

*? fk
"time-space warp," ages visibly from the shock of a

journey which terminates in an elegantly appointed, floor-

lit, Louis XVI bedchamber.

The bedchamber is one of the most unsettling and unan­

ticipated images in the film. As Bowman investigates his

new surroundings, the only noise on the soundtrack is that

of his breathing, a sound which, as Geduld pointed out, is

reminiscent of a woman in labor.

Bowman, still aging rapidly, presented in double image,

now watches himself from within his space suit. He sees

himself, much older, seated at a dining table, an image he

assumes, resolving the double into a single apparition.

Hearing a sound behind him, the seated Bowman turns to look,

26The Making of Kubrick's 2001, midsection.

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 83

and, in doing so, breaks his wine glass, a much commented

upon incident, which perhaps symbolizes the general fragil­

ity of existence. Turning to view the broken glass, he

catches sight of himself on the bed, increasingly aged, an

image which he again assumes. As he lies on his death bed,

he is confronted by the monolith, looming ominously above

him. Its presence here is accompanied by Also Sprach Zara­

thustra. Once more he is transformed, this time into a

lovely, glowing fetus in embryo, an image of reincarnated

innocence.

The Starchild, as this final image has come to be

called, now returns to earth, on which it gazes, the child

and the planet dominating each half of the screen. As the

Starchild then fills the screen, turning to face the audi­

ence, the film ends.

Motifs in 2001

There are five principal motifs in 2001; biological

events, tools, humanity, evolution, and murder.

Biological Events

Throughout the film, numerous biological events and

functions are chronicled. There are two birthdays and one

birth, as well as several deaths. Five meals are consumed.

One of the film's more obvious jokes concerns a set of in­

structions for the use of a zero-gravity toilet. Although

there is no erotic behavior displayed by any of the humans,

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 84

there are clear erotic references in the design and movement

of the spacecraft.

Since the film raises the question of the nature and

existence of extraterrestrial life, it is not surprising

that it should also refer to the biological processes of

human life as well. One significance of this theme lies in

its Nietzschean reference, as set forth in the section of

Also Sprach Zarathustra entitled "On the Despisers of the

Body," to which the film alludes with this emphasis on

physical existence.

Embodied in this theme is the difference in character

between the two astronauts, Dave Bowman and Frank Poole. In

"The End of Sex in 2 0 01 ," Jack Fisher pointed out that while

Poole seeks out physical comfort, Bowman's is a personality

which responds to more mental stimuli:

The series of character touches which are

presented differentiate the men so completely that
in the rarefied world of the space ship, Poole
emerges as a sensualist, Bowman as an intellectual.

In the desert, one palm tree can make an oa­

sis, and in a film as ruthlessly sexless as 2001,
a small amount of sensuality will make a satyr.
Poole's harmless pasttimes, jogging and lolling in
the sunroom, on a couch that must be just right
for comfort, become infused with deeper over­
tones.2^

Fisher illustrates Bowman's intellectual qualities,

concluding that it was for the sake of these that he was

2 7jack Fisher, "Too Bad, Lois Lane: The End of Sex

in 2001," Film Journal, Vol. II, No. 2, Sept., 1972, p. 65.

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 85

singled out by an alien, extraterrestrial civilization as

their candidate from earth. Although this may well be a

valid interpretation of the film, this characterization may

also be comprehended in Nietzschean terms. Poole, concerned

for the most part with his physical comfort, unmoved by the

adventure of space travel— with the vistas of outer space,

for instance, offered from the Discovery's bow window— is

the epitome of Nietzsche's "Last Man," suffering from none

of the inner conflict which Nietzsche considered so vital—

"one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a

dancing star. . . . [T]he most despicable man [is] he that

28
is no longer able to despise himself."

It might be argued that Bowman is similarly unrespon­

sive to the adventure of space travel; in his leisure acti­

vities, however, he is a thinker. He plays chess with HAL,

he sketches portraits of the hibernating astronauts, pur­

suits which, as Fisher explained, are neither "physical" nor

"social";

He draws pictures of freezer coffins. He

doesn't draw Poole, he doesn't even draw remem­
bered people from earth. Instead, his life stu­
dies are geometric forms within which the people
can be vaguely seen. His pictures are of the
near-Euclidean sort which HAL should and does en­
joy .29

28Nietzsche, p. 129.

Z^Fisher, P* 65.

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 86

Tools

The tools in the film serve as a clear measure of man's

technological evolution. The match cut which links the

first and second sections of the film serves to equate the

bone-weapon and the space ship, a tool of such immense so­

phistication that Kubrick has depicted it in images of

courtship behavior. The ship spans the gap between the

boneweapon and HAL, into whom, it might be argued, the

breath of life has nearly been infused. One of the film's

most intriguing features, one which has been noted by almost

every writer on the film, is the fact that the machines are

more lifelike than the humans.

HAL, in fact, is the most vivid character in the film,

a full-blown personality, beside whom the cardboard char­

acters of Dave Bowman and Frank Poole appear flat and two-

dimensional. While maintaining an air ofassured rational­

ism, HAL is more emotionally motivated than any of the

people in the film. Like so' many memorable characters of

the screen, his most classic lines are delivered when he is

cornered, at which point, he begs for his life, his rational

pretense raising his supercilious insolence to new heights

of hypocrisy: "Look, Dave. I can see you're really upset

about this. I honestly think you should sit down calmly,

take a stress pill, and think things over .”

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 87

His motive in thwarting the mission is not explained.

Perhaps he acted out of fear, reacting to an impulse to

which the humans, incapable as they are are any emotional

stimulation whatsoever, are unable to respond. More likely,

the case seems to be that HAL was given over to an under­

standable megalomania, being, as he was, the intellectual

superior of the humans, and already in control of every as­

pect of the flight except that which was most important, the

command. Exhibiting a human will to power, HAL, rejecting

his role of glorified janitor as demeaning, comes into

being, is spiritually born through the realization of his

anarchist drives, a state whose existence is confirmed by

his emotional plea at the end.

Whatever HAL's vices are, however, it is clear that

they are only the same as those of the humans who invented

him— the sins of the father visiting upon the son. It is

interesting to note that HAL, like Moon-Watcher and Bowman,

is transformed only after committing a criminal act, in each

case, murder.

Humanity and Evolution

The humanity motif in the film is brought into focus by

the machines. In contrast to HAL (as well as to the apes),

Homo sapiens is dull. Kubrick's much-criticized dialogue in

the film illustrates this point, serving as an indictment of

contemporary society's use of language, one which apparently

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 88

hit so close to home for some members of the film community

that they failed to see the humor. This was pointed out by

F. A. Macklin in "The Cosmic Sense of 2001," in which he

argued that the reason that so many critics missed the sat­

ire of Kubrick's dialogue is that the banality of contempor­

ary speech is so widespread that the monstrous misuse of

30
language in the film was actually taken seriously. The

dialogue, as Macklin pointed out, is intended to serve as an

indication of the appalling lack of imagination in contem­

porary society. Macklin illustrated this point in his de­

scription of Floyd's conversation with his daughter, whose

lack of imagination is all the more chilling in that it is

manifested by a young child:

The satire in the Floyd sections is well

done, because it is so close to actuality. There
is enough repetition and emphasis that should make
a viewer aware that what is going one has a point
of view that is observant and critical. The bland
commonplaces of the receptionist as Floyd checks
in from the spacecraft introduce this. The "How­
ard Johnson's Earthlight Room" adds telling illus­
tration. And when Floyd calls his daughter back
on earth, the point of view is in focus. She
squirms as he talks to her, and he asks her if
there is "anything special you want?" She answers
"yes," and looks down at the phone, and gives the
outrageous answer "a telephone." The imagination
is so dulled that all one— a child— thinks of is
the immediate, a telephone.31

30p. a . Macklin, "The Cosmic Sense in 2001," Film

Comment, Vol. V, No. 4, Winter, 1969, p. 10.

31Ibid., p. 12.

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 89

•The astronauts lack for articulate speech as well, as

Macklin also illustrated. Discussing a scene in which they

are asked, "How is everything going?" by an interviewer on

earth, Macklin said, "Again the language' fails. Poole of-

32
fers trite sanguinity, 'Marvelous.'" Poole's response

here, given in a voice as flat as HAL's, brings to mind

Zarathustra's comment on Last Man: "'We have invented hap-

33
piness,' say the last men, and they blink."

The elegant courtship of the spaceships also points up

the sensual deficiencies of the film's humans, as well as

their lack of sensitivity and enthusiasm. The craft glide

through space with a balletic grace and urban polish remini­

scent of Johann Strauss's Vienna, a world whose courtly re­

finements remain lost to the hackneyed technocrats of Kub­

rick's twenty-first century.

Even the pleistocenic Australopithicus are more imagin­

ative and spontaneous than the people, as witnessed by the

relish with which they devour their meal. The film's meals,

in fact, provide an account of the evolution motif, as well

as its humanity motif. First presented as a reward for suc­

cessfully adaptive behavior, the film's repasts evolve

through a series of various menus which reflect not only the

32ibid.
33Nietzsche, p. 129.

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 90

ingenuity of those who prepared them but also the personal­

ities of those who consume them. Following the apes' meal

on raw meat are three meals consumed on board spacecraft.

Floyd's observation that "they" are getting better at imita­

ting chicken sandwiches, with regard to his lunch on board

the shuttle, informs us that whatever remains of human im­

agination is on the preparation end now: if man has learned

how to take chemical food into space, his tastes are also

dulled enough to enjoy it. Another meal, also consumed in

flight en route to the moon, shows us people sipping var­

iously colored muck through straws, the penultimate negation

of the senses, it being only a short step from there to din­

ing intravenously. In the final sequence of the film, how­

ever, Bowman, in contrast to the preceding repasts, dines in

a sort of gourmet utopia, lingering over a splendidly served

dinner, replete with linen and crystal.

Murder

The final motif, murder, is also linked to the evolu­

tion motif. There are three episodes of murder in the

film: Moon-Watcher's killing of the rival apes' leader,

HAL'S multiple murder of Poole and the hibernating astro­

nauts, and Bowman's retaliation against HAL. In each event

the murderer is consequently transformed to a higher evolu­

tionary state: Australopithicus, as personified in Moon-

Watcher, now evolves into Homo sapiens? HAL attains emo­

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 91

tional capacity, which leads to his plea for his life as

well as his regression as Bowman disconnects him; Bowman,

after overcoming the hostile environment of outer space and

killing HAL, goes through the time-space warp, emerging in

the bedchamber in which he will be transformed into the

Starchild. Like the monolith, the act of murder, then, acts

as a catalyst in each presentation, to which the characters

respond, in Nietzschean terms, by "overcoming," killing,

here, being represented as a necessary adjunct to evolu­

tionary succession.

The Choice of Music

Six pieces are heard in 2001, always in excerpt: Also

Sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss; The Blue Danube, by

Johann Strauss; Requiem for Soprano, MezzoSoprano, Two Mixed

Choirs, and Orchestra, by Gyorgy Ligeti; Lux Aeterna, by

Ligeti; Atmospheres, by Ligeti; and the Adagio from the

Gayne Suite by Aram Khatchaturian.

Also Sprach Zarathustra

The most important function of Also Sprach Zarathustra

is a narrative one, for within its frame of reference the

film's main motifs become cohesive.

References to Nietzsche are clearly stated in 2001,

beginning with the opening moment of the film when the

"World Riddle Theme" from Also Sprach Zarathustra (c-g-c1)

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 92

is set to a view of the multiple horizons of earth, moon,

and sun. As Leon Stover said, "Nobody who can identify the

opening and closing bars of music in 2001 need puzzle long

34
over the flim's meaning." Stover then cited Zarathus-

tra's invocation to the sun, which Zarathustra ends by say-

35
ing, "Zarathustra wants to become man again." The

Nietzschean reference of the film is also pointed out in

Agel's The Making of Kubrick's 2001, in which Zarathustra's

invocation is found sandwiched between a still of Dave Bow­

man dining in the Louis XVI bedchamber, moments before

breaking the glass, and a shot of the broken glass lying on

the floor.

Strauss's own comment on the music is enlightening

since his intention was closely related to the basic theme

of 2 00 1;

I meant to convey by means of music an idea

of the human race from its origins, through the
various phases of its development, religious, and
scientific, up to Nietzsche's idea of the Super­
man. 3 6

The opening shots of the film, looking across the hori­

zons of three celestial bodies, is significant in terms of

34Leon Stover, "Apeman, Superman— or 2001's Answer to

the World Riddle," in Best SF: 1968, ed., Harry Harrison
and Brian L. Aldiss (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1969),
p. 134.

35Nietzsche, p. 122.

36Stover, p. 134.

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 93

Nietzschean imagery, since the concept of a "horizon" was an

important one for Nietzsche, as Werner J. Dannhauser ex­

plained. According to Dannhauser, Nietzsche believed that

one characteristic that distinguished man from animals is

his memory of the past. Man, according to Nietzsche, lives

"historically," that is, with a memory of the past. His cap­

acity for memory, however, creates unhappiness because with

his awareness of the passing of time comes knowledge of his

own imperfection. He would not be man, though, without mem­

ory and his ability to learn from the past. Neitzsche be­

lieved, however, that in a healthy person this historical

awareness would be balanced by an ability to forget, calling

(in Dannhauser's words) "the dividing line between the his­

torical and the unhistorical . . . the organism's hor-

37
ison." Nietzsche felt, according to Dannhauser, that "a

living thing can only be healthy, strong, and productive

38
within a certain horizon."

Dannhauser explained that Nietzsche believed that

"[m]an's horizon is constituted by his fundamental set of

assumptions about all things, by what he considers the ab-

39
solute truth which he cannot question." Nietzsche

37werner Dannhauser, "Friedrich Nietzsche," in

History of Political Philosophy, ed. , Leo Strauss and Joseph
Cropsey (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1963), p. 725.

38Nietzsche, quoted in Dannhauser, p. 725.

^ D a n n h a u s e r , p. 726.

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 94

believed that an undue reverence for the past would handicap

man, that he would base his knowledge on past experience,

shutting out his present. "Truth" thus attained would be

invalid. Dannhauser explained that "[m]en who have no fur­

ther task to accomplish or men who believe there is nothing

more to be done are bound to degenerate, for what is best in

40
man is his aspiration," — i.e., an undue reverence for

the past would destroy man's aspiration.

Nietzsche concluded that there is no fixed horizon, or

as Dannhauser stated, "To see a horizon as a horizon is to

41
be beyond that horizon." Nietzsche rejected the Aristo­

telian value of "eternal" or "absolute" truth, believing as

Dannhauser put it, "that there is only flux and change,

42
which Nietzsche calls the finality of becoming."

According to Nietzsche, man's belief in God hindered

him from accepting this concept of the "finality of becom­

ing," by providing him with a fixed horizon of absolute

truth. Since the existence of God is not ascertainable, at

the beginning of Also Sprach Zarathustra, Nietzsche declared

that God is dead. Dannhauser explained that, according to

40lbid., p. 727.

4 1 l b i d . , p. 728.

42ibid., p. 727.

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 95

Nietzsche, "The death of God is the discovery of man's

creativity. Knowing that horizons are his creations, he is

also more aware of his own power; if nothing is true, every­

thing is possible. Man has become man by unconsciously pro-

43
jecting horizons . . ." Man becomes man by what

Nietzsche called the "will to power," or the will to over­

come or master.

Man seeking to overcome, to progress, was designated by

Nietzsche as "Overman," or "Superman." When man ceases to

strive and becomes content, seeking only his own comfort, he

becomes what Nietzsche called "Last Man," as described in

44
the opening sections of Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Through his allusion to Also Sprach Zarathustra with

Strauss's famous score, Kubrick has imposed upon the viewer

a Nietzschean frame of reference at the beginning of 2001.

Seen in this light many of the film's more frequently de­

bated questions are more clearly resolved, as David Boyd has

illustrated:

. . . the opening theme from Richard Strauss'

Also Sprach Zarathustra serves to signal a fairly
large indebtedness to Nietzsche on Kubrick's
part. However different Kubrick's terms may be
from Nietzsche's, the film uoes unmistakably deal
with the "will to power" (variously manifested in
Moon-Watcher, Bowman, and HAL), the death of a
god, and the eventual birth in the Starchild, of
an Ubermann. Nietzsche also furnishes perhaps the

43Ibid., p. 727.

44Nietzsche, p. 129.

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 96

most succinct statement on the film's controlling

irony. "What is ape to man?"/ he asks in a famous
passage in Also Sprach Zarathustra. "A laughing
stock and a thing of shame."45

The irony of Nietzsche's statement here with regard to

Kubrick's twenty-first century Homo sapiens was noted by

Elie Flatto. "Superficially," he said, "life in 2001 is

thoroughly different from that of the primates, yet there

46
are a number of similarities . . ." Among these he

lists the fact that, like the ape tribe at the beginning,

man has reached an impasse, seen, for instance, in his dia­

logue— "like the chattering ape he is incapable of dialogue

containing more than a few pithy, platitudinous for-

47 -
mulae" — as well as his incapacity for emotional involve­

me nt — "like his inert ancestor, he never becomes involved in

48
any truly dramatic situation or genuine emotion." He

is, as Flatto described him, historically dominated, like

Last Man: "Every aspect of human existence has become so

efficiently organized that any initiative on the part of

49
individual men is superfluous." Flatto concluded

45cavid Boyd, "Mode and Meaning in 2001," Journal of

Popular F i l m , Vol. VI, No. 3, 1978, p. 202.

46Elie Flatto, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Eternal

Renewal," Film Comment, Vol. V, No. 4, Winter, 1969, p. 8.

47Ibid.

48Ibid.

49Ibid.

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 97

"Once again evolutionary conditions are ripe for a dramatic

change and innovation.

De Vries, concurring with Flatto's Last Man image of

the humans in 2001, added, "It is not only the dullness of

these creatures of the twenty-first century that is disturb-

51
ing— it is their lack of humanity." Penelope Gilliat

echoed this sentiment, describing the people^ in the film as

sounding "like recordings left on while the soul is

52
out." Nothing, m fact, would seem to be further off

the mark than Max Kozloff's vision of the film as "almost

one long, spun-out documentary of grandeur, a kind of loving

observation of future men at complex work, overpoweringly

53
American m its pioneering aura."

While it is true that the film in itself, both in its

use of pioneering cinematic innovations as well as in its

splendid depiction of space travel in the twenty-first cen­

tury, constitutes a celebration of advancing technology, it

also presents a one-hundred-eighty-degree contrast between

SOibid.
SlDavid De Vries, The Films of Stanley Kubrick (Grand
Rapids: William B. Erdman's Publishing Company, 1973), p.
47.

52penelope Gilliat, "After Man," reprinted fr o m The

New Yorker in The Making of Kubrick's 2001, p. 209.

53Max Kozloff, "200 1," Film Culture, Vol. 48-49, Win­

ter, 1970, p. 55.

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 98

technological and spiritual/moral evolution: in2001, the

former does not presuppose the latter. The lack of moral

advancement from ape to Homo sapiens looms even larger in

the face of contemporary man's technical wizardry, in which

he has nearly superseded himself in the creation of HAL, a

machine with an intellect superior to that of its creator.

In comparing the astronauts to HAL, Don Daniels raised

one of Kubrick's most frightening implications:

HAL seems to be acquiring sentiments of fear,

anger, and joy to supplement the higher activi­
ties. His "mutiny" is more than the error of a
machine or the insanity of pure intellect. Kub­
rick has allowed HAL's actions all the ambiguity
usually granted a flesh and blood character. By
forcing us to deal with HAL as a person, the dir­
ector traps us on board the Discovery beside those
drained astronauts with their dogged mechanical
investigation of the universe. If the machine is
a man, then what are the men? It is one of 2 00 1 's
blackest subversions.5 ^

The humans of Kubrick's film, then, may be seen as Last

Man. This Nietzschean interpretation of the film would also

explain Moon-Watcher's and HAL's motivations as an acting

out of the will to power, thus throwing light upon the

film's murder motif as a realization of the will to power,

through which those who murder "become," or "progress."

Ultimately Dave Bowman— whose name, according to Boyd,

combines "reference to both Hebraic and Hellenic legend

5^Don Daniels, "2001 : A New Myth," Film Heritage,

Vol. Ill, No. 4, Summer, 1968, p. 6.

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 99

(like David he slays Goliath, and like Odysseus, the bowman,

55
he undertakes a return to his origins)" — whose death in

the eighteenth century bedchamber symbolizes the Nietzschean

doctrine of the death of rationalism, becomes Overman, whose

horizon at the film's end encompasses not only the earth but

the universe as well.

The Blue Danube

Johann Strauss's Blue Danube is used structurally, nar­

ratively, and incongruously.

The structural use of The Blue Danube is particularly

complex encompassing the ideals of vertical montage as set

forth in Eisenstein's Film Sense. (The structural/choreo­

graphic setting of this piece will be dealt with in the fol­

lowing section.)

Narratively, the use of the Viennese waltz serves to

point up the sterility of the twenty-first century in the

film by contrasting it with a civilization whose culture was

infinitely richer. The fact that it is the tools, specifi­

cally spacecraft, in this age of technological advancement

and creative decline, which now enjoy the elegant courtship

ritual of waltzing reinforces the irony.

This incongruous use of the music is, in its obvious­

ness, strikingly clever; and, in coupling this waltz with

55Boyd, p. 208.

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 100

mammoth pieces of NASA hardware, Kubrick has emphasized the

ironic juxtaposition of romanticism in 2001 from man to

machine

L i g e t i ’s Music

Three pieces of Gyorgy Ligeti are heard in 2001; the

Re q ui em , Lux A et er na , and Atmospheres. The last two are

used structurally, in each instance being associated with

space travel, a vision for which their static, weightless

texture would seem to be well suited. The Requiem accom­

panies the first three appearances of the monolith, eleva­

ting the film's mysterious catalyst, a symbol whose much

debated meaning has often been interpreted as denoting pure

intelligence, to a position of quasi-religious signifi­

cance. The Requiem functions structurally as well as narra­

tively.

Kubrick's choice of Ligeti is particularly appropriate

since Ligeti is a composer who, as was pointed out in the

first chapter, has admitted to composing in graphic

c /r
terms, thus exhibiting a type of musical conception

which would appear to be ideally suited to the cinema. As

will be shown, in the "Stargate Corridor" sequence, Kubrick

exploits Ligeti's musical geometry in an Eisensteinian man­

ner. The striking consistency of Ligeti's texturally/tim-

5 ®Adrian Jack, "Ligeti Talks to Adrian Jack," Music

and Musicians, Vol. 22, pp. 24-30.

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 101

brally dominated musical style, exhibited in all three of

these pieces, serves to unify the film, acting as a leit­

motif as well, which in turn narratively links each presen­

tation of the Ligeti scores. The Lux Aeterna, heard as a

setting for the shuttle, for instance, refers the viewer

back to the original appearance of the monolith set to the

Requiem, while, at the same time, anticipating its presence

on the moon near Clavius, also set to the Requiem. In the

final episode, "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite," the Re­

quiem similarly anticipates the setting of the "Stargate

Corridor" sequence to Atmospheres.

The Adagio from the Gayne Suite

The Adagio from the Gayne Suite is used descriptively

and structurally. Heard in the opening of the third sec­

tion, it functions decoratively as an establishing piece,

mirroring in its lonely and mournful tenor the isolation of

space travel.

Structurally, its setting is anti-rhythmic, its seam­

less, legato texture hardly well matched to the sight of

Poole jogging around the Discovery's vertical, in-flight

track. The synthesis is successful in its illustration of

the fact that, while man can travel through outer space in

an acceptably comfortable manner, he is still very much out

of place there, an important distinction which is kinesthe-

tically communicated to the viewer by the inherent conflict

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 102

between the rhythm of the image and that of the score. The

fragility of man's existence, so effectively pictured here,

is later symbolized by Bowman's breaking of the glass in the

film's final sequence, a sequence whose isolation is like­

wise anticipated in the opening of this third episode.

The Presentation of the Music

Also Sprach Zarathustra

Also Sprach Zarathustra is heard three times: first

with the opening credits as the triple horizons of sun,

moon, and earth move into alignment; second, during the

"Dawn of Man" episode when Moon-Watcher first realizes the

bone's potential as a tool-weapon; and third, at the end, in

celebration of Bowman's death and transfiguration into the

Starchild. Only the first period of the music is used, the

c-g-c' World Riddle Theme serving as an evolutionary leit­

motif symbolizing the three Nietzschean concepts which are

stated in its three presentations: that is, the finality of

becoming, symbolized in the opening shots of the multiple

horizon; the will to power, symbolized in the shots of Moon-

Watcher smashing the skull with his tool-weapon, intercut

with shots of a falling tapir, which Geduld calls "associa­

tive shots" that "show what Moon-Watcher plans to do with

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 103
57
his new tool"; and finally man's ascension into Overman,

seen in the Starchild at the film's conclusion.

In the opening statement of Also Sprach Zarathustra,

the three horizons come into view, the earth sinking down to

reveal the sun and the moon behind in what is perhaps a lit­

eral allusion to the Nietzschean figure of speech, unterge-

hen (the going under), a process which Zarathustra himself

begins to accomplish immediately after his invocation to the

sun. Geduld felt that "everything about the opening shot

from the abstract eroticism of the slow-moving globes in the

sky to the aggressive music on the soundtrack foreshadows

elements that take on added significance later in the

film."58

After the triple alignment, set to the antecedent

c'-g'-c" statement and cadence, the titles begin, set to the

consequent, followed by a fade to the "Dawn of Man" episode.

In the next presentation of Also Sprach Zarathustra,

Moon-Watcher asserts his will to power, discovering the

tool-weapon immediately after his contact with the mono­

lith. The series begins as Moon-Watcher crouches, studying

a skeleton on the ground beside him. A cut to the monolith

reveals the sun and moon in "magical alignment" above it.

5^Geduld, p. 41.

^®Ibid., p . 35.

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 104

The ensuing cut shows Moon-Watcher meditatively tilting his

head from side to side. As the first fanfare begins, Moon-

Watcher lifts a bone from the skeleton and strikes it three

times in rhythm to the music, particles of the bone majesti­

cally gliding through the air in slow motion. Filmed at an

extreme up angle, he raises his arm again, making an arc

through th sky, just as the consequent phrase begins. As

Moon-Watcher1s arm reaches top of its arc, the c" in the

motif is sounded by the trumpet. There follows a series of

short associative cuts, showing the falling tapir, offset by

the use of slow motion photography. The series is set, ap­

propriately, to the cadence.

The World Riddle Theme is once more set to the vision

of the ape's arm circling through the sky, the last three

chords of the music showing Moon-Watcher demolishing a skull

which lies on the ground (anticipating his ensuing murder of

the rival ape as well as, perhaps, Bowman's death in the

Louis XVI bedchamber, the skull on the ground symbolizing

rationalism) . The series is once more intercut with tapir

shots, the final chord resting on the magnificent reverbera­

tions of the organ as Australopithicus triumphantly hurls

his new tool into the air. In the following scene, the ape

tribe is pictured, no longer foraging a minimal existence

out of the barren wasteland, but aggressively feasting on

tapir.

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 105

In the final presentation, the monolith appears to Bow­

man as he lies on his death bed. First shown in silence,

its sudden presence here is so startlingly ominous that it

nearly seems to leap from the screen. As Bowman reaches out

toward it and the music begins, the camera moves in toward

the monolith, its smooth black surface completely darkening

the screen, symbolizing Bowman's death. The World Riddle

Theme is heard as the Starchild floats through space for its

rendez vous with earth, the penultimate chord finding the

child turning to face the audience, the organ once more dom­

inating the final sound.

Ligeti's Requiem

Heard three times, the Requiem is first set to the

scene in which the apes encounter the monolith. Awakening

one morning, huddled under a protruding rock, they find it

towering over them, an imposing arcanum whose sudden, inex­

plicable confrontation in the primordial desertscape recalls

Eliot's existential Waste Land challenge: "Come in under

the shadow of this red rock / And I will show you . .

fear."59

The series is preceded by shots of the desert intercut

with shots of the apes sleeping, a disturbing juxtaposition

of long and close up shots, in which the most extreme

59 t . S. Eliot, The Waste Land, Collected Poems) New

York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1963), pp. 53-54.

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 106

close up yet encountered in the film is seen in close suc­

cession with an extreme long shot. The sound of the wind

accentuates the tribe's isolation. As the day begins to

dawn, one of the apes begins to stir. It is at this point

that the apes first find the monolith, the cause of alarm

remaining unknown to the audience who are informed of its

presence through a series of reaction shots, described as

follows: The awakened ape begins to growl, quietly arousing

the rest of the tribe, whose chorus of cries and growls

grows to a fortissimo. As the sun rises, a medium close-up

shot reveals the monolith to the audience for the first

time, the apes now scurrying around its base. The Requiem

begins, its clustral sonorities giving voice to the sound

which seems to arise unsung at the back of the throat. As

the volume increases, the apes spread away from the base of

the slab, followed by a shot in medium close-up of the tribe

silhouetted against the sky, their loud cries overpowering

the score. As the music continues to crescendo, the apes'

voices joining in the ever thickening texture, a soprano is

heard over the rest as one ape begins to jump higher than

the rest, the first in a series of paired audio-visual fo­

cusing. A cut to the base, as a sustained higher pitch

takes hold against the dense clustral band, reveals Moon-

Watcher reaching out to touch the monolith. The soprano

reenters, followed by a trumpet, the wall of the sound hold­

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 107

ing steadily as a new shot shows the sun, moon, and slab in

symmetrical alignment, photographed at extreme up angle

against a field of randomly scattered clouds. The image and

sound are retained in stasis for a moment, an audio-visual

fermata which punctuates the end of the series. In the next

cut, an extreme long shot of the desert is set in silence.

In the episode that follows, Australopithicus, in the person

of Moon-Watcher, discovers the tool-weapon to the strains of

Also Sprach Zarathustra.

The next presentation of the Requiem takes place at the

second appearance of the monolith, an event which has been

musically anticipated by the use of Lux Aeterna during the

flight to the excavation site. In contrast to the scien­

tists' reaction, the Requiem functions contrapuntally: in­

stead of displaying any of the awe-struck features which

characterized Moon-Watcher's response to the monolith, they

line up in front of it in tourist fashion, exhibiting the

banality of gesture which marks their speech. The music

begins as they descend the ramp toward the recently un­

covered object, building to an ominous climax, the thicken­

ing texture entrapping the viewer there along with the

scientists, the use of a hand-held camera serving to rein­

force the viewer's sense of identification. As the blinding

lights of the excavation site come into closer view, the

slab is seen in a high key long shot, the scientists lining

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 108

up for their souvenir photo. As the soprano is heard on the

track, Floyd descends for a closer investigation, reaching

out (like Moon-Watcher) to touch it. At this point the for­

tissimo score resolves into the ear-splitting radio emission

from the planet Jupiter, a blast which knocks the group to

the ground. The music fades, the screen darkens. The next

section, "Jupiter: 18 Months Later," begins.

The next presentation of the Requiem is an abbreviated

one, commencing when Bowman, after murdering HAL and learn­

ing of the purpose of the mission, sights the monolith tum­

bling through space at the beginning of the final section,

"Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite." As the sequence opens,

we find an arresting vision, which Geduld described as fol­

lows :

The fourth episode in 2001 begins with the

title "To Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite." An
immediate cut takes us out into Jupiter space,
where the giant planet, its moons, the sun, Dis­
covery, and the film's third monolith, all in
"magical alignment" roughly conforming to the cru­
cifix (an unintentional biblical image, Clarke
claims, nevertheless appropriately suggesting a
corrupted Passion) takes part in yet another
dawn. As in the first episode, there is no human
speech heard on the soundtrack here or throughout
the remainder of the film; Ligeti's music intro­
duces us to a completely nonverbal universe.

Bowman now leaves the Discovery in pursuit of the mono­

lith in the ship's pod, thus entering the Stargate Corri­

60Geduld, p. 59.

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 109

dor, an episode which is set to Ligeti's Atmospheres.

Atmospheres

The setting of Atmospheres in the "Stargate Corridor"

sequence borrows techniques from the experimental film of

the 1960's, which were used here for the first time in a

full length, commercial movie.^ Filmed in Super Pana-

vision for viewing on a Cinerama screen, 2001 is a film

which fully exploits the wide screen, as Hunter pointed out:

No film in history achieves the degree of

three dimensional depth maintained consistently in
2001 (and rhapsodically climaxed in a shot of a
pulsating stellar galaxy); Kubrick frequently
focuses our attention to one side of the wide
screen, then introduces an element from the oppo­
site corner, forcing a reorientation which heigh­
tens our sense of personal observation of spontan­
eous reality.62

This technique of drawing our attention to various por­

tions of the screen, thereby emphasizing its size, is no­

where more in evidence than in the "Stargate Corridor" se­

quence, in which chordal modulations in Ligeti's texturally

conceived score are often synchronized with changes of

color, shape, light and/or texture on the screen.

6lsee The Making of Kubrick's 2001, midsection, for a

discussion of these techniques.

62Tim Hunter, "2001: A Space Odyssey," Film Heri­

ta g e, Vol. Ill,No. 4, Summer, 1968, p. 13. It should be
noted that Gance achieved the same effect in 1927 with Napo­
leon through his use of the tryptich screen, which antici­
pated the use of Cinerama and Super Panavision.

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 110

Geduld has divided this sequence into four types of

shots (quoted as follows):

(1) Establishing shots of Bowman transformed

by the trip . . . We see freeze frames of his
face, agonized, shaken, blue, and extreme close-
ups of his eye in changing colors, always cut on a
blink.

(2) Grids, multi-colored and moving fast,

suggesting read-outs, rectangles, all the mechani­
cal imagery seen before.

(3) Organic movements of color recalling the

erotic and fetal imagery of the film, including
shots simulating exploding nebula, swirling gases,
shooting stars.

(4) The wildly colored landscapes, filmed

through filters from the air over the Hebrides in
Scotland and Mountain Valley in Arizona and Utah
. . . Included here is the mysterious shot of the
seven spinning diamonds.63

The music is heard over the roar of the pod's engine, a

pulsating obligato which somewhat compensates for the in­

herently static nature of the piece. Chords, gradually

built up and dispersed, coincide with explosions of color on

the screen, textural changes on the score often correspond­

ing to cuts in the film.

In fact, though, the choice of Atmospheres for the

"Stargate Corridor" sequence is notan altogether successful

one. It is a quiet piece whose delicate mezzo piano and

pianissimo effects, such as the divisi pppp string har­

monics beginning at measure 88, are often overshadowed by

63ceduld, p. 60.

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 Ill

the spectacular voyage on the screen. Chords, taken while

covered by other sounds, are meant to be perceived only when

already in existence, as Ligeti makes clear in his opening

remarks in the score: "All entrances are to be played im-

64
perceptibly and dolcissimo."

The intentionally static texture of Atmospheres often

leaves the rapid movement of the visual portion to fend for

itself, lonely and unaccompanied, embarrassed by momentary

silences in the score. Yet, in visual terms, this is the

film's climax, one which leaves behind the slow motion

rhythms of outer space, for a high-speed, rapid-fire rush to

the cadence which requires a score of corresponding tempi.

The mood of Atmospheres is also inappropriate to that

of the time-space warp, in which Bowman, aging before our

eyes, rushes head-long toward a destination whose nature is

as enigmatic and threatening as the monolith which led him

there. Several tonal references occurring within the clus­

tral framework of the piece, such as the audible major triad

with the added sixth beginning circa measure 16, are not

consistent with the anxiety mirrored on Bowman's face.

Perhaps another piece by Ligeti could have been found,

one which would also serve to unify the film, as Atmospheres

does, through its stylistic relationship to the composer's

64cyorgy Ligeti, Atmospheres (Baden-Baden: Universal

Edition, 1961).

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 112

other works. Lux A e t e r n a # for instance/ would have been a

better choice here. Milko Kelemen's Sur p ri se # also composed

of long bands of sound# but consistently more active and

less delicately constructed than Atmosph ere s# might have

been more successful here. Not in the same style# but none­

theless well suited to the film because of its dramatic tex-

tural/tibral changes# Witold L ut os la wsk i1s last movement to

Jeux ve ne ti en s# with its wildly spontaneous cadenza sec­

tions, would have provided an electrifying accompaniment to

the “Stargate Corridor" sequence.

Lux Aeterna

Ligeti's Lux Aeterna provides a fitting accompaniment

to the shuttle's trip to the excavation site# its remote and

shimmering timbres well adapted to the vistas of the craft

as it darts across the lunar landscape. As a group of clus­

ters are grafted onto the dense harmony# a series of shots

offsets the stasis of the variably arhythmic score— the ship

traversing above the moon's surface, the ship in front of

the distant earth# and another moonscape with the ship dart­

ing across the bottom of the screen. The craft's rapid,

consistent travel provides a clear counterpoint to the

static music, the score being used decoratively here# focus­

ing upon the foreign, uninhabited landscape with which it is

allied in mood. As establishing music, the piece illus­

trates one of the film's most persistent themes— that is#

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 113

the isolation of man in the twenty-first century which is

exaggerated by the conditions of space travel. It also an­

ticipates the use of the Requiem in the following sequence.

With the exception of Atmospheres/ the Ligeti scores

are conceptually well suited to 2001/ in that the work of

both Ligeti and Kubrick gives the impression that the sight

or sound presented is only a part of what is available.

Just as in 2001 the viewer is aware that there are vistas

beyond the camera that go on and on which the camera is un­

able to show/ so one senses in Ligeti's work a concern that

the presentation of the piece is only a part of its exis­

tence, the music giving the illusion that the piece was

there, in Plaistow's words "even before one began to per-

ceive it." (One even sees this concept carried into the

actual composition of Atmospheres in the composer's direc­

tions that "[a]ll entrances are to be played imperceptibly

66
and dolcissimo.)

The Blue Danube

The now-classic "Space Waltz" sequence begins with a

match cut that leaps across four million years as the bone

65Stephen Plaistow, "Ligeti's Recent Music," The Mus­

ical T i m e s , Vol. 115, No. 1575, pp. 379-381.

G^Ligeti, A t m o s p h e r e s , Remarks concerning rehearsal.

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 114

which Moon-Watcher tosses into the air (high key shot) re­

turns as a spaceship (low key shot). The consistent grace

of this sequence is in part indebted to the use of the cam­

era, found in all the space shots of the film, which Kozloff

described as follows:

Every movement of the lens has a surprising

yet slow lift and lilt to it. With their tangibly
buoyant, decelerated grace (never, however, as
ghostly as slow motion) Kubrick's boom and pan
shots wield the glance through circumferences al­
ready mimed by the curvature of the screen it­
self. Whether one is seated above or beneath this
spectacle, one is brought almost physically toward
its shifting gyre, hanging in it as if suspended
from some balcony on the solar system.^7

The waltz, used both structurally and narratively, mir­

rors both the "lilt" of the camera movement and the slow

motion grace of the spacecraft, the repetitive triple meter

elegantly imitated in the whirling of the space station re­

calling the literal conceptualization of motion delineated

in Eisenstein's theory of vertical montage.

The waltz is presented in two segments, being interrup­

ted by the scenes set in the interior of the Orion space

station. In the first presentation two spacecraft, the ar­

rowlike ship which carries Floyd and the wheel-shaped sta­

tion Orion, consummate their interstellar courtship as the

ship docks at the revolving space station, the earth's hori­

zon drifting luminously in the foreground.

67Rozloff, p. 55.

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 115

The waltz is recapitulated as Floyd's ship leaves Orion

en route to the moon/ the music fading inon a cut to the

rocket. As the second section of the music begins, a cut to

the interior of the ship shows the flight attendant carrying

a tray of food to Floyd, whom she finds sleeping. His pen

having floated out of his hand, she retrieves it in what

68
Daniels described as "slow motion fussiness." It is

also during this section that this attendant walks around

the ship's circumference (like Fred Astaire in Royal Wed­

ding ), literally climbing the walls.

During the final section of the waltz, the ship lands

at the moon, Kubrick employing obviously erotic imagery

here, interpreted by Geduld as "uterine":

The spherical vehicle represents an impreg­

nated ova implanting itself in the uterus of a
gigantic reproductive system. In general, this
would conform to the second step in the develop­
ment of fetal life, the first having been the act­
ual conception of Orion and the wheel.69

The significance of this erotic imagery has already

been discussed— that its, the fact of the machines taking on

human courtship functions points up the emotional sterility

of the people in the film. The conception to which Geduld

alluded in this case may also anticipate the birth of the

Starchild at the end of the film.

^Daniels, p. 4.

69Geduld, p. 48.

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 116

Daniels's comment on the incongruous function of The

Blue Danube is enlightening: "The overblown orchestration

of the waltz," he said, "is a witty comment on the preten-

70
sions of twenty-first century technology. . . ." The

grand associations of this particular waltz do, however,

emphasize the superhuman grace of the craft: they literally

whirl, continuously, and float, acts which human dancers may

only accomplish through suggestion.

The Gayne Suite Adagio

The opening of the third section, the "Discovery" epi­

sode of the film, is set to Khatchaturian's Adagio from the

Gayne Suite. Another instance of vertical montage occurs

here as Poole jogs around a circular track, a series which

is set to the sequentially repetitive music, as well as the

use of legato strings which enhance the gl iG O f the Dis­

covery through interplanetary space. The music persists

through the astronaut's opening dialogue with HAL as well as

Dave's game of chess with the computer, the camera then

stopping to rest on HAL's glowing red eye as the score

fades. The piece also is used decoratively as establishing

music, like Lux A et ern a, depicting the loneliness of outer

space and the isolation of the Discovery.

70Daniels, p. 3.

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 117

Conclusion

"Stanley Kubrick's major films," wrote Harriet and Ir­

ving Deer, "reveal his search for an unrestricted form

through which he can communicate with his audience without

coercing them into mistaking his particular structures for

71
reality." It is a statement which well applies to 2001,

a film in which within a creatively conceived, yet clearly

defined, form, he as sought to deal with not only the real­

ity of existence in space but also of the future of the hu­

man race, realities which, in the final analysis, can only

be viewed as conjecture. It is one of the film's triumphs

that its scenes in space are so convincing.

This emphasis on realism with regard to the landscapes

and machinery of space did not, however, deter him from the

desirable artifice of constructing a highly formal film, one

in which the music plays an integral role. Instead of seek­

ing the realism of melodrama, he sought to temper his well

documented scenery within the formal strictures of myth in

which the music is called upon not only as a setting for his

elaborate, cinematic choreography but to provided the viewer

with important narrative and symbolic insight as well.

In the music of both of the Strausses, he has gathered

together all the elements of structure as they relate to the

71lrving and Harriet Deer, "Kubrick and the Struc­

tures of Popular Culture," Journal of Popular Film, Vol.
Ill, No. 3, Summer, 1974, p. 234.

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 118

narrative of the film. The visualization of the will to

power symbolism in the arc of Moon-Watcher's arm against the

sky, accompanied by the World Riddle Theme, for instance, is

ramified continually throughout the course of the film.

Stanley Kubrick's majestic setting of the "finality of be­

coming" theme shot serves as a catalyst whose action is fin­

ally resolved in the Starchild's multi-horizonal, interstel-

lactic gaze at the film's conclusion, a vision which is also

set to the World Riddle Theme, a motif whose return symbol­

izes the realization of the "odyssey" in 2001.

The Last Men of 2 0 0 1 , whose banal existence is so aptly

satirized by the Space Waltz, set to the elegant, urbane The

Blue D a n ub e, appear as a doomed race whose extinction, like

that of Australopithicus, is hinted at in the anguished

strains of Ligeti's Requiem. The Requiem fittingly accom­

panies all but the final presentation of the monolith, ano­

ther catalyst whose apparition in each instance leads to an

evolutionary act through which the present species will be

superseded. Bowman's traumatic ride through the time-space

warp of the Stargate Corridor and Floyd's journey to the

excavation site are set to Atmospheres and Lux Aet er na, res­

pectively, scores which are stylistically linked to the Re­

q u i e m , a device which serves to unify the film structurally

as well as narratively, since it was the appearance of the

monolith (accompanied by the Requiem) which effected these

journeys in the first place.

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 119

Like The Blue Danube, the Adagio from the Gayne Suite#

which is used descriptively as establishing music, points up

the existential isolation of Kubrick's twenty-first century

Homo sapiens.

The music of 2001 is an indispensable element of the

film, one which not only serves to reinforce the action on

the screen, but also acts as a participant in and interpre­

ter of that action.

If Kubrick's view of the twenty-first century is bleak,

he has nonetheless intimated that man has the evolutionary

capacity to overcome the problems which plague him, the most

threatening of which, in light of the film, lie within him­

self. Similarly evolutionary, Kubrick's accomplishment in

2001 has pointed the way toward a singularly powerful artis­

tic union, one in which the music and visual imagery in film

may stand on equal terms, not in competition, but in crea­

tive synthesis.

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 C H APTER I I I

LUCHINO VISCONTI'S DEATH IN VENICE

The Setting

In Death in Venice ( 1 9 7 1 ) Luchino Visconti returned

to the source of a former film: the fiction of Thomas Mann,

whose novel Buddenbrooks had provided material for Vis­

conti's account of the ruin of the powerful bourgeois family

in La Caduta degli dei (1969). Set in a National Socialist

Germany, La Caduta degli dei (frequently exhibited under its

German title, Gotterdammerung), was the first of Visconti's

German trilogy, which also included Death in Venice and Lud­

wig (1972). Made in historically reverse order, the three

films deal with the rise of Germany from the time of its

unification in the nineteenth century (Ludwig) to its defeat

at the end of the Third Reich (La Caduta degli d e i ). In

Death in Venice, Visconti chronicled the middle of this era,

^Director, Luchino Visconti; screenplay, Visconti and

Nicola Badalucco; based on the novella by Thomas Mann; cine­
matography, Pasquale de Santies; music, Gustav Mahler; music
conducted by Franco Manoni; edited by Ruggero Mastroianni;
costumes by Pier Tosi.

120

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 121

providing insightful comment on the future decline of the

bourgeoisie after the fall of the monarchy in 1918.

Set in 1911, Death in Venice anticipates the war which

was to alter drastically the social structure of Europe, as

Pauline Kael has observed, noting that Visconti had caught

2
the image of "history on the turn." It was a period

which held great interest for Visconti, as Monica Stirling

pointed out:

The contemporaneity of Marcel Proust (1871-

1922) and Thomas Mann (1875-1955) seemed to Vis­
conti a particularly interesting feature of "the
whole complex of cultural changes and revolutions
that characterized those prewar years and that one
must understand in order to follow our own his­
tory." It was during the period when Proust was
writing his masterpiece and Mann going from Death
in Venice toward The Magic Mountain that, said
Visconti, "the whole of European bourgeois culture
underwent radical changes, began combing out its
knots and setting itself new objectives— all this
just as the First World War was about to sweep
away every old solution and illusion."3

^Pauline Kael, Death in Ve n i c e , reviewed in The New

Y or ker , March, 1971.

3Monica Stirling, A Screen of Time, A Study of Luchi­

no Visconti (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p.
211 .

According to Hilde Spiel, "The Vienna of Gustav Mah­

ler," Gustav Mahler in Vienna (New York: International Pub­
lications, 1976):

In a century in which everywhere in Europe

the function of the patronage system was shifting
away from the upper strata of society to the soc­
ial middle class, this group had become, moreover,

[Footnote continued on next page.]

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 122

The changes in society which Visconti mentioned here consti­

tute a very important part of the thematic statement of the

film since modern viewers are acutely aware of the oncoming

destruction that is shortly to engulf the illusive, Prous-

tian setting found in Visconti's Lido of 1911.

Themes in Death in Venice

The importance of music in Death in Venice reflects

Visconti's perspective as a musician and an opera direc­

tor,4 which he displayed in the opening sequence of Senso

(1954). Set in the Risorgimento, the film begins during a

demonstration by Italian nationalists at a performance of II

Trovatore at La Fenice. One of the characters comments to

another that art should not intrude upon life, that high

[Footnote continued from previous page.]

the most important receptacle of literary, musi­

cal, and artistic creations. (pp. 34-35)

Visconti's profound admiration of Proust should be

noted at this point. The director nurtured a lifetime am­
bition of making a film of A la Recherche du Temps p er du , a
project which he turned over to Joseph Losey just before his
death. A script of the projected Losey film has been writ­
ten by Harold Pinter (available from Grove P r e ss ).

4A s a child, Visconti displayed musical gifts, ac­

cording to Stirling: "When, at thirteen, he played a con­
cert at Milan Conservatory, the music critic of the Milan
newspaper Sera noted that "the juvenile Luchino Visconti di
Modrone" already possessed "far more than amateur talent."
p. 4.

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 123

drama should remain upon the stage, which during the film it

does not. Art similarly intrudes upon life in Death in

V e n i c e , a film about the relationship of an artist to his

environment and the nature of artistic motivation.

The latter film also deals with the perception of

beauty, an issue which it derived from Mann's novella, in

which the question of whether beauty is perceived through

the senses or as a result of abstract contemplation is the

subject of many of the internal debates of the central char­

acter. Viewed from an artist's perspective, this question

is of vital importance to Aschenbach, the creative artist-

hero of the film who has believed for his entire life that

beauty cannot be reached through the senses, but only

through the painstaking, daily struggles of a well disci­

plined creative mind. It was this belief, which had been

the ruling doctrine of his life's work, that was called into

question when the artist was confronted for the first time

by the incarnation of his ideal of beauty in the boy Tadzio,

a beauty which resulted not from toil, but rather as a con­

sequence of nature. It is this aesthetic crisis along with

the historical threat of the approaching war to which this

beautiful world is doomed which form the central themes of

Death in V e n i c e ; for Aschenbach's death symbolizes not only

the

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 12 4

death of the classical ideal of beauty, but also the death

of the seemingly gentle world from which it sprang.

Visconti's early association with Jean Renoir may have

had some influence on his thinking here since it is the end

of this same world which is so gently and poignantly depic­

ted in La Grande Illusion (1937) in which the death of one

of its heroes, de Boieldieu, symbolizes the diminishing in­

fluence of the aristocratic class. In Renoir's Regie de jeu

(1939), the death of the Lindbergh-like aviator similarly

symbolizes the death of heroism. Both films chronicle the

passing of the old order.

Sources of the Film

The film, Death in Ven ic e , was based upon Mann's novel­

la as well as two other sources, which Visconti used in or­

der to transcribe into film questions which Mann had raised

in prose. The main theme of the novella treats the psycho­

logy of artistic creation, which Mann dealt with in terms of

Dionysian and Apollonian conflict. This is a recurrent

theme in Mann's work, and Visconti also drew on Mann's late

novel, Doctor Faustus, for some of the material in the film.

Another source which Visconti tapped was the life of

Gustav Mahler, a source which he had inherited from Mann,

Gustav Mahler and Gustav von Aschenbach sharing a similar

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 12 5
5
appearance, as Ethel Caro noted in Thomas Mann's W o r l d .

Mann himself acknowledged that he had drawn Aschenbach

upon the model of Mahler in a letter to Wolfgang Born (Mun­

ich, March 18, 1921):

One word more on the last picture, entitled

"Death," [in reference to illustrations which Born
had sent to him that were based upon the novella]
which strikes me as almost uncanny because of a
certain resemblance. The conception of my story,
which occurred in the early summer of 1911, was
influenced by news of the death of Gustav Mahler,
whose acquaintance I had been privileged to make
in Munich and whose intense personality left the
strongest impression on me. I was on the island
of Brioni at the time of his passing and followed
the story of his last hours in the Viennese press
bulletins, which were cast in the royal style.
Later, these shocks fused with the impressions and
the ideas from which the novella sprang. So that
when I conceived my hero who succumbs to lasci­
vious dissolution, I not only gave him the great
musician's Christian name, but also in describing
his appearance conferred Mahler's mask upon him.
I felt quite sure that given so loose a connection
there could be no question of recognition by read­
ers. Nor was it likely in your case as illustra­
tor. For you had not known Mahler, nor had I con-

^Ethel Caro, Thomas Mann's World (Oxford: Blarendon

Press, 1956), p. 6. The following is Mann's description of
Aschenbach:

Gustav von Aschenbach was somewhat below mid­

dle height, dark and smooth shaven, with a head
that looked rather too large for his almost deli­
cate figure. He wore his hair brushed back; it
was thin at the parting, bushy and grey on the
temples, framing a lofty rugged, knotty brow— if
one may so characterize it. The nose piece of his
rimless gold spectacles cut into the base of his
thick, artistically hooked nose. The mouth was
large, often lax, often suddenly narrow and tense;
the cheeks lean and furrowed, the pronounced chin
slightly cleft. (Death in V en i ce , p. 14-15.)

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 126

fessed anything to you about that secret, personal

connection. Nevertheless— and this is what start­
led me at first glance— Aschenbach's head in your
picture unmistakably reveals the Mahler type.6

Visconti carried through this likeness in the film in

which Dirk Bogarde, in the role of Aschenbach, bears a

striking resemblance to Mahler. Bogarde also adopted a

shuffling gait in the film, an oddly uneven manner of loco­

motion, which suitably corresponds to Natalie Bauer-Lech-

ner's description of Mahler's walk: "He never took two suc-

7
cessive steps alike."

In addition to a physical resemblance, Aschenbach, like

Mahler just before his death, is in ill health, the reason

for his visit to Venice being as a retreat from a lifetime

of overwork. Throughout Visconti's film, Aschenbach appears

fatigued and unhealthy, a condition which he reveals to the

8
hotel manager on one occasion.

^Letters of Thomas Mann, 1889-1955, selected and

trans., Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books,
1975), p. 101.

^Natalie Bauer-Lechner, quoted in Henri Louis de la

Grange, M a hl er , (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company,
1973), Vol. I, p. 384.

®See La Grange (cited in n. 7) for information con­

cerning Mahler's health, pp. 71-72.

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 127
Dirk Bogarde in the role of
Aschenbach (right) and
Gustave Mahler (below).

DIRK?BOGARpe.

• r

. Mahler in Vienna at the time of his marriage.

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 128

Mann's Novella

There are several ways to view film adaptations of im­

portant works of fiction. Some films are not intended as

faithful translations of a literary work; others are, such

as Gone With the W i n d . Death in Venice is in the latter

category. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, writing about Death in

V e n i c e , pointed out that in the case of a famous work of

literature, a director expects the viewer to bring knowledge

of that work to the film:

The texts are not chosen to be subsequently

forgotten once they have served their purpose of
providing material for the movie, but on the con­
trary, to be remembered. Though the film can be
read naively, without reference to the literary
original, this is clearly not the author's inten­
tion, which is to produce, for the camera, an in­
stant equivalent of a literary classic. The film
is "the film of the book" and it arrogates to it­
self the merit of the book as one of the reasons
for seeing it. Not only that, but it is intrinsic
in the meaning of the film that it be seen as re­
ferring to the original, situating it and adding
its own meanings on the form of interpretation.9

Before discussing the film, it is necessary to deal

with the salient features of the novella, one of which is

that of the previously mentioned Dionysian-Apollonian

conflict within the artist. Gustav von Aschenbach was a

writer who was, in the words of another Mann artist-hero

Tonio Kroger, "called to knowledge without being born to

^Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Luchino Visconti (New York:

Viking Press, 1973), p. 181.

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 129

it."10 Mann described Aschenbach as a man whose "whole

soul, from the very beginning was bent on fame."11 He is

pictured as a person who, "while not precisely precocious,"

had learned "to sit at his desk and sustain and live up to
12
his growing reputation." He arose early each morning,

beginning his day with cold showers, in the service of his

art, "so that his young days never knew the sweet idleness
13
and blithe laissez faire that belong to youth." Thus it

was, at fifty, bowed down from toil, that his health was

broken. Yet persisting in his motto, "Durchhalten" (hold

fast), he indulged, each afternoon, in napping and walking

that he might return, thereby refreshed, to his desk in the

evening.

It thus came about on one of Aschenbach's afternoon

walks through the suburbs of his native Munich, that long

repressed aspirations were awakened by the sight of a for­

eign stranger who, glimpsed on the steps of a mortuary

chapel, prompted Aschenbach to seek regeneration in a few

weeks' vacation in some sun-drenched resort. It is this

stranger who, in his various guises throughout the novella,

lOThomas Mann, "Tonio Kroger," Death in Venice and

Seven Other Stories, trans., H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York:
Vintage Books, 1954), p. 102.

H-Mann, "Death in Venice," Death in Venice and Seven

Other Stories, p. 9.

12Ibid.

l^Ibid .

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 130

acts as a catalyst, causing Aschenbach's repressed tenden­

cies to surface, until, in the end, he assumes the Diirer-

esque demonic appearance of the stranger.

Mann's concepts of "spirit," that is, reflective

thought, and "nature," unreflective, energetic existence,

the seat of which is the flesh, are an important element in

his writings. Mann felt that these two forces which con­

flict within the artist must be equally balanced. In As­

chenbach they are only briefly balanced. Mann believed that

the consequence of the dominance of either was death. This

is an important theme of the novella, since Aschenbach is

dominated in turn by one, and then the other, a situation

which proved fatal to him. In the beginning, we see him

dominated by "spirit"; in the end, he is dominated by

"nature," the repression of which in the earlier part of his

life led to its ascendancy at the end. It is this dominance

of "nature" that eventually leads to his death.

The setting of Venice was inspired by Mann's trip there

in 1911. His description of the city distinguishes both

"its sordid, reality and mythic splendor," as Andre von Gron-

icka explained in his analysis of the novella, "Myth Plus

Psy chology."^ The conflict within Aschenbach is thus

realized within the site of the story.

l^Andre von Gronicka, "Myth Plus Psychology," p. 193.

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 131

Von Gronicka maintained that there were three main

characters: Aschenbach/ Tadzio/ and the "'stranger' in his

various guises. One immediately recognizes the stran­

ger as the devil from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustusf w h o f as

in Doctor Faustus, assumes varying appearances throughout

the course of the novella. First seen on the steps of the

mortuary chapel in Munich, he next is found as the "young-

old" man on the ship who greets Aschenbach as he disembarks

with the familiarity of recognition— the recognition of one

of his own kind, for, as we shall see, Aschenbach assumes

this mask of youth by the end of the story. As the leader

of the minstrels who come to serenade the hotel guests, the

stranger lies to Aschenbach when Aschenbach makes inquires

of him as to the reason that the city of Venice is being

disinfected. In this act, he is seen as an associate of the

devil in Doctor Faustus who disposes of the doctors from

whom Adrian Leverktihn has sought a cure for syphilis.

Tadzio, "a creature of the two worlds of reality and

myth," is described almost entirely from Aschenbach1s point

of view, as von Gronicka pointed out: "We see him as the

little Polish boy of pale complexion, with carious teeth, we

hear his high-pitched voice, observe his highstrung temper.

But we also behold him as a paragon of beauty whose profile

ISibid., p. 195.

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 132

awakens in Aschenbach's memories 'griechischer Bildewerke

1 fi
aus edelster Zeit.'" Described on numerous occasions as

a young god, he is nonetheless of such frail and delicate

appearance that Aschenbach conjectures at one point that he

will die before reaching maturity, a thought that gives

Aschenbach a pleasure which he does not seek to understand.

Extolled as the personification of Aschenbach1s ideal

beauty, Tadzio is not unaware of Aschenbach1s attentions,

and, in the end, reciprocates them in some small measure.

The plot of the story is basically uncomplicated; it is

Mann's working out of the story through the use of leit­

motifs that gives it its involved structure. The main

events will be given here, so that they may be discussed

later in light of the film.

Not long after his walk, Aschenbach departs for Ven­

ice. While leaving the ship there, he is accosted by a de­

monic character, the "young-old" man, who tells him, "Give

17
her our love, will you, the p-pretty little dear." The

devil, to judge from the insolent familiarity of his greet­

ing, has recognized Aschenbach as the one who is destined

for descent into the fires of passionate excess.

l^Ibid., p. 199. The words "griechischer Bildewerke

aus edelster Zeit" are translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter as
the "noblest moment of Greek sculpture.” (Death in Venice,
p. 25.)

l^Death in Veni ce, p. 20.

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 133

Aschenbach then boards a gondola, pictured as "black as

18
nothing else except a coffin." Noting that the vessel

is on the wrong course, he protests to the gondolier, who

19
replies in Charonian fashion, "I will row you well."

It is at dinner that evening that Aschenbach first not­

ices Tadzio. He has opportunity to observe him more closely

on the beach the next day. As the days pass, he is captiva­

ted by the boy's beauty. The oppressive heat and the

scirocco (a hot wind), however, make stopping longer in Ven­

ice unwise. We are told that on a previous occasion "he had

20
to flee for his life" due to the same conditions. At­

tempting to leave, he finds that his luggage has been mis­

placed. While waiting at the railway station for the situa­

tion to be resolved, he sees a man collapse, near to death.

Nothing more is revealed about this incident at the time.

Upon learning that his luggage has been sent on the wrong

train, he returns to the Lido on the pretense of awaiting

its recovery.

At the beach, immediately upon his return, inspired by

the presence of Tadzio, he writes several pages of prose

that will later be acknowledged as his greatest masterpiece.

ISi bid ., p. 23.

l^Ibid.
2 0 i b i d . , p. 39.

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 134

At this point, he begins to notice accounts in the German

newspapers of a plague in Venice; the city is disinfected;

the number of guests at the hotel dwindles. At first his

Inquires are met with patronizing reassurances. He soon

verifies, however, that there is indeed a plague, a fact

that has been kept secret in the interest of maintaining the

vital foreign tourist trade.

Since he has fallen desperately in love with Tadzio, an

emotion whose erotic nature is revealed in a dream he has in

which he is witness to an orgy, he finds himself unable to

leave. He then conceals the city's dreadful secret from the

other guests in the interest of remaining in the presence of

the youth for at least a few more days. Thus compromised,

he now follows Tadzio and his family on their walks through­

out the city, quite aware that his attentions are noticed by

the family, but no longer capable of embarrassment. In the

end he dies on the beach, a victim of the plague which he

sought to conceal, as Tadzio stands beckoningly at the

shore, hours before the boy's inevitable departure from Ven­

ice.

Doctor Faustus

Visconti's Aschenbach is a composer, partially drawn

from the character of Adrian LeverkCihn, the composer-pro-

tagonist of Doctor Faustus, who sells his soul to the devil

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 in exchange for the time that it will take him to develop

his new system of composition. Early in his career, Lever-

kiihn deliberately contracts syphilis, a disease which, des­

pite being the cause of his death as well as years of in­

sanity preceding it, heightens his powers of perception, a

condition which he turns to advantage as an artist. For

Leverkuhn is the consummate creator; his fantastic flights—

whether they are the products of his delusions or actual

travels, in which, ushered by the devil, he journeys through

the vast reaches of interstellar space or plumbs the depths

of the sea— are synthesized into his work. All that touches

him becomes part of his art.

Visconti's Aschenbach is related to Leverkuhn in two

ways, the first of which is music. Leverkuhn's music was in

advance of its time. The novel includes a detailed account

of the theory on which his system was built, a theory that

was based on Schoenberg's dodecaphonic technique, a similar­

ity which Schoenberg considered unfortunate, wishing neither

to be identified with the mad, syphilitic Leverkuhn nor cast

in the allegorical role of Nazi Germany, a frequent inter-

21
pretation of the novel's hero. Leverkuhn was born in an

21This is a frequent interpretation of the novel,

which is outlined more fully in J. P. Stern, History and
Allegory in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus (London: H. K.
Lewis for University College, 1975) and Patrick Carnegy,
Faust as Musician (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973).

i£'v
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 136

age when artistic evolution was impaired by the confines of

the musical language which was his direct inheritance (the

post-Romantic idiom), a problem which the devil elucidates

by pointing out, "Every composer of the better sort carries

within him a canon of the forbidden, the self-forbidding,

which by degrees includes all the possibilties of tonality,

in other words all traditional music. What becomes false,

22
wornout cliche, the canor. decides." The significance of

the dilemma which Leverkuhn faced was explained by Donald

Hirschback:

In Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann has adopted the

Faustus legend to the twentieth century. Its hero
is neither Nietzsche, nor Schoenberg, nor even
Thomas Mann. Its hero is the modern artist who,
with centuries of art behind him, faces a wall
beyond which there may or may not lie new cen­
turies of a r t . 23

The second relationship which Visconti establishes be­

tween the film's Aschenbach and Leverkuhn was brought about

by naming the ship which brings Aschenbach to Venice in the

film "Esmeralda," which is the name of the prostitute from

whom Leverkuhn contracted syphilis in Doctor Faustus, as

well as by transposing the visit to Esmeralda's brothel into

22Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, the Life of the German

Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told By a Friend, trans., H. T.
Lowe-Porter (New York: Vintage Books, 1948), p. 239.

23Frank Donald Hirschbach, The Arrow and the Lyre: A

Study of Love in the Works of Thomas Mann (The Hague: Mar-
tinus Nijhoff, 1955), p. 148.

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 13 7

the film (an incident which was presented in detail in Chap­

ter I of this dissertation).

The novel has also been read as an allegory in which

Germany, cast in the role of Leverkuhn, sells her soul to

the devil in exchange for power, or as Leverkuhn put it,

24
"because I would win glory in this world." A parallel

analogy might be drawn with Aschenbach by casting him sym­

bolically in the role of the German bourgeoisie, a class

whose influence was threatened in the aftermath of World War

I, resulting in its alliance with the Nazis in exchange for

the use of its power against the rising threat of com­

munism. This phenomenon was of great interest to Visconti

(himself a communist during the thirties) , as evidenced by

his previously mentioned treatment of it in his film Gotter-

dammerung.

Visconti's Film

The film, for the most part, follows the sequence of

events set forth in the novella. Visconti, however, did

take departures from the Mann work. The most striking

change is that of making Aschenbach into a composer, an

identity which creates for the music of the film a special

relationship with the narrative, since this makes Death in

Venice, like Fellini's Orchestra Rehearsal, on one level a

24Poctor Faustus, p. 497.

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 138

film about music. Although most of the music in the film is

sounded externally, on at least one occasion it is implied

that the hero is composing this music at that moment (in the

case of the Mitternachtslied), a situation which generally

enhances the narrative role of all of the film's music.

By making Aschenbach into a composer, Visconti is able

to have him indulge in dialogues about music, for which pur­

pose he created the role of Alfried, a student of Aschen-

25
bach. He is thus able to transpose certain discussions

which Aschenbach carries on with himself in the novella into

the movie; these include the discourses of Socrates and

Phaedrus on the nature of beauty, as well as some material

which derives from Doctor Faus tu s, since the character of

Alfried is drawn in part from the devil in Faustus.

Visconti made other narrative departures from the no­

vella. The film begins, unlike the novella, as Aschenbach

arrives in Venice. This tightens the structure of the film,

since it places it all within a single setting (with the

exception of the flashbacks). Visconti further unifies the

film by reducing the time spectrum in which events in Venice

take place. Alexander Hutchison has theorized that the

25Luchino Visconti, interviewed by Lee Langley, "Vis­

conti Oblige," Arts Guardian.

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 139
26
action of the film occurs over a period of a few days.

Other changes include the flashbacks which establish the

existence of close family ties in Aschenbach's past, as well

as the previously mentioned bordello sequence and the naming

of the ship "Esmeralda."

The close family which Visconti gives to Aschenbach is

one of the most enigmatic changes in the film. (Mann gave

his hero a wife, long dead, and a grown, married daughter,

neither of whom seem to have been particularly close to

him.) In the film it is this close-knit family which gives

the lie to Alfried's charge that Aschenbach is incapable of

having "direct, honest contact" with anyone. The inconsis­

tency of this accusation is especially puzzling in light of

the fact that Alfried himself is an invention of Visconti:

the conflict would seem deliberate. It is possible that

Visconti introduced Alfried and Aschenbach's wife, respec­

tively, as representatives of the evil and good forces which

Mann and Visconti implied that it was necessary for the art­

ist to internalize. Perhaps, also, its origin lies in Vis­

conti's adaptation of material from Doctor Faustus, in which

Leverkuhn, like Alberich in The Ring of the Nibelungen, for­

swears love. But, unlike the dwarf, Leverkuhn breaks his

pledge, the implication being that it is only through love

^Alexander Hutchison, Luchino Visconti's Death in

Veni ce. The sequence of events in the novella takes place
over a period of weeks.

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 140

that Leverkuhn will be able to attain salvation (a situation

which raises another Wagnerian allusion, that of the promi­

nent Wagnerian theme of redemption through love).

Wagnerian References in Death in Venice

Wagner's influence on Mann has been well documen-

27
ted. In "Wagnerian Overtones in Per Tod inVenedig,"

William H. McClain raised the question that the artist in

the novella might have been patterned after Richard Wagner.

McClain listed several incidents in Wagner's life that led

him to this speculation. The first such incident was Wag­

ner's trip to Venice in the summer of 1858, during which he

composed the second act of Tristan und Isolde. Another co­

incidence was Wagner's own death in Venice in 1883, which,

McClain asserted, "from the point of view of German art and

culture, was certainly the most famous death in Venice in

28
the nineteenth century." He elaborated:

If one reads Mann's extraordinary Novelle

with these circumstances in mind one cannot but be
struck by the numerous parallels in form and con­
tent between his touching account of Aschenbach's
passion and death in Venice and the many works of
Wagner which tell of individuals who suffered and

^^Particularly enlightening on this point is Mann's

The Story of a Novel: The Genesis of Doctor Faustus,
trans., Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Knopf, 1961).

28william H. McClain, "Wagnerian Overtones in Per Tod

in Venedig" , p. 482-483.

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 141

died for love, particularly, of course, his moving

version of the Tristan-story and his portrayal of
Brunnhilde's Liebestod at the end of Gotterdam-
m er ung .29

The central theme in both Tristan and The Ring is that

ofredemption through love, one which, as has been pointed

out, is also important in both the film and the novella of

Death in Ve nice. Visconti stated that "love is the most

important sentiment . . . [T]he boy in the story represents

30
the sentiment of love." It would seem, then, that Vis­

conti's hero, like those of Wagner, was also seeking redemp­

tion through love.

Visconti's Leitmotifs

The Love Motif

Visconti, however, qualified the nature of Aschenbach's

love as platonic. He stated that the nature of Aschenbach's

passion was "not homosexual .. . It is love without eroti­

cism."31 This would seem to differ sharply from Mann's

account in which there are numerous incidents which define

Aschenbach's passion for Tadzio as an erotic one. One of

29lbid., p. 483.

3°Luchino Visconti, interviewed by Guy Plately in

"Yes, He Threw No Tantrum, [Interview with Luchino Visconti].

31ibid. Visconti also told Lee Langley in an inter­

view in the Arts Guardian entitled "Visconti Oblige" that
"in the film I make him [Tadzio] a sort of angel of destiny
. . . a fatal presence . . . [H]e knows, instinctively,
that he will lead Aschenbach to his death."

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 14 2

the most convincing of these is defined by the symbolism of

Aschenbach's dream in which he witnesses an ancient Greek

orgy (a possible reference to the decline of Classi-

32
ci sm ). Another incident is Aschenbach's visit to Tad-

zio's door, during which he "leaned his head against the

panel, and remained there long, in utter drunkenness, power­

less to tear himself away, blind to the danger of being

33
caught in so mad an attitude." The very language in

which Aschenbach's passion for Tadzio is couched, in which

he terms himself as the "lover" and the youth as the "be­

loved," leaves no doubt as to the eroticism of his feeling;

and in the case of Aschenbach, such a passion for Tadzio

would certainly be considered illicit as well.

It is the forbidden nature of this relationship which

is its most important aspect since it provides some measure

for Aschenbach's passion as well as for his resulting sense

of compromise. The strength of Aschenbach's passion is such

that it keeps him in Venice; and, as a consequence, he dies

there.

With regard to Visconti's denial of the erotic nature

of Aschenbach's love for Tadzio, there is every reason not

to believe him, one of the strongest being to read into it

his response to the press's ad hominem criticism that he had

32peath in V e n i c e , pp. 66-67. See n. 44.

33ibid. , p. 56.

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 143

turned Mann's story into a homosexual travesty (a ridiculous

charge, since, as has been show, Mann himself left no doubt

as to the erotic nature of Aschenbach's passion). More im­

portant, however, is the fact that the film itself belies

Visconti's professed interpretation. The bordello sequence,

for instance, in which Beethoven's Fur Elise is used to

equate Tadzio with Esmeralda, is one example in which the

34
nature of Aschenbach's passion is clearly defined.

It would seem, in fact, that Visconti did intend to

insinuate a similarity between Aschenbach's relationships

with Tadzio and with Esmeralda, as Stirling pointed out:

When Visconti was asked if it had not struck

him that by putting Tadzio's piano playing and the
brothel scene side by side he might seem to be
suggesting that Tadzio and Esmeralda have some­
thing in common, he replied that he had done so
intentionally, to emphasize the growing ambiguity
of the mute relationship between Tadzio and As-
chenbach.35

The scene marks a transition in Aschenbach's feeling for

Tadzio, which began as a detached and impartial admiration

such as an artist might have for his subject at the start of

a work, and, progressed into an uncontrolled passion.

To pursue Visconti's earlier mentioned interpretation

for a moment, however, the director's description of this

emotion as "love without eroticism," interestingly calls to

3 ^see Hutchison's discussion of this sequence in

Chapter I (n. 73).
^Stirling, p. 218.

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 14 4

mind a conversation between Adrian Leverkiihn and Serenus

Zeitblom, the pedantic persona of Doctor Faustus;

Leverkiihn: "Do you consider love the strongest emo­

tion?"

Zeitblom: "Do you know a stronger?"

Leverkiihn: "Yes, interest."

Zeitblom: "By which you presumably mean love from

which the animal warmth has been withdrawn."

Leverkiihn: "Let us agree on the definition!" [He

laughed .]^

"Love without eroticism" is indeed what Leverkiihn seems

to have meant here. The implication is, significantly, that

the object of the love to which he refers is the subject of

artistic creation— those puzzles and games that he was so

fond of working out. This is implicit in the bargain which

he strikes with the devil, who in forbidding him the warmth

of love tells him, "Cold we want you to be, that the fires

of creation shall be hot enough to warm yourself in. Into

37
them you will flee out of the cold of your life . . ."

Leverkiihn is convinced that it is erotic love that is denied

him. In the end, however, he redefines his opinion. When

the child Nepomuk is taken from him, he is forced to the

realization that by "love" the devil meant any feeling that

36poctor Faustus, p. 69.

37ibid., p. 249.

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 14 5

might warm the "cold" within him, and thereby negate the

"fires" of artistic creation.

Leverkiihn loved on three occasions, attachments which,

because of the devil's curse, proved disastrous for those he

loved on all but one of these occasions. Two of these in­

volvements contributed the raw material for some of his

work. His love, then provided inspiration for his achieve­

ment. Aschenbach's love for Tadzio similarly inspires the

artist's finest prose in the novella, and the Mitternachts-

lied in the film. The issue which both Mann and Visconti

have raised here is concerned with the source of artistic

inspiration, and the relationship between the subject and

the creator, between the artist and the art.

As in Faustus the love motif receives paradoxical

treatment, so it does in the film as well: Alfried's state­

ment to Aschenbach, "You are afraid to have direct, honest

contact with anything because of your standards of moral­

ity," stands in opposition to the love and warmth of his

family life (displayed in the flaskbacks, as well as by As­

chenbach's gesture in kissing the photographs of his wife

and daughter as soon as he is alone in his hotel room).

One presumes that Alfried's use of the word "morality"

is concerned with Aschenbach's creative morality to which

Aschenbach himself refers when he says that it is only

through complete subjugation of the senses that one can

achieve "wisdom, truth, and human dignity." If beauty may

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 146

not be perceived through the senses, according to Aschen­

bach, then he would deny himself, as Leverkiihn would have

wished to, the warmth of human contact. The conflict which

arises from this denial is vital to both Aschenbach's and

Leverkiihn's sources of inspiration as artists: if denied

the warmth of human contact, they may also be separated from

the source from which their art springs.

Since Aschenbach's relationship with his wife is de­

picted as warm and caring in the film, Visconti's character­

ization of Aschenbach's wife places her in direct contrast

to Alfried, for, in Hutchison's words, "she is the surest

38
sign of good." In many ways, Aschenbach's situation

with regard to the love motif in the film would seem to be

drawn from Fa ustus. Like Leverkiihn, for instance, he must

endure the death of a child (his own, a parallel with Mah­

ler's life as well), although there is no indication that he

has brought this misfortune upon himself (as there is in

Leverkiihn's case).

The love motif is only one of several in the film,

which like the novella and Doctor Faustus, deals with the

theme of the psychology of artistic creation through the use

of leitmotif.

^ H ut c h i s o n , p. 42.

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 14 7

The Use of Leitmotifs

McClain listed seven leitmotifs that are presented in

the novella: falseness, encounter, yearning, death, fleet­

ing-time, love, and nirvana. In addition to these there are

two others presented in the film: demonic and war.

Falseness

The first, falseness, according to McClain is repre­

sented in the person of the "young-old" man on the ship. It

is also represented in Aschenbach's betrayal of his own ar­

tistic ideals, a situation which occurs in the novella but

not, as Hutchison pointed out, in the film. This is one of

Visconti's most important departures from Mann's novella, in

which, according to Hutchison, "Mann's ironic pessimism cen­

ters on the consequence of Aschenbach's own falsehood to his

39
art and his ideals."

This betrayal of his own ideals by Aschenbach, which is

not carried through into the film is one of the most impor­

tant differences between Mann's character and Visconti's, a

difference which is defined in terms of their artistic

style. Mann's hero is somewhat of a pedant. His writings,

built thorough day-by-day perseverance, are widely respec­

ted, held up as examples of style to schoolchildren. Vis ­

conti's hero, on the other hand, partially based on the

39ibid., p. 43.

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 148

character of Adrian Leverkiihn, is an innovator, a radical.

This is made clear in the film by the final, dissonant chord

of his symphony and the audience's hostile reception to it.

That one does not find in the film's protagonist Mann's

guardian of bourgeois ideals is also made clear in Alfried's

reaction to Aschenbach's music. Here one finds Leverkiihn's

art in Alfried's description of Aschenbach's music as "am­

biguity made a science," an analysis which Alfried delivers

as he strikes a quartally constructed chord taken from one

of Aschenbach's scores. Leverkiihn's mathematically con­

ceived ideas are also echoed in Alfried's words, as he glis-

sandos across the keyboard, "an entire series of double

meanings which you have robbed."

One finds in the film's composer, then, a picture of

Leverkiihn, the composer of the unsuccessfully received opera

Love's Labors L o s t ,40 not the novella's writer whose aca­

demically flawless style was eulogized to schoolchildren.

One also recognizes in Alfried's description the radical

Leverkiihn who, in his Brentano song, "O lieb Madel," sought

the composition of a constellation in which "the polyphonic

dignity of every note" would "guarantee . . . the emancipa-

41
tion of dissonance from its resolution." Thus, in the

40Poctor Fau stu s, p. 305.

41Ibid., p. 103. Mann referred here to Schoenberg's

twelve-tone theory.

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 1.49

film the falseness, or betrayal, motif does not encompass

the realm of Aschenbach's art, as it does in the novella.

It does, however, include his relationship with Tadzio,

as Hutchison pointed out:

The main theme of Ossessione and Senso— a

theme that touches all of Visconti's film— is the
destructive power of sexual passion in relation to
betrayal. It is a "permanent item" as Nowell-
Smith points out. To reinforce that theme, in
addition to creating the character of Alfred
[sic], who begins be demonstrating his devotion to
Aschenbach and ends by cruelly abusing him, Vis­
conti very quickly makes Tadzio a "traitor," too.
When Aschenbach returns to the hotel from the
beach after seeing Jaschu kiss Tadzio, we observe
him first in the lobby where, in an odd, brief
prelude to his profound humiliation, he drops his
spectacles. He recovers them (to the amusement of
some women sitting nearby) and makes for the ele­
vator. As he stands inside, a number of boys from
the beach, including Jaschu and Tadzio, crowd in
after him. They are giggling, and, although As­
chenbach is uncertain, he appears amused, too. He
loses his smile, however, when Jaschu whispers
something in Tadzio's ear and Tadzio grins. At
the second floor, white hat off, his hair shaken
out, Tadzio exits alone, as if dared to, walking
backward and gazing provocatively at Aschenbach in
the elevator. The other boys make noises and ges­
tures of encouragement.42

There are several other instances of the falseness

motif in the novella, which McClain pointed out. One is

Aschenbach's deliberate participation in the concealment of

the cholera epidemic; another is his youthful masquerade at

the end.

42nutchison, p. 38.

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 150

Encounter

The second motif is encounter. Under this must be in­

cluded Aschenbach's meetings with the various death spectres

throughout the film. One of these is the "young-old" man in

his various guises (in whose person is also seen the false­

ness motif). As in the dialogue of Doctor Faustus, the

43
devil goes through a series of metamorphoses, in the

film he is variously represented in the Diireresque guise in

which he first appears to Aschenbach on board the "Esmeral­

da," that is, as the "young-old" man with the red hair and

the lurid Mephistopholes smile. Tadzio's confrontation of

Aschenbach as he exits from the dining room before leaving

the Lido must be included here. They meet at the doorway,

only a few feet apart, pausing for a moment to exchange

looks. In response to Tadzio's provocative, "Mona Lisa,"

smile, Aschenbach whispers, sotto voce, "Farewell, Tadzio,

it was all too brief." His encounter with the dying man at

the train station is another sounding of this motif, an en­

counter which Visconti described so brilliantly through his

use of a reaction shot, that of a small child being pulled

away by a horrified adult (similar to the reaction shot that

he used to confirm the death of Aschenbach on the beach at

the end of the film, again a child, who on this occasion is

being motioned away by an adult). The incident in the

4^Doctor Faustus, p . 254.

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 151

railway station is Aschenbach's first encounter with the

pla g ue .

The Yearning Motif and Mann's Metaphysics

McClain next discusses the yearning motif, one which is

so movingly reflected in the great sweeps of phrase in the

Mahler Adagietto. Before discussing this motif in Death in

Venice, however, it is first necessary to deal with Mann's

views on metaphysics. These were outlined by Marta Regina

Kruiiner in The Nature and the Function of the Artist in the

44
World of Thomas Mann.

44Marta Regina Kruiiner, The Nature and the Function

of the Artist in the World of Thomas Mann as Revealed in
Selected W o r k s , Doctor of Philosophy Thesis, Occidental Col­
lege, 1961.

Mann's views on theology are derived in part from Hindu

though. They also reflect the influence of Neoplatonism,
which has had a marked influence on European culture. Ac­
cording to Arthur Hillary Armstrong, neoplatonic doctrine
derives its "ultimate inspiration from the Dialogues of
Plato and embrace his belief in absolute values rooted in a
realm of unchanging and eternal values independent of the
world perceived by the senses." (Encyclopedia Britannica:
Micropaedia, Fifteenth Edition, 1979, Vol. VIII, p. 35.

Armstrong elaborated:

There is a hierarchy of reality, a plurality

of spheres of being, arranged in descending order,
the last, lowest, and least comprising that which
exists in time and space, these being perceptible
to the senses.

Each sphere of being is derived from its

superior; this derivation is not a process in time
or space. Each derived being is established in
its own reality by turning back toward its
superior . . .

[Footnote continued on following page.]

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 15 2

According to Kruiiner (whose main source for her dis­

cussion on Mann's metaphysics was his Joseph tetralogy),

Mann viewed the artist as an individual whose capacity for

creative productivity was derived from his "role as the med-

45
iator between nature and spirit." In Mann's work

"nature" is characterized as "innocent and energetic, but

ignorant, unconscious, and unreflective life, the seat of

46
which is flesh." "Spirit" is defined as "conscious and

introspective life which is marked by feeling and by intel-

47
lectual and artistic refinement.”

[Footnote continued from preceding page.]

According to Armstrong, the highest sphere was known as

"the good." The similarity between this doctrine and Mann's
theology as discussed by Kriiiiner is apparent. Mann may or
may not have been influenced by Neoplatonism, there having
been a revival of interest in Classical culture in Germany
at the turn of this century. His description of Tadzio as
"griechischer Bildwerke aus edelster Zeit," (Death in Ven­
i c e , p. 25), however, would indicate that Aschenbach's ideal
of beauty was certainly based on the Classical ideal; and,
therefore, in a sense, Aschenbach's death on the beach at
the end of the film as Tadzio, posed as a Greek statue,
looks out to sea represents a death of the influence of
Classicism in an increasingly materialist society which was
rapidly forsaking its spiritual ideals. ["Neoplantonism,"
Encyclopedia Britannica, (Chicago; William Benton, Pub­
lisher, 1973), Vol. XVIV, p. 217.]

45Kriiiiner, p. 15.

46ibid., p. 40.

47lbid. "Nature" may be seen as corresponding to the

Dionysian drive within an artist, "spirit" with the Apol­
lonian.

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 153

In Mann's view, "soul" always existed (like the spirit

Ariel in Leverkiihn's explanation to Nepomuk). Looking down

from heaven, through creation, soul saw itself mirrored in

matter and fell in love with its own image; and, according

to Kriiiiner, "it is this primeval love affair which is the

48
origin of man's double nature." Soul's yearning acted

as a catalyst to what followed, as Kriiiiner elaborated:

Thus as a result of its narcissistic desire

and longing soul fell from its blissful state of
innocence and became enslaved in the lower
w o rl d.49

It was soul's passionate longing that changed

its state of innocence to that of guilt; God added
no additional punishment to the measure of suffer­
ing and the pain of soul's passion was heightened
greatly by the sluggishness and obstinacy of mat­
ter which refused to take on form and thus give
pleasure to soul. Then, God feeling sorry for
soul, came to its aid by creating the world of
form in order to support soul as it struggled in
love with matter . . . Thus the world of form and
the human being in flesh were created, and with
them death entered the world as well.59

God then sent spirit to help soul:

As a higher self of the soul, spirit brought

the knowledge of good and evil into the world
which soul had not possessed.

It was spirit's purpose to try to induce soul to leave

the world of matter and fly back to its original state with

48ibid., p. 2.

49Ibid.

SOlbid., p. 3.

5llbid., p. 4.

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 154
52
God. Spirit, however, was unhappy with this role as the

harbinger of death. Also, as a result of its own weakness

and narcissistic nature,spirit fell in love with soul,

which was, after all its lower self.

With regard to the artist, who serves as a mediator

between spirit and nature, Kriiiiner pointed out that Mann

felt that it is the artist's weakness which saves him:

Here it must be noted that it is his weak­

nesses, especially his proneness to excesses,
which "save" the artist in the world of Mann.
Because of his "weaknesses" the artist is "set
apart" as the mediator between spirit and nature.
The idea of weakness being transformed into
strength is one of the major ironies connected
with the existence of Mann's artist.53

Kriiiiner went on toexplain that Mann saw the soul of

the artist as the meeting place of spirit and nature:

After Tonio Kroger, Mann's views in regard to

the nature and function of the artist in humanity
changed gradually in accordance with his philo­
sophy of life as a synthesis and interpretation of
all opposite principles in which the role and
function of the artist rose to an extremely high
position, for it is the soul of the artist in
which the mutual sanctification of spirit and
nature takes place. It is the mediating task of
the artist between the two realms that is instru­
mental in bringing about the transfer of life into
higher life.54

52In Hindu theology, nirvana refers to the denudation

of the soul— that is, when the soul is freed from the flesh
so that it may fly back to God. Mann's ideas at this point
closely correspond to Hindu thought. Interview with Dr. S.
Krishnamoorthy, November 7, 1979.

53Kriiuner, p. 5.

54Ibid., p. 10.

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 155

Mann felt that spirit and nature must remain in bal­

ance, since spirit was dependent on nature for its existence

in form, and nature without spirit would "lack vital-

55
ity": one without the other would lead to death. The

struggle to keep the two in balance is a permanent theme in

Mann. As Kriiiiner pointed out, for instance, all of Mann's

artists are disturbed by their sexual desires. This can be

seen in the cases of Tonio Kroger, Gustave Aschenbach, Hans

Castorp, and Adrian Leverkiihn. In Leverkiihn the excesses of

spirit and nature meet in their most extreme presentation,

in the "icy peaks of intellect" as well as the "fires of

C*g
sexual hell" fanned by Esmeralda.

Aschenbach's case is unique, however, since, while both

the excesses of the intellect and those of the flesh are

present in succession, they only meet briefly in one in­

stance, when he writes his short prose work on the beach,

inspired by the presence of the beloved Tadzio.

In depicting Aschenbach's life in Munich, Mann drew the

picture of an artist totally committed to the needs of the

spirit. His concessions to the demands of the flesh, such

as his daily walks and his afternoon naps, are made only to

the extent that they enable him to infuse the energy

55ibid., p. 7.

56ibid., p. 26.

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 156

thereby gained back into his work. The motif of yearning

surfaces in his desire for "three or four weeks of lotus-

eating at some one of the gay world's playgrounds in the

57
lovely south," a long repressed urge of the flesh

brought on by the catalytic sight of the stranger at the

mortuary chapel door. It is thus Aschenbach's yearning

after nature which prompted his trip to Venice, a journey

which precipitated his downfall, just as the soul's longing

r5

after nature precipitated its demise.

Death, Fleeting Time, and Nirvana

McClain's next leitmotif, death, is first seen in the

film in the person, as well as the vessel, of the gondo­

lier. Images of death saturate the film: the funereal dis­

plays of flowers ever present in both the hotel and the

flashbacks, the death of Aschenbach's child, the implied

presence of the deaths resulting from the plague, one of

which is Aschenbach's.

The motif of fleeting time is emphasized by Visconti

through his transposition of the "hour glass" dialogue of

the devil from Doctor Faustus into the film: in the flash­

back to his studio, Aschenbach observes that one does not

perceive the diminution of the sand in the upper half of the

glass until it is nearly gone and there is "no more time."

5 ?Death in Venice , p. 8.

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 15 7

The nirvana motif (McClain's last leitmotif) is first

seen in the wide expanse of sea at the beginning of the

film. Significantly, this shot, lit from within, grows out

of the darkness, out of a void, recalling the first command­

ment of Genesis ("Let there be light."), momentarily sus­

pending the viewer in the eternities that stretch forth on

either side of that directive. The nirvana of the Arthurian

legend, "He goes from the great deep to the great deep," may

also be recalled in this opening series.

The nirvana leitmotif is the strongest one in the film,

since it is through it that all the others are resolved.

The Adagietto, always associated with the sea, is a state­

ment of this motif.

The War Motif

In addition to those listed by McClain, there are two

other leitmotifs presented in the film. The first of these

is the war motif, of which there is only one mention— the

bersaglieri drilling on the shore in the first sequence of

the film. This motif is important, in spite of the fact

that it is afforded but a single presentation, just as the

"redemption through love" motif, which is heard only once,

is similarly important in Die Walkiire. In it, one glimpses

the approaching fate of the bourgeoisie that, as Joan Mellon

put it, "sit [sic 3 buttering its croissants and ordering finer

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 158
58
wines on the Lido." Mellon, discussing this motif,

pointed out also that "the loveliest image in the film may

well be not the boy Tadzio, but his elegant, superior mother

. . . the glory of her class, a living example of privilege,

but inexpressibly beautiful with her poise, control, pearls,

59
mauve satin, and lace."

Visconti, discussing the social comment of the film,

said that one theme of the film was "the duality between

bourgeois respectability and the corruption within the

artist."6® Through this statement, the war motif may be

linked to the next one under consideration.

The Demonic Motif

The demonic motif is linked to the war motif, it being

implicit in Visconti's portrayal of the hotel's guests that

they will be partially responsible for the next war. The

portrait of this fashionable group gathers irony from the

viewer's awareness of their fate: they will soon be locked

into combat against each other.

The film's demonic motif is primarily derived, however,

from Faustus. Its strongest presentation in the film is

5 8joan Mellon, "Death in Venice," Film Quarterly,

Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 47.

59Ibi d. , p. 42.

SOvisconti, interviewed in the Arts Guardian.

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 159

found in the person of the stranger. It is also depicted in

Alfried, who in his betrayal of Aschenbach continually com­

mits that sin which the devil allows to be among the worst—

that is, the sin of destructive criticism ("the devil passes

61
for a man of destructive criticism"). Alfried's be­

trayal reaches its climax when he tells Aschenbach that he

may now go to his grave, that both he and his music have

failed: "The artist and the man are one: they have touched

bottom together." He follows this indictment with an equal­

ly searing condemnation, one which is calculated to exploit

Aschenbach's already unbearable sense of guilt: "You never

possessed chastity. Chastity is the gift of purity, not the

painful result of old age. And you are old, Gustav. And in

all the world there is nothing so impure as old age."

The demonic motif is raised in one of Aschenbach's and

Alfried's conversations early in the film in which Alfried

maintains, "Beauty belongs to the senses." Aschenbach coun­

ters that it is only through domination of the senses that

one can attain "wisdom, truth, human dignity." Alfried re­

plies, "What use are they? Genius is a divine affliction."

In Aschenbach's retort to this, "I reject the demonic vir­

tues of art," one is reminded of the warning of Serinus

^ Doctor Faustus, p. 237.

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 160

Zeitblom to Adrian Leverkiihn/ "Who believes in the devil

62
already belongs to him." Alfried's reply, "Evil is a

necessity; it is the food of genius," recalls the devil's

judgment, "The artist is the brother of the criminal and the

madman. Do you wean that any important work of art was ever

wrought except that its maker learned to understand the way

63
of the criminal and the madman?"

Aschenbach here rejects what he considers to be a

threatening premise— that is, that beauty belongs to the

senses. His whole creative career has been devoted to the

belief that it is only through the spirit that an artist can

achieve beauty. Visconti's remark about "the duality be­

tween bourgeois respectability and the corruption within the

artist" is elucidated within this exchange between Aschen­

bach, who argues in behalf of the former, and Alfried, who

maintains the inevitability of the latter. Within the con­

fines of their dialogue one finds the essential elements of

Mann's spirit-nature dichotomy. In Mann's view, neither is

correct, creative productivity being the result of a balance

between the two forces, spirit and nature. Significantly,

it is when Aschenbach relents to nature, returning to the

Lido, at the film's midpoint, that he composes,

62ibid., p. 87.

63i bi d., p. 236.

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 161

inspired by Tadzio's presence, the work represented by the

Mitternachtslied in the film, which in the novella, we are

led to believe, is his finest creation.

The Choice of Mahler

The choice of Mahler's music introduces themes which

are common to both Mann and Mahler, which may be discussed

in connection with the film's leitmotifs. In the music of

Mahler, some of these motifs are of general importance,

calling forth associations which viewers will undoubtedly

bring to the film.

Among the film's motifs which are also found in Mah­

ler's work is the falseness motif, which turns up in the

early Klagende L ie d, set to a text by the composer. The

piece deals with the betrayal of a good brother by an evil

brother. The falseness motif also appears in the Lieder

eines fahrenden Gesellen, in which the yearning motif fig­

ures prominently.

Death is a prominent theme in the works of Mahler. Its

appearances are too numerous to list. It occurs in both the

Fifth Symphony, as a funeral march in the opening movement,

and the Kindertotenlieder. (These are works which are

closely related to Visconti's film: the Adagietto from the

Fifth Symphony is the most important score in the film;

there is a direct reference to the Kindertotenlieder in the

death of Aschenbach's child.)

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 16 2

The nirvana motif is variously represented, its strong­

est statement being found in the Adagietto. Salvation and

afterlife were treated by both Mann and Mahler. The salva­

tion referred to here is one of fortiter peccati, that is,

through a super-abundance of sins, a Lutheran theology which

is articulated by Leverkiihn when he states in his confession

at the end that he "taketh the guilt of the times on his

shoulders."*^ A statement of this same theology which

teaches of salvation through attrition and anguish is found

at the conclusion of Mahler's Second Symphony in the words,

65
"Your struggles and combats will lead you to God."

Another tie between this symphony and the work of Mann

is found in Tonio Kroger in which Mann wrote about "life's

lulling, trivial waltz-rhythm," an image which found musical

treatment in the Scherzo of the Second Symphony.

The demonic motif was also expressed in the music of

Mahler, for instance, in the scordatura violin passages of

the second movement of the Fourth Symphony. Mahler, like

Mann, set the Faust legend, in his Eighth Symphony.

G^Ibid., p. 499. For further discussion on fortiter

peccati, see Stern, p. 11.

65Gustav Mahler, Second Symphony, as translated by

Henri Loise de la Grange in Mahler, p. 791. Gustav Mahler,
Symphony No. 2 in c minor (Melville, N.Y.: Kalmus Publish­
ing Corp.), pp.- 204-206.

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 163

The war motif recalls the Wunderhorn lieder. Also, the

delicate Adagietto emphasizes the decaying fragility of the

world on the brink of war. Mahler's habit of sudden juxta­

position of elegiac and emotionally charged passages may be

seen as a musical analogy of the same menacing theme.

The music in the novella is found in two sources:

first, in Aschenbach's dream in which he hears a flute (a

Dionysian reference); and, second, in the soft vowel sounds

of Tadzio's native language, a timbral group whose chief

sonority is provided by the sound of Tadzio's name. Al­

though the dream has been omitted from the film, its passion

has been transposed into it, for the most part, by Aschen­

bach's concealed and repressed fantigue, revealed in the

numerous close-ups.

The musical quality of the language, which has been

retained, is a sound which fascinates Aschenbach. Mann des­

cribed it: "Thus the lad's foreign birth raised his speech

to music.

With regard to the question of excerpting the Adagietto

and the Mitternachtslied from expanded symphonic works, it

should be noted that Mahler himself implied that the

movements of the Third Symphony might be performed separ-

S^Death in Venice, p. 43.

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 164

ately.^ The case of the Adagietto is more involved.

That Visconti took it out of context without any specific

permission on the part of the composer might be rationalized

through consideration of its role in the Fifth Symphony, in

which it serves as a caesura in the midst of an intensely

climactic work. It provides a similar sense of repose in

the film, in which it is consistently associated with the

nirvana motif.

The Adagietto

The Adagietto was composed on a melody originally found

in one of the Riickert songs, "Ich bin der Welt abhanden ge-

kommen." Neville Cardus believed that the piece celebrates

an existence "given up to poetry and love— a life which Mah­

ler idealized in music but could never, as a music director

committed to the pressure of endless travel and rehearsals,

68
enjoy for more than a few short spells in the summer."

The melody of the Adagietto as it appears in the song

is set to a text w h ’ch describes a paradisical existence:

^^Mahler as quoted in Neville Cardus, Gustav Mahler:

His Mind and His Music (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1965), p. 105. Mahler said with regard to the Third Sym­
phony: "The great unity of movements which I dreamed of has
come to nothing. Each of them is sufficient unto them­
selves ."

68Ibid., p. 151.

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 165

1>

Ich leb' al-lein in meinem Him-mel in meinem Lie-ben

The Adagietto's tranquility mirrors this text.

The Mitternachtslied

The text of the Mitternachtslied, taken from Nietz­

sche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, brings to the film the as ­

sociation of Mann and Nietzsche, whom Mann greatly admired.

The character of Adrian Leverkiihn was partially based on

Nietzsche, both being immensely innovative thinkers who

eventually went insane. Patrick Carnegy pointed out that

the brothel visits in Doctor Fa ust us, incidents which V i s ­

conti transposed into the film, were based on accounts of

such a visit that Nietzsche made, these being the source of

the syphilis from which he is alleged to have died.®^ It

is an extraordinary coincidence that when Leverkuhn makes

his journey to see Esmeralda for the second time, at which

point he contracts the disease, it is made on the pretense

of going to the premiere of Salome in Graz in 1906, an act ­

ual performance which was in fact attended by both Schoenberg

69patrick Carnegy, Faust as Musician (London: Chatto

and Windus, 1973), p. 69.

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 166
70
and Mahler. The motive for Leverkiihn's second visit to

Esmeralda, for deliberately contaminating himself with a

disease which was to prove fatal, has been speculated to

71
have been the guilt of desire. Aschenbach suffers the

same guilt in the film, as evidenced in his attempts to re­

sist Esmeralda. The salvation Aschenbach seeks, the nirvana

he longs for in the sea and the Adagietto, represent the

absolution of this guilt. It is thus a salvation of forti­

ter pecc ati , one sought through anguish and attrition in

atonement for what he perceives to be a superabundance of

sins. This is why Alfried's accusation, "You never pos­

sessed chastity," is such a destructive one.

The Mitternachtslied, coming at the film's midpoint, at

a moment when spirit and nature hold equal sway within As­

chenbach, offers in both its text and its music the escape

which he craves.

The choice of Mahler's music for this film is a com­

plicated issue. Since Visconti made Aschenbach a composer,

in order to transpose certain themes dealt with in Doctor

Faustus into the film, the question of linking his identity

with Mahler's through the use of Mahler's music as

70lbid., p. 70. The attendance of Schoenberg and

Mahler at this event is not mentioned in the novel.
71Hirschback, p. 133.

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 167

well as the resemblance which the Bogarde character bears to

Mahler must be discussed. There are similarities between

the music of Leverktihn and Mahler, such as the dramatic

shifts in mood and the scathing satire (an example of the

latter being found in Mahler's Wunderhorn song, "Des Anto-

nius von Padua Fischpredigt"). Carnegy cites Mann's sources

for Leverkuhn's Brentano cycle as the music of both Mahler

and Schoenberg:

This song is nostalgic, almost guilty regres­

sion to childlike sensibility of a mind embittered
by frustration of its every attempt to break new
ground. The music of the cycle, we are to under­
stand, is ironic in its treatment of tonality and
is at once a mockery and glorification of the fun­
damental. But the world of childhood and naivete
tempered into artistry is still felt to be within
reach. It is the world of Mahler's Des Knaben
Wunderhorn and Schumann's Kinderscenen, but with
the sinister prophetic overtones of Schoenberg's
Pierrot Lunaire.

There are problems, however, in the choice of Mahler's

music, if we are to infer that Visconti's Aschenbach was

patterned after the composer as well as the Mann character

Leverkuhn. For instance, the protagonist envisioned by Vis­

conti as well as by Mann in Faustus was more radical than

Mahler, more in the image of, say, Schoenberg, Varese, or

Ives. The historical problem faced and solved by Leverkuhn,

moreover, was the same as that of Schoenberg, that is, the

72carnegy, p. 76.

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 168
73
supersession of common practice harmony by atonality.

With regard to the visual resemblance between Bogarde

as Aschenbach and Gustav Mahler, it might be noted that al­

though Visconti inherited this description from Mann, Mann

was subtle enough to make his hero a writer. Visconti, by

confirming the identity of his hero as that of a real life

individual at the brink of his death, has imposed a dilemma

by requiring the viewer to deal with the transposition of

fictitious events into a famous individual's life. While

there has been plenty of successful fiction embroidered upon

the lives of the famous, it usually deals with unknown or

74
speculative aspects of history. (There is, for in­

stance, an intriguing novella by Elenor Wylie in which

Shelley, instead of drowning near Leghorn, secretly sails to

America.) With Visconti's film, the viewer, who knows that

Mahler did not die in Venice, becomes encumbered with the

task of dealing with a character who, although he looks like

73&t Schoenberg's insistence, Mann included a note at

the end of Doctor Faustus which acknowledged the theory dis­
cussed in the novel as Leverkuhn's to be the intellectual
property of Schoenberg.

^ A l t h o u g h it is not an unusual custom to base fic­

tional accounts upon the lives of famous individuals, most
of these do not deal with well known incidents in the per­
son's life (as in this case the death of Mahler), but rather
with portions of the person's life about which some specula­
tion is possible.

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 169

Mahler and writes music that is Mahler's obviously cannot be

Mahle r .75

The Ose of Music in the Film

The music in the film is used structurally, narra­

tively, and descriptively. The scores heard include the

Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, and the Mitter-

nachtslied from his Third Symphony. The former functions

narratively, descriptively, and structurally; the latter is

used, for the most part, narratively. Two period waltzes

are played in the second sequence as Aschenbach awaits din­

ner at the Hotel des Bains. These are employed decora-

tively, as establishing music. The "Laughing Song" from the

novella is sung by a troup of minstrels led by the stranger

in the demonic guise of the "young-old" man. It is thus

presented narratively, as a demonic leitmotif. Beethoven's

Fur Elise is used for characterization (as discussed in

Chapter I). In the final sequence, an unaccompanied lament

is sung by one of the hotel guests, a woman sitting on the

beach.

The music will be discussed in order of its presenta­

tion in the film, as follows;

75Hutchison, p. 32.

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 170

Adagietto: First Presentation

The Waltzes

Adagietto: Abbreviated Presentation

Adagietto: Second Presentation

The Mitternachtslied

Fur Elise

"Laughing Song"

Adagietto: Third Presentation

Adagietto: Fourth Presentation

The Adagietto: First Presentation

The Adagietto is heard four times, always associated

with water, thereby linking it to the "sea" or "nirvana"

motif. Hutchison stated that it "controls the sympathetic

mood in the film," describing its role thus:

It is played four times and marks the film's

quarters. Initially and at the close it corres­
ponds to the visual contour— the flow of the
tides. This is the emotional groundswell— a won­
derful, piercing sound— and also, Michael Chanan
claims, a "triumph of formal ba lan ce ."^6

First heard with the credits, which are projected from

the rear of the screen out of the dark background, its use

is structural: since the credits are presented in an even,

rhythmical sequence, which does not, however, conform to the

beat of the music, the randomly rolling motion of the sea is

76lbid., P- 33*

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 171

thus anticipated in the resulting cross-rhythms. At the end

of the first section of the music, just before B, the screen

begins to lighten, the ritardando hovering over the drawn-

out cadence. (See Appendix for corresponding letters.)

Taking advantage of the substantial depth of field offered

by Super Panavision, cinematographer Pasquale de Santies

drew the viewer's attention into the center of the shot with

a thin line of smoke which becomes increasingly visible in

the ever deepening perspective of the slowly lightening

shot. The viewer's perception of this line of smoke is syn­

chronized with the first note of the violin melody beginning

at B, recalling Eisenstein's vertical montage. Both the

image and the melody emerge from a void: the smoke from the

darkness, the melody from the caesura of the sustained

cadence, this dual stasis marking the first statement of the

nirvana motif at the film's opening frames. (The film opens

and closes with this motif.)

In a style reminiscent of Miklos Jancso's use of Super

77
Panavision in The Red and the White, the camera now

77in The Red and the White (1967), Miklos Jancso took
advantage of the wide angle lens of Super Panavision, pro­
ducing a film which displays very little camera movement,
the only cuts being the mandatory ones at the end of the
reels. The wide focus of the lens allowed the camera to
witness the action, which was enclosed within the panoramic
vistas offered by the landscape. The wide visual field ren­
dered the frequent use of camera movement unnecessary. When
the action moves off screen, the camera needs to pan only a
few degrees to encompass it.

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 172

slowly pans a few degrees to the left to reveal the ap­

proaching Esmeralda. As the music builds to the climactic

C% chord, the ship passes, leaving behind once again the

view of the open sea, the nirvana motif reiterated in the

steady wash of the harp at the conclusion of the B section,

as well as the gentle swells of the sea. The passing ofthe

ship is the first presentation of the encounter motif in the

film. Significantly, this is the same phrase of music

played at Aschenbach's death.

There follows a cut to Aschenbach, on deck, reading,

taking no notice of the vista of sky and sea around him,

pictured as an individual in whom spirit has triumphed over

nature, a situation which, according to Mann, can only be

resolved in death. This shot is set to the final phrase of

B (the phrase which begins at measure 33). The shot begins

as a medium shot followed by a zoom to an extreme close-up,

which reveals Aschenbach looking very tired, much more ex­

hausted than would seem to be the result of the loss of one

night's sleep in travel: the death motif is introduced here.

The beginning of C anticipates the cut to mud flats,

where workers are silhouetted against the dawning sky, a

shot which begins in mid-phrase. This wide vista, so

sparsely populated, which emphasizes the hero's isolation,

also serves as an establishing shot in which the "marshland"

of Aschenbach's Munich vision is revealed. The death motif

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 173

is extended into this series, both in the threatening inten­

sity of the music and in the landscape, for it is from this

78
"tropical marshland, beneath a reeking sky," that the

plague will spring.

The C section of the music continues with a cut back to

Aschenbach, followed by another close-up. There are, as in

the case of the mud flats, more tracking shots seen from the

ship, establishing shots of Venice. The music is then in­

terrupted by the whistle of the ship, whose name is revealed

to be the "Esmeralda." The aural lapse at the music's ces­

sation is filled by the shouts and bugle calls of bersagli-

eri drilling on shore. This is the only presentation of the

war motif.

The lovely establishing shots of Venice which follow,

the domes of Santa Maria della Salute gleaming against the

rose-colored sky, for instance, are set in silence. (It is

interesting to note that this particular church was erected

79
by order of the senate during a plague.) The absence of

music is more noticeable than its presence here. The warm

Adagietto in combination with the church's fresh-morning

spendor would have produced an audio-visual intensity in­

appropriate to this point in the film which began in the

78peath in Ven ic e , p. 4.

79Hutchi son, p. 32.

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 174

nirvana of the ocean depths and proceeded to the quiet/ med­

itative mood established by the picture of Aschenbach/ as

Hutchison described him, "seated on the portside deck/ wrap­

ped against the chill/ glancing at a book of poems, dozing

fitfully."80

The whistle of the "Esmeralda" offers a rude counter­

point here to the cityscape o^ Venice. Jarring Aschenbach

(as well as the viewer) with its sharp blasts, it serves as

a transitional device between the meditative opening of the

sequence and its conclusion.

Although this music has stopped, the rest of the se­

quence will be discussed since it is at this point that the

demonic motif is introduced in the person of the "young-old"

man. Made up with dyed red hair and rouge, his appearance

is similar to the one which Aschenbach will assume at the

end of the film, thus anticipating the falseness motif.

This first sequence is of integral importance to the

rest of the film, since, in it, Visconti has introduced so

many of the leitmotifs of the film: Here are brought toge­

ther the falseness, encounter, demonic, nirvana, death and

war motifs; the yearning motif is also sounded since it is

this motif which prompted his journey in the first place.

SOlbid., pp. 31-32.

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 175

Hutchison commented on the significance of this sequence in

saying, "It is within this classical form of sea, city,

music, and masks of death that the action of the film is

81
played out." Visconti achieved here a cinematically

technical virtuosity comparable to that which Mann produced

in the novella, as Ethel Caro noted:

Mann said of his craft here, that each sen­

tence, in whole or in part, could return as motif,
parenthesis, symbol, quotation, relationship,
carrying with it a certain elevation and symbolic
mood, which makes it worthy of being sounded anew
at some future point in the novella.^2

The handling of the musical leitmotif here is impres­

sive. Although the Adagietto saturates this film, its mean­

ing is never lost, which is a frequent shortcoming in films

which rely heavily on leitmotivic technique. One reason for

this is the structural role of this work in the first se­

quence, in which it not only represents the nirvana motif,

but through its drifting nature becomes a physical manifes­

tation of it. The luminous, descending harp arpeggios which

accompany the gradually lightening seascape create an apo­

theosis of nirvana, resulting kinesthetically in the weight­

less sensation of final emancipation as well.

The success of this synthesis also rests on Aschen­

bach's identity as a composer, since one may infer that this

81Ibid., p. 32.

82Caro, p. 23.

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 176

music which is heard externally might also be the subject of

his meditation. In the case of the Mitternachtslied/ it is

clear that this is the work which he is composing at that

moment. In Death in Venice, then, the music becomes the

soul of the film.

The music thus supplies its own narrative. The warmth

and longing of the Adagietto anticipates the motifs of love

and yearning, eliciting the viewer's empathy for Aschen­

bach. The piece serves as a confirmation of his humanity

and native integrity? for, despite his faults, he is meant

83
to be liked. He is, in the film, the artist as the

twentieth century hero, an Orpheus, who, like Leverkuhn,

seeks to carry the art beyond its impasse in style.

The Waltzes

Visconti's choice of Mann was one of collegiality, for

they are bound together by their meticulous attention to

period detail. The following description by Daniel Albright

of Mann's fiction might be equally well applied to Vis­

conti's mise en sc ene;

There is every reason to trust one's im­

pression that Mann's fiction is the kingdom of the
tangible. Where else does verbal assertion so
convince, the depth of reference so compel. Here

83Mann said that, of all his artist-heros, the one

that he loved the most was Leverkuhn. Aschenbach, however,
was also one of his favorite characters.

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 177

all things abide: nourishing food will always be

served on thick china; the books are too learned
and heavy to be removed from the bookcase; the
paternal hand is laid firmly on the questionable
child's shoulder; most appointments will be ob­
served punctually, despite the imminent liquida­
tion of the f i r m .84

In Visconti's films, one finds the same "kingdom of the tan­

gible," this being no less the case with Death in V e n i c e .

The HStel des Bains on the Lido, at which this work was

actually filmed, became the setting of a grand and sumptuous

pageantry in the hands of the master of Se n so , The Leopard,

The Innocents, and The D am me d.

In Death in V e n i c e , a film of enormous visual beauty,

it is in his evocation of period splendor that Visconti's

genius is strikingly apparent. The series of establishing

shots in the hotel lobby as Aschenbach awaits dinner, is a

case in point, as Mellon illustrated:

Visconti does magnificently with his evoca­

tion of the wealthy bourgeoisie on vacation at
Venice. He surveys the lobby of the hotel, intro­
ducing us to the world in which Aschenbach holds a
respected place. Aschenbach enters the lobby be­
fore dinner dressed in the manner of his class,
replete with white gloves. Women in the most ela­
borate costumes outnumber the men, foreshadowing
the oncoming of the war— a point which Visconti
makes merely by the pan of the camera . . . The
hotel is adorned with enormous vases of gorgeous
flowers, the women are all in pearls and fea­
thers.

84Daniel Albright, Personality and Impersonality:

Lawrence, Woolf, and Mann (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1978), p. 198.

S^Mellon, p. 42.

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 178

Most strikingly associated with the flowers which grace

the hotel in overwhelming abundance, Visconti's use of color

in the film is very deliberate. There is justification for

connecting strong or bright colors with nature and the love

motif, and somber or -muted colors, such as pastels, with

death.

As Aschenbach enters the hotel, enormous pink hydran­

geas are seen on the steps (pink being interpreted here as a

pastel). As he enters his room the same flowers are seen

(screen right). We find pink roses sharing the top of his

dressing table with photographs of his wife and daughter.

In the flashbacks of his breakdown and his dialogues with

Alfried, funereal displays of Easter lilies are seen close

by. Later when Alfried tells him that he may now go to his

grave, the following shot which shows him reaching for the

light switch in his hotel room reveals, as Hutchison noted,

"the rose that he is to wear at his death in a glass of

O C
water on the bedside table."

A narrative use of color is also found in the scenes in

the launch as he is departing from and returning to the

Lido. As he leaves he is shown with a red and black flag

(love and death) on the left, or negative, side of the

screen. On the return trip this flag has moved to the

right, or positive, side of the screen.

86Hutchison, p. 36.

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 179

The waltzes, like the beautiful sets of this film, are

used decoratively, as period-establishing music. As the

camera's inquiring eye drifts through the lobby, past magni­

ficent vases of pink and blue hydrangeas, it is accompanied

by Franz Lehar's "Merry Widow" waltz, as well as another

waltz in period style. They are also used narratively ac­

cording to Hutchison, who observed that they function "in

contrast to the Mahler themes, and as an indication of the

separation between Aschenbach's consciousness and his com-

87
fortable Bourgeois surroundings." These waltzes, then,

which provide descriptive music for the Lido sequences and

serve as a countersubject of the war motif, also emphasize

Aschenbach's inner conflict. (This contrast between the

artist and bourgeois repectability is a frequent theme in

M ann.) The waltzes, like the flowers, are therefore used

symbolically.

Adagietto; Abbreviated Presentation

It is during the next presentation of the Adagietto (an

abbreviated one, not to be numbered among the four playings

of the piece throughout the film) that the motif of fleeting

time is introduced. The scene which precedes it is neces­

sary to the analysis. It begins with Aschenbach, after his

87Ibid., p. 33.

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 180

breakdown, lying unconscious on a couch, surrounded by a

funereal display of Easter lilies (a possible reference to

the Christ image of Leverkuhn). The artist's ever-present

fear of running out of time is raised in Alfried's question

to the attending physician, "When do you think he'll be able

to work?", the demonic side of Alfried being revealed here.

(Since Aschenbach looks close to death, the possibility of

work is obviously ridiculous: Alfried might have more rea­

sonably asked, "Will he live?")

Alfried is cast here in the role of the devil in Faus-

t u s , who tells Leverkuhn that "genius-giving disease, dis­

ease that rides on a high horse over all hindrances, and

springs with drunken daring from peak to peak, is a thousand

88
times dearer to life than plodding healthiness." Later

in the film, Alfried's words, "Think of what a dry and arid

thing good health is, especially if it is of the mind, no

less than of the body," recalls the devil's statement.

There follows a cut to Alfried, seated at the piano in

Aschenbach's studio, playing the Adagietto. It is at this

point that the hourglass discourse from the devil's dialogue

in Faustus is paraphrased by Aschenbach. Seated on a couch,

next to a vase of lilies (screen right), he points to an

hourglass in front of him and muses that one does not

88Poctor Faustus, p. 242.

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 181

perceive the diminution of the sand in the upper cavity un­

til it has nearly all run out and there is "no more time,"

these words fittingly set to the cadence.

The Adagietto has thus been associated with the intro­

duction of almost all of the leitmotifs (all except love).

This should not present any confusion, however, since the

piece itself functions as a statement of the nirvana motif,

a motif in which all the rest find their resolution.

The Adagietto; Second Presentation

The Adagietto is next played as Aschenbach is leaving

the Lido. The flashback that immediately precedes this has

revealed that the reason for his departure is Tadzio. The

viewer has just heard Alfried warn him in a flashback that

"direct, honest contact" with others is a necessity for an

artist. Alfried does not stop there, however; he raves, "To

be in debt to one's senses to a condition which is irredeem­

ably corrupt, sick . . . What joy for an artist!" When

Aschenbach counters that he must find his balance, Alfried

tells him that if only he were "contaminable," his art would

be "supreme, inimitable." As Aschenbach looks struck by

this, Alfried presses on, warning, "Do you know what lies at

the bottom of the mainstream? . . . Mediocrity."

At the hotel, as Aschenbach is departing, he is con­

fronted by Tadzio at the door of the dining room, at which

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 182

point he murmurs, sotto v oce , "Farewell, Tadzio, it was all

too brief." At this point the Adagietto begins. There fol­

lows a cut to Aschenbach on the launch, the wide blue lagoon

stretching out in the background, the wake rolling up imme­

diately behind. Again, this music is associated with the

sea and its motion. The camera angles are of particular

importance here since they afford us a disorienting point of

view. Aschenbach is first seen at an odd, off-balance, ex­

treme up-angle, then in extreme close-up. A red and black

flag flutters in the background, screen left (the signifi­

cance of color in the film was discussed in the section on

the waltzes). This series is interrupted just before the

dominant chord at measure 18.

The interruption of this resolution is mirrored in the

action: Aschenbach never leaves Venice, since it is as that

point that he first encounters the plague in the person of

the dying man at the train station.

On the return trip to the Lido, the Adagietto is once

more taken upas Aschenbach's surrender to nature is re­

vealed in his delight in the sea and sky against which he is

filmed. The flag has symbolically moved to the ric,ht side

of the screen.

As the Adagietto continues, Aschenbach is shown in

flashback with his wife and daughter at their mountain lodge,

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 183
89
a setting which recalls Mahler's Hau s ch en ." As we watch

him rolling in the meadow with his child, kissing his wife,

an overhead shot prophetically reveals storm clouds racing

past. The Adagietto is once more interrupted by a cut back

to the HStel des Bains.

It is at this point that the Mitternachtslied begins,

the balance of spirit and nature having been momentarily

achieved. From this point on, it is the Dionysian drive

(nature) which dominates.

The Mitternachtslied

The Mitternachtslied marks the midpoint of the film.

It begins after Aschenbach, having returned from the railway

station, goes to the beach in order to be in the presence of

Tadzio, where Mann's protagonist produced his finest prose,

a work "that would shortly be the admiration and the wonder

90
of the multitude." Spirit and nature came into balance,

or in Mann's words, "thought that can merge wholly into

feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought— these

91
are an artist's highest joy." In the film, the song is

the equivalent of this prose.

89ln 1894 Mahler had a single room cottage, "Haus­

c h en ," built at Steinbach, which he used as a retreat. It
was here that he composed his Second Symphony. La Grange,
pp. 302-304.

90peath in Ven i ce , p. 46.

91ibid.

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 184

The text of the Mitternachtslied is taken from Fried­

rich Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, found in the third

part of that work, in a section entitled "Das andere Tanz-

lied." It is midnight, and, in a conversation between Life

and Zarathustra, Life reveals that she is aware that he has

been contemplating suicide, for which she reproaches him,

accusing him thereby of infidelity to her. She marvels in

his wisdom, but warns, "if your wisdom ever ran away from
92
you, then my love would quickly run away from you too."

The Mitternachtslied, coming as it does at the film's mid­

point when nature begins to dominate spirit, carries within

its presentation an implicit reference to life's warning to

Zarathustra: Aschenbach must likewise retain his wisdom

(spirit), or, like Zarathustra, forfeit life in return.

Life tells Zarathustra that as the twelve strokes of

midnight chime, he is to think on his unfaithfulness to

her. The eleven lines of the poem represent those

thoughts. The nirvana motif, represented in the poem, re­

ceives its strongest representation in the final lines:

"But all joy wants eternity / Wants deep, wants deep eter-
o 3
nity." The floating, dreamlike state of nirvana is

92priedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, in

The Portable Nietzsche, trans., Walter Kaufmann (New York:
The Viking Press, 1968), p. 338.

93Ibid., pp. 338-339.

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 185

mirrored within the construction of the music, a through-

94
composed work." In describing its amorphous character,

La Grange commented, "The intense atmosphere and deep

emotion engendered by this Nietzsche lied is all the more

amazing because it remains throughout in the piano and

95
pianissimo range . . . "

The sequence begins with Aschenbach on the beach,

watching Tadzio, immediately following the flashback of the

wife and daughter. As the song begins he takes out paper

and begins to write (the Mitternachtslied presumably being

the work which he is composing), Tadzio strolls past him to

the sea, a long white towel wrapped about him in classic

Greek fashion. They exchange glances as the song begins,

"Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?" (What does the deep

gg
midnight declare?) The next shot shows Aschenbach (at

sunset) gazing out of the window of his room toward the sea,

a rhythmic and descriptive use of the song in portrayal of

the ocean-nirvana.

In the next series the music continues contrapuntally,

as Hutchison describes (at the beach the next day) :

S^La Grange, p. 806.

95ibid., p. 807.

96 a s translated by Kaufmann, p. 339.

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 186

Tadzio is standing with some other boys, in­

cluding Jaschu, who run off as Aschenbach ap­
proaches. Aschenbach pauses. Tadzio, with delib­
eration, swings slowly three times on the poles
supporting the awning as Aschenbach, helplessly,
follows close behind. When he reaches the end of
the board walk, he has to hang onto the poles for
support. "Die Welt ist tiefJ Und tiefer als der
Tag gedacht!"97 (The world is deep / Deeper
than the day had been aware.)S8

It is during this incident in the novella that Aschenbach

had wished to utter some casual greeting to Tadzio— thereby

placing their relationship within a more acceptably conven­

tional framework— but had found himself unable to do so at

the opportune moment. The encounter here is revealing: In

light of Aschenbach's attempt to leave Venice, an act which

99
Hutchison called "the last exercise of moral will." His

decision to stay proves him to be no longer in control, to

have surrendered to nature. This lack of control is con­

firmed by his behavior in this encounter with Tadzio.

Fur Elise

Immediately following the Mitternachtslied sequence,

Aschenbach, in the lobby, comes upon Tadzio playing the

hotel piano. As the hotel manager passes, Aschenbach takes

97nutchison, p. 39.

98 a s t ranslated by Kaufmann, p. 339.

99Hutchison, p. 39.

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 187

the opportunity to ask him to explain the reason for which

the city is being disinfected, the falseness motif being

sounded here in the manager's reassurances that it is merely

a routine precaution. As Tadzio picks out Fur Elise on the

hotel piano, there is a flashback, introduced by segue, to a

brothel where Esmeralda takes up the same tune. As this

scene is transposed into the film from Doctor Faustus, it is

interesting to note an important change" in the novel, it

is Leverkuhn, who, frightened by Esmeralda's solicitation,

rushes to the piano seeking escape. He then exits,

resisting her temptation, thereby retaining control of the

situation. In the film, however, it is Esmeralda and Tadzio

(who is equated with her here) who is also, obviously, the

dominant force as well.

The importance of this piece is in its equation of Tad­

zio and Esmeralda. It confirms what Aschenbach's reaction

to Tadzio on the beach has already told us, that is, that

nature has now assumed control over Aschenbach.

The "Laughing Song"

The "Laughing Song" (its composer is not mentioned in

the credits) is taken from the scene on the hotel balcony in

the novella, in which a troupe of minstrels come to sing to

the guests. The song, whose lyrics consist of an exaggera­

ted laugh, "Wha-ha-haI," is a low life piece performed with

a repertory of suggestive gestures.

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 188

Its use is narrative. Led by the stranger in a varia­

tion of his guise as the "young-old" man, the motifs of

death and falseness are sounded in its presentation, since

this masquerade of youth is the same guise which Aschenbach

will assume immediately before his death.

It is also used contrapuntally, forging another bond

between Aschenbach and Tadzio, since, with the exception of

Ta d zi o 1s elegant mother, they are the only guests who are

noticeably offended by it, an opinion which they commun­

icate to each other by glance, standing, as they are, only

several feet apart.

The Adagietto: Third Presentation

Opening with a flashback to his daughter's funeral, the

next presentation of the Adagietto begins with one of the

strongest references to Mahler's life in the film, on ac­

count of his Kindertotenlieder as well as his own daughter's

death. It was at the time of his daughter's death that Mah­

ler also learned of his heart ailment, a condition which

considerably restricted his activities as well as being the

eventual cause of his death.

Aschenbach's grief over his child here directly contra­

dicts Alfried's accusation that he is incapable of contact

with others. Since the flashback is immediately preceded by

a shot of Tadzio, Mellon has read into this succession a

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 189

reference to Aschenbach's wish from the novella that Tadzio

would die young:

Visconti cuts from the image of Tadzio to

Aschenbach's memory of the funeral of his daugh­
ter, he and his wife weeping, the coffin being
carried away. As he remembers the death of his
child, he fantasizes that of Tadzio. [This last
clause is conjecture on Mellon's part; there is no
such visualization of Tadzio's death in the
film.] The cutting is clever because it is a per­
fect visual expression of Mann's insight into As­
chenbach's secret wish that Tadzio would not live
to grow up, so that his beloved would not outlive
h i m . 100

This may be a valid interpretation, since, by its placement,

the shot of Tadzio is indeed tied to the death motif here.

It also recalls Visconti's description of Tadzio, that is

that he made him an "angel of de ath."101 The daughter's

death recalls the death of Nepomuk in Faustus as well.

As the Adagietto proceeds, Aschenbach is shown in the

barber's chair receiving his cosmetic rejuvenation, a sound­

ing of the falseness motif. In the barber's words, "And now

the signore may fall in love as soon as he pleases," the

love and encounter motifs are heard, significantly, since

this dialogue is set to the same C4 chord climax (measures

30-31) as the passing of the steamer, "Esmeralda," which

brought Aschenbach to Venice.

10°Mellon, p.44.

lOlsee footnote 26.

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 190

The final phrase of section B (measures 33-38) finds

Aschenbach reflected in the stagnant waters of a canal, fol­

lowed by a pan revealing Tadzio, his governess, and his sis­

ters reflected in the same dirty canal, crossing a highly

arched bridge, such as one so carefully described by Mann.

As Aschenbach follows the Polish party through a square be­

tween piles of burning refuse (a precaution against the

plague), he passes a man leaning, dazed, against the putrid

base of a fountain, an image which anticipates Aschenbach's

own collapse into a similar posture against the repulsive

base of another fountain. This shot, which immediately fol­

lows, finds Aschenbach sinking into the filth next to the

102
fountain as the C section of the Adagietto continues.

It is during this appropriately anguished portion of the

score that he has his first premonition of death. Half sit­

ting, half prostrate, in his elegant white suit among the

dank refuse in the wet street, he begins to laugh, a knowing

laugh reminiscent of Leverkuhn's. His laughter turns to

weeDing just before the rending, penultimate dominant over

the tonic pedal (three measures before the end) is to be

sounded. But, it is never heard; the Adagietto is inter­

rupted once more.

l°2 It is at this point (before he begins to laugh)

that a man in a laboratory coat comes out of his door into
the street, pauses watching Aschenbach, and goes back, leav­
ing him to suffer.

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 191

Visconti immediately cuts to the final, dissonant chord

of Aschenbach's symphony, in the concert scene in which Al­

fried 's betrayal becomes complete. As Aschenbach's wife

leans protectively over him, Alfried demonically taunts him

(pacing in agitation around the room, the camera following

in a circular pan):

Pure beauty, absolute severity, purity of

form, perfect abstraction of the senses
It's all done, nothing remains. Your music is
stillborn, and you are unmasked . . . They [re­
ferring to the angry audience gathered outside of
the dressing room door] will judge you, and they
will condemn you. Wisdom, human dignity, all fin­
ished. Now there is no reason why you cannot go
to your grave with your music. You have achieved
perfect balance. the man and the artist are one:
They have touched bottom together.

The Adagietto: Fourth Presentation

The fourth presentation of the Adagietto takes place

during the final sequence. Aschenbach has arrived at the

beach the next day after completing the Mitternachtslied.

As he sits helplessly nearby, Tadzio and Jaschu fight, an

abandoned antique camera propped surrealistically in the

sand. Jaschu overpowers Tadzio, pushing his face into the

sand. As Tadzio rises, he rejects Jaschu's offer of recon­

ciliation, walking away instead, toward the sea. As the

Adagietto begins, its soft harp arpeggios are reflected in

the shallow waves that wash the beach as Tadzio wades out

into the water, the sun before him, silhouetted against the

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 192

open sea. As he pauses, turning to look beckoningly at As­

chenbach, the B section begins. Attempting to rise with

futility from his chair, Aschenbach is afforded this one

last transcendent vision as Tadzio, pausing on the sand bar,

extends his left arm out toward the sea and the horizon.

The c\ chord sounds for the last time as an extreme long

shot of Tadzio, antique camera in the foreground, reveals a

boat near the shore, a recapitulation of the "Esmeralda,"

the vessel of death which brought Aschenbach to Venice (as

well as the agent of Leverkiihn's demise). (Perhaps this

ship waits, like the Charon ferry, to take Aschenbach

away. ) It is during the final phrase of the B section that

Aschenbach collapses into his chair.

Once again, Visconti relied upon a reaction shot, this

time of an adult who motions a child away. The credits fin­

ish over the gradually fading picture, and again (Visconti

wisely refusing to state the obvious here) the Adagietto is

not allowed to reach its conclusion.

Conclusion

Guilt and the Theme of Artistic Motivation

Both Mann, in Death in Venice and Doctor Faustus, and

Visconti in Death in Venice, raised questions about the

nature of artistic motivation. This theme is central to the

film Death in V e n i c e . While it is not within the scope of

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 193

this work to deal with this subject in depth, certain obser­

vations may be made in relation to Mann's and Mahler's works

as reflections of the period in which they were written,

especially in light of what was to come, observations which

may thereby elucidate the theme of the origins of the crea­

tive drive within the context of the film.

The film's treatment of artistic motivation is con­

nected with the period, a time of impending war. When the

war motif is briefly presented in the film, as the "Esmer­

alda" swings into port, Mahler's Adagietto is interrupted by

the bugle calls and shouts of soldiers drilling on the

shore. In the novella a connection is drawn between these

soldiers and young men on the ship who are on holiday.

Among these is the "young-old" man, a demonic character as

well as a spectre of death whose description matches that of

the devil in Doctor Faustus. Since Doctor Faustus has been

interpreted as an allegory of the rise of national Social­

ism, the concept of Leverkuhn the artist cast in the alle­

gorical role of Germany raises a question of artistic moti­

vation and the place allotted to the arts in Germany. This

becomes relevant to the film in light of the "young-old" man

fthe devil from Faustus) and his recognition of Aschenbach

as one of his kind.

To pursue, artistic motivation has always had its sus­

pect side: the picture of Hitler as a frustrated artist has

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 194

been postulated by numerous writers. Although the artist

held a respected place in German society during the first

half of this century (that is, during the period under dis­

cussion), it is interesting to note that for Mann at least,

there was a darker side to creativity, as he illustrated in

Tonio Kroger (1910) when he had the protagonist say that "a

properly constituted man never writes, acts, or com-

101
poses." In Psychoanalysis Observed, Charles Rycroft

speculated that Freud even ventured to conclude that those

who question the meaning of life are mentally unbal­

anced.

The connections which link Mahler, Freud, and Hitler

run like concentric waves away from the central issue of

guilt. For instance, Mahler, who raised just such questions

as those to which Rycroft alluded, particularly in the

Second Symphony— "Wherefore hast thou lived? Wherefore hast

105
thou suffered? — was a one time patient of the founder

103Tonio Kroger, p. 98-99.

lO^Charles Rycroft, Psychoanalysis Observed, p. 21.

Rycroft went on to explain that Freud probably would have
said that those who question the meaning of life to the ex­
clusion of carrying on with their responsibilities are using
this pursuit as an escape instead of relying on their own
merits to solve their problems.

105custav Mahler in a letter to Max Marchalk, 1896,

quoted in La Grange, p. 784.

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 195

of psychoanalysis.'1' ^ Mann even proposed that the reason

Hitler marched into Vienna in 1938 was as a revenge upon

Guilt was an important topic among the Austro-German

thinkers of the period, immediately proceeding the First

World War until the end of the Second, this being the time

of Visconti's childhood and later maturation as an artist.

The place of guilt and man's ability to cope with it was one

of the focal points of Freud's writings. It was also a cen­

tral theme in the works of Mahler and Mann, as is illus­

trated in Leverkiihn's ranting confession at the end of Faus­

tus:

I had I suppose a good wit and gifts gra­

ciously given me from above which I could have
used in all honor and honesty, but felt all too
well: it is the time when uprightly and in pious
sober wise, naught of work is to be wrought and
art grown impossible without the divel's help and
fires of hell under the cauldron . . . Yea

106La Grange, p. 21.

lOV^homas Mann, quoted in Erich Heller, Thomas Mann,

The* Tronic German (Cleveland: Meridan, 1961), p. 91:

I quietly suspect that the frenzy which drove

him [Hitler] into a certain capital [Vienna] was
aimed at the old analyst who lived there, his true
and personal enemy, the philosophical man Freud
who revealed the true nature of neurosis, and ad­
ministers sobriety and sobering knowledge even
about genius.

In reference to this statement, Carnegy remarked that

"Mann made no bones about attributing the hateful madness of
Hitler to a monstrous miscarriage of the artistic impulse."
(p. 89.)

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 196

verily, dear mates, that art is stuck and grown

too heavy and scorneth itself and God's poor man
knoweth no longer where to turn in his sore
plight, that is belike the fault of the times.
But an one invite the divel as guest, to pass be­
yond all this and to get to the breakthrough, he
chargeth his soul and taketh the guilt of the
times upon his own shoulders, so that he is
damned. [Italics m i n e .]108

If Leverkiihn here is interpreted as an allegorical re­

presentation of Germany, what follows is a scourging indict­

ment of the Third Reich:

. . . For it has been said "Be sober, and

watchi" [Leverkiihn refers here to Christ's in­
structions to his disciple while he went to pray
on the Mount of Olives immediately before his be­
trayal.] But that is not the affair of some;
rather, instead of shrewdly concerning themselves
with what is needful upon earth that it may be
better there, and discreetly doing it, that among
men such order shall be established that again for
the beautiful work of the living soil and true
harmony shall be prepared, man playeth the truant
and breaketh out in hellish drunkenness; so giveth
his soul thereto and cometh among the carrion.10^

And it is from "among the carrion" that there arises

the rank stench of Auschwitz, the Katrine forest, and the

other atrocities which are presumably the true sites of

Leverkiihn's frightening oratorio, whose reading occasioned

this accusation in the allegorical novel. Mann certainly

intended this reading of the novel, being a leader in the

movement which prompted many German artists to emigrate from

lOSnpctor Faustus, p. 499.

109lbid., pp. 499-500.

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 197

Germany during the 1930's.11^ He blamed the intelli­

gentsia for the rise of Nazism, citing "the irresponsibili­

ties, the not-wanting-to-know, those German intellectuals

and aesthetes who prepared the ground for the Third Reich"

as those chiefly among the gui l ty .111 If one is to under­

stand Leverkiihn's music as a reflection of the society in

which it was written, then we find in the devil's statement

one of Mann's most damning accusations when Mann has him

say, "The artist is the brother of the criminal and the mad-

m a n .n 11 2

From Death in Venice to Doctor Faustus

It is necessary at this point to comment further on the

period in which Visconti's film and Mann's novella are set.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the distinction

between rich and poor was a great one, a large portion of

the population in Europe belonging to the latter category.

In Vienna, for instance, a sizable number of the population

were without homes, a condition which led to the custom of

paying for the use of a bed in which to sleep while its

owner was out at work.

llOtfiiiiam L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third

Reich (New York: Fawcett World Library, 1967), p. 334.

m-Mann, quoted in Carnegy, p. 109.

112p0 ctor Fau s tu s, p. 236.

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 198

On the other end of the spectrum was a shallow, courtly

world, one which disgusted Freud, which was depicted in

Lehar's Merry W i d o w , the main theme of which Visconti chose

for his establishing music at the Hdtel des Bains. It is

this society, the same as that which also populated Proust's

Faubourg Saint-Germaine, which is depicted on vacation at

the Lido in Death in V e ni ce . And, although Visconti alludes

to the coming war only once in the course of the film, the

viewer is very much aware that in only a few short years

these same people will be fighting each other.

That would not be the end, however. As we know, twenty

years after the end of the First World War, another worse

war followed. In the course of the events which lasted over

the three decades from the time of the film, 1911, this

social structure was destroyed, a destruction which is sym­

bolized in the stories of both Aschenbach and Leverkiihn.

(It was also the topic of Jean Renoir's film La Grande Illu­

s i o n .)

The question of guilt and the focus which affected

these events is one that is raised in the viewer's mind by

an awareness of the future. In Death in Veni ce, Visconti

pictured an escapist society. In the early years of the

century, proletarian disturbances seriously threatened the

status quo in England (known as the "Bloodless Revolu­

tion"), Russia, and Italy (beginning even earlier with

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 199
1 1 *3
Garibaldi). By 1928, that unrest had been sublimated

into the building of a rather powerful socialist block. In

1930, the Communists in Germany were a sizable force, win­

ning two-thirds as many votes as the Nazis in the elections

of that year.'*'^

It was at this point that Hitler began to build an al­

liance with the army, the landed aristocracy, and the indus­

trialists— in other words, some of those same people who

sat, in Mel lo n 1s words, "ordering fine wines and buttering

croissants on the Lido"— in order to defeat the Communists.

"The guilt of the times" had by that point a long his­

tory of social irresponsibility. It was a theme which fas­

cinated Visconti, himself a self-professed Marxist during

115
the Thirties, and a theme which he treated in such

diverse films as La Terra trema (1948), Rocco and His Bro­

thers (1906), and The Leopard. In alluding to Doctor Faus­

tus so stongly, Visconti projected the temporal setting of

113^ subject with which Visconti dealt in The Leo­

pard.

H^Sh ire r , p. 194-195.

H ^ R h o d e , p. 470. See also Walter F. Korte, "Marxism
and Formalism in La Terra treme and The Leopard," Encounter­
ing Cinema (reprinted from Cinema J o u rn al ) (Dutton, 1980).

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 200

Mann's novella to encompass the events of the next three

decades, thereby encompassing within its borders material

from many varied sources. The film Death in Venice trans-

cendentally draws together through association the depic­

tions and prophecies of the most important intellectuals of

the period in which it is set: Freud's theories on both

sublimation (sublimation ofsocio-political revolution, as

well as the drives of nature within Aschenbach) and dreams

(those of both Aschenbach and Leverkiihn); the dream-world

creations of Mahler (Second Symphony) and Schoenberg (Pier­

rot Lunaire) in prophecy; as well as the twilight worlds of

Proust and Mann in Visconti's tangibly elegant period detail

in the film.

The "guilt of the times" was an important theme in the

works of each of the trilogy of artists who contributed to

the final product of the film, Death in V e n i c e : Visconti,

Mann, and Mahler.

The Theme of Guilt

In addressing the question of guilt in Doctor Faustus,

Stern explained, "The theology of Doctor Faustus, which

Thomas Mann takes from his particular reading of Martin

Luther, is the theology of fortiter peccati, of salvation

through a superabundance of sins: a salvation, moreover,

not though repentance and contrition but through attrition

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 201
116
and anguish." Leverkiihn's art is laden with images of

guilt, not only the guilt of the artist, but also the guilt

of those who look on ana do nothing. His transposition of

Diirer's Apocalypse into his oratorio (the piece which was

presented in connection with his confession) offers ample

evidence of this. During its composition he described to

Zeitblom his vision of himself as a victim of torture while

a crowd of "respectable townsfolk" looked on "unper­

tu rb ed ."117

Mann did not take up this theme of "the guilt of the

times" with Doctor F a u st us ; it began much earlier. Already

in Death in Venice we find this same unconcerned bourgeoisie

upon whom Mann later lays at least part of the blame for

Hitler's rise to power in their careless alliance with the

Nazis in an effort to combat the rise of communism after

World War I, an alliance with which the narrator of Doctor

Fau stu s, Zeitblom, confesses to have sympathized at the

time. They are present in Death in Venice as the shallow

and callously beautiful guests at the H6tel des Bains in the

last years before the war, so facilely depicted in Lehar's

"Merry Widow." The scientist in the laboratory coat who

wanders into the street as Aschenbach leans helplessly

H 6st ern, p. 5.

ll^poctor Faustus, p. 254.

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 202

against the fountain in the first realization that he is

dying— this same man who turns back into his house, abandon­

ing the dying, closing his door behind him, as if by that

simple gesture he could shut out the pestilence that went to

the very core of society— is revealed to be equally callous

and short-sighted. Thus Venice, "the pearl of the Adria­

tic," was implicated in her own destruction, as would be

Germany twenty years hence.

Aschenbach, the artist-hero, is also implicated, guilty

in his failure to report the presence of the plague to his

fellow guests, among them, of course, Tadzio. When he does

so in a fantasy in the film, it is for the reward of cares­

sing the beloved's Classic brow.

Like Leverkiihn, the Aschenbach of the film is an inno­

vator. We hear this in the last dissonant chord of his sym­

phony which is rejected by a society which finds itself un­

pleasantly revealed in the work. In the end, it is Aschen­

bach who rejects his own Apollonian ideals as well. Mirror­

ing in turn the society which had rejected him, he rushes

headlong into a degrading Dionysian fantasy whose only res­

olution is that found in the nirvana of the sea and death,

so movingly portrayed by the Adagietto.

Conclusion

In conclusion, various associations may be inferred

from the fusion of Death in Venice and Doctor Faustus, from

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 203

which the following speculations might result. While Pier­

rot Lunaire is generally interpreted as one of the more pro­

phetic works of the period immediately preceding the war,

Death in Venice may be viewed as a prophetic work as well.

While Pierrot offered a gory detailing of the corrupt world

envisioned in Visconti's film Gotterdammerung, Death in Ven­

ice affords a view of the last years before the fall of the

monarchy, from whose ashes the malicious phoenix of Nazism

would appear. One may also recall here Hans Castorp, the

hero of The Magic Mountain,whose ideals were politically

miscarried in the resulting upheaval of the First World

War. In Castorp's self-imposed reclusion, one may look

ahead to similarly secluded haute bourgeois matrons who, in

the face of certain defeat, reputedly draped themselves in

mink and gorged on Baba-au-rums while the Third Reich came

crashing down about their ears. One suspects that some of

Mann's and Visconti's Lido guests would be capable of equal

escapism.

In a sense, one might find in Aschenbach's nirvana Aus-

tro-Germany's sublimation of the proletarian disturbances

that shook Russia, France, and England at the turn of the

century. It was this sublimation that led to the unfortu­

nate collusion of the ruling class with National Socialism

thirty years hence. Just as Aschenbach's nature-dominated

drives which resulted in his corruption would eventually

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 204

lead to escape in death, thus this society's preoccupation

with escapism would end in the same way. The hypothesis of

such a social statement would not be inappropriate with Vis­

conti's political viewpoint; it is attribute to his craft

that he could accomplish it primarily through suggestion.

Summary

Visconti's film of Death in Venic e, by drawing together

a number of associations— from other works of Mann, from

works of Mahler, as well as references to a number of peri­

pheral sources, such as Nietzsche, Schoenberg, and Proust—

might well be characterized by the following description

from Schoenberg:

Great art must proceed to precision and brev­

ity. It presupposes the alert mind of an educated
listener which in a single act of thinking in­
cludes with every concept all association pertain­
ing to the complex.

Like Doctor Faustus, the film exists, in essence and by

implication, within several planes of time. First of all,

it takes place in Venice as a chronicle of a doomed society

whose mindless elegance is so aptly mirrored in Lehar's

"Merry Widow" waltz. It also incorporates flashbacks into

Aschenbach's past, from which we gather that he is a highly

H 8Arnold Schoenberg, quoted in Caro, p. 15.

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 205

regarded, yet radical, composer. He is also pictured as a

person of strong family ties (in the past, at least, the

present whereabouts of his wife remaining unknown to the

viewer).

By making his protagonist a composer, and through his

references to Doctor Fau stu s, Visconti has linked the iden­

tity of Aschenbach to that of Leverkiihn, the syphilitic com­

poser who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for artis­

tic glory, or for the time to achieve that end. Through the

allegorical role of Doctor Faustus as an account of the rise

and the fall of the Third Reich, Visconti has heightened his

viewer's awareness of events to come, such as the First

World War, the rise of National Socialism, and the eventual

defeat of Germany in World War II. The character of Aschen­

bach might, like Leverkiihn, be allegorically interpreted to

represent the Germany of his time.

It is in this connection, as an account of the times

from which it springs, that the music of Mahler makes its

strongest statement in this film, saturated as it is with

images of guilt and war. It was part of Mahler's particular

genius to so thoroughly express the Zeitgeist of the Austro-

119
German empire. The prophecy— the horrible imagery of

H ^ S e e sPi-e l' f°r a discussion of Mahler's music as a

reflection of the last years of the Hapsburg Empire, pp.
33-47.

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 206

the apocalypse envisioned in the Second Symphony— and theo­

logy— the fortiter peccati statement of salvation from the

same symphony— expressed in his music are the same as those

that were to be taken up by Mann only a few years later.

The vision of the heavenly feast at the end of the Fourth

Symphony provides a sense of peace, an escape, similar to

the nirvana proffered to Aschenbach by the sea and the Ada-

gietto in Visconti's film.

The character of Leverkiihn is paradoxical. On the one

hand, he is portrayed as the Germany who sold her soul to

the devil in exchange for temporal power. On the other, he

might be envisioned as a Christ figure. This interpretation

is apparent in his confession atthe end, when he says that

hetook "the guilt of his times upon his shoulders." His

suffering is great, both in his migraines for which the

devil takes credit, and in his later insanity. The main

question that arises is: How has he sinned? What has he

done to deserve his pain?

One answer is that, like Christ, he suffers guilt­

lessly. Another, provided by Stern, is that Leverkiihn's sin

is that of pride ("because I would win glory in this

world"). For Hirschback the problem was more complicated:

The final question we must ask ourselves is

this: What has Adrian done to deserve his fate?
What was his sin? One answer is that Adrian's sin

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 207

consisted in exactly that quality that rendered

his artistic rise possible: the maintenance of an
inhuman reserve, a distance from life.I20

Aschenbach suffers from this same isolation in the

film, a condition which elicits Alfried's early criticism,

"If only you were contaminable" (presumably meaning capable

of "direct, honest contact"). Aschenbach1s plight is iden­

tical to Leverkiihn1s with regard to this reserve, as was

shown by Hirschback, in the continuation of the preceding

statem en t:

When he finds that his art requires contact

with life in order to be complete, he can achieve
this contact only through what he considers to be
a sin.

In the case of Leverkiihn this sin is represented in

Esmeralda; in Asc henbach1s case, in Tadzio. Both relation­

ships were illicit; and one of the questions which arises

here concerns the necessity of an artists to act out fanta­

sies, to experience first hand the emotions depicted in

art. This throws one back, then, on the statement of Mann's

devil that "the artist is the brother of the criminal and

the madman," or, in Visconti's words, that "evil is the food

of genius," or in Mann's words, that "every important work

of art was . . . wrought [in that] its maker learned to

121
understand the way of the criminal and the madman."

l ^ H i r sc hb ac k, p. 147.

l2 lpoctor Faustus, p. 236.

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 208

Did Mann imply that if Aschenbach and Leverkiihn/ as products

of their environment, were to depict in their art the times

in which they lived, it was necessary for them to "take the

guilt of their times upon their shoulders" to do so?

The sea and the Adagietto in the film represent for

Aschenbach an escape from this inborn and eternal conflict

within the artist's soul. "Nirvana," in Hindu theology,

means the denudation of the soul, the freeing of the soul

from nature— in Mann's theology, the accomplishment of the

task of spirit, a mission which spirit betrayed— so that the

122
soul, the higher self of spirit, may fly back to God.

It is this nirvana, this final emancipation, that is held

out to Aschenbach, throughout the film, by the dual forces

of nature and spirit, respectively represented in the sea

and the Adagietto; and, in the end, he accepts it.

l22Interview with Dr. S. Krishnamoorthy, November 7,

1979.

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 CONCLUSION

In the two films 2001: A Space Odyssey and Death in

V e n i c e , Stanley Kubrick and Luchino Visconti have juxtaposed

music and visual imagery in a manner which was foreshadowed

by Eisenstein in his theory of "vertical montage." In both

the case of the music— which was chosen from the appropriate

stock classical repertory music and the case of the visual

imagery— in each case a setting of well known material

(Mann's novella, and the then-existing view of space travel,

based on Arthur Clarke's famous writings as well as the pub­

licized experiences of actual space travel)— each director

dealt with material which raised for the viewer numerous and

strong associations. The associations of the music and

those of the corresponding visual imagery were in many cases

conflicting ones, a factor which is very much in keeping

with Eisenstein's tenet of conflict as a basic element of

montage.

The conflict between the previously existing associa­

tions raised by the music and those raised by the visual

imagery was, perhaps, more intense in the case of 2001 since

the connection of the composer Mahler with Mann's novella

209

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 210

Death in Venice was already a famous one. In both films,

however, the director successfully exploited the narrative

potential of these associations.

In both films music functions in each of the four cate­

gories set forth in the first chapter: structurally, narra­

tively, descriptively, and incongruously.

In line with Eisenstein's theory of montage, the re­

sulting synthesis of music and visual imagery has been of a

different qualitative value than that of either of the two

components in isolation. The music has thus served an in­

tegral and vital function within the films, one which is

much closer to that of the role of music in opera, dance, or

silent film, than to the role of music in films which have

been heavily dependent on the spoken word— or, "filmed thea­

ter."

Through their use of music, Visconti and Kubrick have

contributed to the feature length music-film genre, a genre

which includes a diversity of film and music, but one unfor­

tunately restricted to a small number of films. With their

rich orchestral timbres and sumptuous visual pageantry, 2001

and Death in Venice are successors of Wagner's Gesamtkunst-

werk, offering an example of an adventure which it is hoped

that others will have the courage to follow.

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 Bibliography

Chapter I

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Allen, Woody, dir., Play It Again, Sa m, 1975.

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211

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 212

Eisenstein/ Sergei, dir., Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II,

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Fellini, Federico, dir., 8-1/2, 1963.

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 213

Kubrick, Stanley, dir., Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to

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 214

Schlondorff, Volker, and von Trotta, Margarethe, dir., The

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 215

Chapter II

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 216

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents.

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 217

Plaistow, Stephen. "Ligeti's Recent Music." The Musical

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Chapter III

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 218

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treme and The L e o p a r d ." Encountering Cinema. Dutton,

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 219

Mahler, Gustav. Second Symphony in c minor. Melville,

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Other S tories. Trans., H. T. Lowe-Porter. New Ycrk:

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Mann, Thomas. Doctor Faustus, the Life of the German

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Vintage Books, 1954.

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V e n e d i g ."

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No. 1.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Also Sprach Zarathustra. The

Portable Nietzsche. Trans., Walter Kaufmann. New

York: The Viking Press, 1968.

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 220

Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. Luchino Visconti. New York: The

Viking Press, 1973.

Rycroft, Charles. Psychoanalysis Observed.

Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third R e i c h .

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Spiel, Hilde. "The Vienna of Gustav Mahler." Gustave

Mahler in Vienna. New York: International

Publications, 1976.

Stern, J. P. History and Allegory in Thomas Mann's Doctor

Faustus. London: H. K. Lewis for University College,

1975.

Stirling, Monica. A Screen of Time, A Study of Luchino

Visco n t i . New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Von Gronicka, Andre. "Myth Plus Psychology."

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 APPENDIX A

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

221

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 222

'Also sprach Zarathustrn!* . *>

T h u s spokf-Zaruthust.ru'.' “ A insi p a rla Z o ro astro ”
” .' Richard Strauss, Op. 30
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Sir h
n h jvtl
nr a mi '•~f’i'.: . j; . . t«. ....
ft 0tioi*n.
,n . - j - ^
The seebad presentation
of Also Sprach Zarathus- Klarinelti* m Es
tra begins with a shot 5 K larint*llt-n
of Moon-Watcher examin­ in H.
ing a bone, above. 8 Fagc*t It*.
H e then strikes the
K ontrafagolt.
bonej smashing a
skull.which is lying
on the ground (see Horn in K
following page of
s c o r e ) , the bot t o m of
1. 8.
his stroke coordinating Trompeln in 0. Kfeirrlirh]
with the beginning pf 8 .4 .
the second phrase of music.
Rosaune
In the shots which follow
his a r m is seen arching
against the sky, the 2 Panken.
series being intercut ‘TnCe Trammel
w i t h associative shots W'Onit P<|ukgnschli»Veln)
of a falling tapir Berken.

showing, as Geduld
said, "what Moon-Watcher
plans to do w i t h his
b o n e ." l.V iolinen.

8. Violinen.

(gett(IO
/
Bralschen.

Violoncello,
tremolo
Konirabhsse.

l>»L4l«,nrkt •( UM k> Jo. Albl Vtrtu

<« » rirti R~»»*i i n i b, Eaaion 1. c. r. Pam t. iu i

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 223

Moon-Watcher and associative shots of falling tapir.

Ij.ll . ....................................................... ii— ^ m i l i n l . l l l HU

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 224
Moon-Watcher strikes skull with bone.

LSAQfe.

rrtBr.

r»w
poeo'fCptcft crtnr.

'resi*

pljrh l'ij« .jjO

crenr.
tret?

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 225

End of music.
“ 1

(,\Vm 4en H inl*n*eltkn.

ueaiger breit.
k .FI.

mob.

l.iKL
(B)

ia.a.F«g.

CM.

a.Pwu
t&fitb.

D»»irf.«rhcjt
Diunpf«r

C7 (Ar inA<Aita«<« o f th*

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 3 226
B iS a ilis M il The clustral texture of the
Ligeti Requiem is reflected
in the cluster of clouds
gathered over the monolith.
4* Rhythmically static whirl
— %£- ~..f provides an audio.fermata
for the visual ceaaur.a-.pre­
sented here as the sun
edges over the top of the
monolith.

The mystery of the harmoni-

cally/texturally unsettling
score is mirrored in this
triple alignment of sun, :v o
moon* and monolith, of which
Kubrick said:
••The idea of the magical
R ;K alignment of the sun, the
Earth, and the Moon, or of
Jupiter and its moons, was
fe-y;^--Tf^TVSi used throughout the film to
represent something magical
and important about to hap­
pen. I suppose theaideaahad
something to do with the
-;.5Z£v' strange sensation one has i-
;.:. ;''•-;r^ ■' when the alignment of the
sun takes place at Stonehenge.
(Agel, midsection).

See corresponding page of

:^r«..~ Ligeti's Requiem, follow­
•'--T« .
ing p a g e .

:,C^V
aaajggSteBagteT^^^^tgf^SrgSS^ ^.rS?^^';

p s s c s * s i m - s & * r n s m m

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::.!•:.:i;:..;.ArLOlih:.

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j

I
3

crescendo poco a poco -

2
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:u .v ssj=

with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 228

*>>^»3s&r ' Orion space station drifts

b y the earth in the Space-
Waltz sequence. Kubrick
said that it is "hard to
find anything much better
*!?:•C2C:£5.'SKST •■V-'f-»i■*2*L^:-•>
•**.jj--'' '
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for depicting grace and
•:•*** * ■&;? beauty in turning. It
..%£ v £ ^ ' * also gets about as far
._ ______________ -i away as you can get from
■'T/i:'' the cliche of space .music.'
iS:.' ■>T: (Agel, midsection).
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3, ■

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: & e .--. ..•>;V - ~ '.25./S.:-#:..' ' i w , - ■ •.’ % £,. '*i?
;€..' .T.:;^ ' P T V : - - :

Shuttle darts
across lunarscape
accompanied by
L i g e t i ’s Lux A e t e r n a .
pointing up isolation of
space travel.

f g y - 1

Vv .. ^ ...
&
f■«••>'
«.*
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v ». — '
6 '.v .••;*'•I . , i * - ; . - . : - '+
S -;rvv v v'.V T;

VZQ-.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 229

- a . W - * 4 ^ - 3 .. •
ft4•-■■.■*. •■r.ii.'i.:'jr^??; ,v‘-£r' • ’•.-•s '.*'*; -si.

ISi Astronaut Dave Bowman

during his journey
- . y ^ c w r ••• '-^ •-“'r-*.;- through the time-
space warp in the
Stargate Corridor
sequence (left),
set to L i g e t i ’s
M i
A t mospheres. Below
aerial photograph
of Hebrides seen
through variously
colored filters is
...j -:.w~~ one of the sights
which Bowman witnesses
during his journey.

~ •<*-1■— —1.._.

VK-"

^wvcJ #..-

- :•:.; : ^ 44‘^ - ' 4- ■■£■;„.

A erial views were made o f Hebrides in Scotland and Monument Valley in

Arizona, Utah. Best effects over Hebrides were o f snow and ice.

--

Xt i ; . . r : v^-;w ~-.4r

E*A
w & .

-'rV..

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 llSSfe'- " ••

^:4::
Stargate scan effect
(right) corresponds to
brass entrances in ;
g' r, ■■
score of Atmospheres
(below).

.• V. ..vj y* .•
>X ••••:& t;--'

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission
 231

VV**•
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7*£:'•-•/V
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V V- VV4^'.
ft? K .:^ ,it^r4 - ' - -------- -? nr-.,^T ..... .

Flare a n d b u r s t s of K p s '
co l o r f r o m t he S t a r ­
g ate C o r r i d o r s e q u e n c e
(above) a r e m i r r o r e d
in t he v i b r a n t trem.o-
landi of L i g e t i •s yC*l C-luV-H'-T-d ,
Atmospheres (right).

s'Sss •Tin

«~?i *
*•*
s^tSOEZ kLAtt) /?n
b*'*
.rrh
-Uiv
SiEw:; ;*:,/•./7U

- —?y

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 232

Clouds o f interstellar dust and pas were made by interacting chemicals within
camera held o f size no larger than a paperback book.

Clouds of i n t e r s t e l l a r dust and gas * a b o v e £ are seen,:in'-.con­

junction w i t h s l o w l y c h a n g i n g bands of s o u n d (below) in the
S t a r g a t e C o r r i d o r sequence.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 APPENDIX B

DEATH IN VENICE

233

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 234

Aschenbach on board the

Esmeralda, reading, as
vistas of sky and sea
pass unnoticed: Spirit
f Rgsssggga
tv.*-'*38*. .
’ dominates nature as
'
4 ^/ he approaches Venice.
^sitfisF/

v*V;

Alfried leans isfelSv

over Aschenbach «S.?rifc*v.iL V: .
as he regains
consciousness
after collapse
in film's first
flashback.

- ••—v*.•.•

si-.:;/

p
r

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 Aschenbach is accosted by the "young-old” man on board the
Esmeralda during the first presentation of both the betrayal
and demonic motifs.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 236

I n t e r n a t i o n a l h a u t e bourgeois en i^acance at the Lido.

Below, T a d z i o d i n e s w i t h his family. Visconti
p i c t u r e d P r o u s t i a n w o r l d on v e r g e of d e s t r u c t i o n .

Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 237

A s c h e n b a c h (below) cat c h e s sight of T a d z i o (above) at beginning

of f l a s h b a c k s e q u e n c e in w h i c h A s c h e n b a c h and Alfr'te.cl debate the
q u e s t i o n of w h e t h e r b e a u t y can b e p e r c e i v e d thr o u g h the s e n s e s .

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 238

A s c h e n b a c h leans against
T a d z i o ' s door in scene I K ;•- ;'•: *•
i ». • *• t

which Visconti trans­

p o s e d fro m th e novella,
in w h i c h ; a c c o r d i n g to
M ann, h e " l e a n e d his.
h e a d against th e panel, and
r e m a i n e d there. . . p o w e r ­
! 1 ; . ; V I I ■
i . a ;?
less to t e a r h i m s e l f
a w a y ." ( M a n n , p . 56). \ U M m m

•:.J

•K> •• . I ' - u - v - n v •? ; » £ v r--- 'S . —

. V£V:
i v.i
i %•' \r ~*y-y?~yf
f” V M 'I1':/
.
f'
v.- v y
,I. -.A'iX. ■ .
.' I
'
’
-'-:■* -

mm T a d z i o and A schenbach
on e l e vator at hotel;
b e t r a y a l theme is
p r e s e n t e d here as
T a d z i o leaves the
elevator, beckoning
K , « ^ * s V - s : to Aschenbach. The
t h e m e of sexual passion
in relation to betrayal
is a persistent one
in V i s c o n t i ’s films.

Ill
V •?*.•.'"■*••. •>)•, i-:.•:*•** —ft

x r : ; • ' T . ? - . : ' S T f A . : i . ; •
..-v. ~— * ......... • ' - * ‘ -

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 239

Aschenbach and Tadzio at door of dining room moments before

Aschenbach murmurs, "Farewell, Tadzio, it was all too brief,"
introducing the second full presentation of the Adagietto.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 24 0

P V 1 -•'«
BFJiS--
rv-cs
hj
?-* .r-23J~5
F & /3
'■
Sin&rf.t
--

Like Mahler, Aschenbach is

not well when he visits
the Lido. Above, Aschenbach
explains to the hotel manager
that the reason for his
sudden departure is poor
health. At left, after
concert he collapses as
his wife shields h i m from
Alfried's demonic attacks
"The artist and the man
are one; they have touched
bottom together."

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 241

Visconti, unlike Mann,

gave Aschenbach close
family ties in the
p a s t , relationships
which give the lie to
Alfred's charge t h a t !:
the composer, like
Leverkuhn, is incapa­
MM'.: ble of "direct, honest,
contact with anyone."
(Leverktihn similarly
proves the Devil wrong
. b y loving on three
occasions, all of which
P ^ jtT prove disastrous for
those involved).

Above, Aschenbach and

his wife frolic with;
their daughter at their
alpine lodge, a scene
which calls to mind
Mahler's vacations at
Haiischen. Below, they
wee p together at the
c h i l d ’s funeral.

,R, m
S- r 1.
;- .
r-m?
I
;

I v
tr . _.V_ :-------- ■- ■ 3 „*i \

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Nirvana motif is sounded as Aschenbach looks out to sea in a theme shot

which anticipates his death on the beach at the end of the film.
 243

"Die Welt ist t'ief,

und tiefer als der
Tag gedacht!"
Tadzio swings around
poles on beach as
Aschenbach approaches
(left). Below,
Aschenbach leans
against cabana for
support during
Visconti's setting .
of the Mitte rnachts-
l ied, which occurs
at the midpoint of
the film. (See music
on following page).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 244

0 if ^ --- _ _ ---------»--- —Y ~ :~
----------- ---- - ' ■ ;l ..: --------- ---------------
- wachtl lie Welt

------------------- r -1 ° ' = ------

- - ..... — — ------ :-------------

8 ^1: --- ----

— PH-W---m— j-ar- ~m— faJ— uL |--y~» — ir- it I* 1=at= a zibi— a — zmH a t : a — +f
i l r r LI
1st und

acS ■ML

tie fer, als der -

r. H.

Tt

Sehr l>reit.

Tag.

PPP
I.H. r.H.
3SC
7^=Tz=T=----------------------------' *— z£— “—
mill a a
of the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright
copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 • •* '
Be t r a y a l themes Aschen­ V---rv- - ■ '• -

b a c h le a r n s f rom c l e r k 2-. - ' ' ■ . ' 'S-' '

at C o o k s that V e n i c e is
s u f f e r i n g a n e p i d e m i c of
p l a g u e (right). Above 1 ,'v 'V.:--'"’
h e reaches out to pet
T a d z i o in a f a n t a s y
sequence in which he
im a gines that h e w a r n s
the P o l i s h family of t h e
plague.
• :\''Af~r4vsj£?
;'-r y.V- I V '..-7

S . :'

r: : •* ; i. i :* , ?C;*'
&

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 246

D e m o n i c m o t i f is pre s e n t e d in three shots f r o m the Laughing

S o n g 9 s u n g b y t h e " y o u n g - o l d " m a n and a troup of players.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 247

D e m o n i c theme is r e p r e s e n t e d i n b o t h the "young-old" man,

below, a c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n of. t he D e v i l f r o m Doctor F a u s t u s .
and i n Alfri e d , above,'who, like t h e D e v i l in Faustus,
" p a s s e s for a man of d e s t r u c t i v e c r i t i c i s m . "

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 248

Aschenbach's c o s metic
rejuvenation, at left
and below, during
t hird presentation
of the Adagietto.
Falseness m o t i f is
sounded on C 4 chord
at measure 30 when
barber tells him,
"And n o w the signore
m a y fall in love as
soon as he w i s h e s ."

A&'"&'Sf«-ZL
S"-T■'' A s c h e n b a c h w e a r s rose
l**
Ws that he will w e a r at
his death.

.SCr!

'■Sr

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 24 9
i
t
!
i

During third presentation

of the Adagietto, Aschen­
bach sinks into street
at base of fountain
in his first realization
that he is dying.
(See measures 85-101,
Third Presentation
of the A d a g i e t t o ).

vr vg&K**;

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 250

F i r s t Pr e s e n t a t i o n : Cr e d i t s a r e p r e s e n t e d i n e v e n a nd exact
rhylfhm w h i c h does not c o r r e s p o n d w i t h the b e a t of the music.
T h e s e c r o s s r h y t h m s a n t i c i p a t e the random, r o l l i n g motion of
t h e sea. '
*• in
_ _ 4. Adagietto.
» •
LA]
I- ^ S rh r liiogsam. ra o lto rit. * tempo (a&ito a ^ iqJ

H irfe .

it/fv *it
Brstt Violinen. = m m m stm
.Zwrile VioHnen.

Violen.
rr
mmm
VldloDcelle.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 251

ns

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W a k e of b o a t
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 252

Cut to tracking shot of mud flats,

followed b y cut b a c k to Aschenbach.

EC]

rr

T r a c k i n g sh ots
of V e n i c e ( seen
from boat).
«otto /

m
(50)

' rp " .........

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 253

ns
Fiieasend. , (60)

pp **hf<»'
m m M

pp

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Baglieri
1 JJfffK* 99*
nM4
t6 * ----- W
on s h o r e ;
end of music.

f7nm

3 , LD] T ^m po f . (M otto Adagio,)

n-fcpfw**

U r n W

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 254

S e c o n d P r e s e n t a t i o n : (Abbreviated v e r s i o n ) .
&
i..;
Alfried playing p i a n o version, in A s c h e n b a c h ' s studio.
Aschenbach,:'.- s e a t e d on'couch, next to a v a s e of lillies,.
£'/• ' .begins " hourgalss''discour^qd£3$$> d o ctor F a u s t u s .- ■"-i '. -'
fV ,
[A][ Solir iangsaiu molto rit. a tempo <mouo Adagio)_
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— ■ -
i;• Bratscfaui I

R 8 £& s= 3= = i
—
jt T
~-—
-- — ■
■' =P="^--------
------------- :
y
y>xHllro
i | TP

ViolonccJli r ~ - = ^ —- ^ ■ = = = ^ = 1

TP —:
% ? ! i! 0

KontrabHsse ;
----------- ';c.rrT
' FT

I:/
•'

Hif.
Vf:
:-VT
VI.1

vi.ii

i
i *.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 255

E x t r e m e close up. •'No more time.

of Aschenbach. I '<Z1
>
. - % . Nieht echlcppiimjr ■:
\ 1 0 J (ct’A'hs fiiissip^r als zu A nfuu;)
to)
rr=*=
Utf. <
;J i r-J
_UJ.
fx: :V-■a*:

V UI

#> r.«/»r.

* 7 *x e ic n r o f i
rro

•iNo. more time ’ *'

Lil.;;
>Pr
I!i;

-- .r-r=L"— •rj^r=J-.r^r=z^-i--:T-^d :r=^rra==.r.rrr-.T.—

J

ihf. < l 1--r n . i •

i-

br**iter Stitch meremac

vui

Rr.

m o ttn d o

Vr.

Jffv
Kb. ; teffij.ro:r^- k .-

5#»0

b#

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 256

S e c o n d P r e s e n t a t i o n s A t I/ido, A s h e n b a c h e n c o u n t e r s Tad z i o at
d o o r o f di n i n g room. T h e m u s i c begins as A s c h e n b a c h murmurs,
sottopjvoce« "Farewell, Tadziio, it was all too b r i e f . ”

ni
4. Adagietto.
[A] Cut to Aschenbaah'.''- op. l a u n c h .
SrbrInncrum. noilsrll. fttempo(moltoAdiLgia.) (5 1

Unrfe.

*//* r,t
Brtl. VioUnoii.

.Zvrite Vlolinen.

VSolea.

mmm rr

Violoncello.

Bis**.

Niojt ftchlrppro.

Mmt *

- - - - - - jta - .-
rr---'1
m m i z m

itor'ltt *» C t M m
*» C ( Nun
44
U .H M iMrnAt C I.M m
Uvri* i«J •• C f.r«m

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 257

Music stops.
179 (15)
b I
f c H p 8 S S 3 5 S B 2 )

fe ,!^ J'^5‘
f~*fl-V 'r*?rA
Rif’rfr y>ri
w ____ «■»•*:■;
iff
M usic X
^MOXU resumes
COUAU^O for x W1 | 90 7
f XU rlf
) H . _ ._7
I... . W|
H
i-<
1drirr>
Ip
iiw p d t«npau». ( 2 5 )
r e t u r n t r i p ,to Lido.
( A s c h e n b a c h ]is in
train station).
lt«1Tl*|
r
pp~ri-Xi?(r■v^esf: - f m o S p O T 4
*t
f“ a-rrLrfrTix.--.ju iJ-tltr.-rr!"T
j:-.-jjii-4-.a.- .-Si-..Jr. •r --™--5r.-^.~ t»«
5
B5"^ .rgr-?^

Qfits.
9, driinsrnrt. 30 V "*™ ^ zuriirktmllrnd.

A s c h e n b a c h s "I
i n t e n d t o return." issisaS?
.uct:''-
Arm***
z-jssn

y*■ • • -w /^ X - ____

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 25 8

(Flag b e h i n d ) .
Dying m a n at station. Cut to l a u n c h . r _

mftWSrm*. as**.
a
mn n n r i i r _ ua». - < a i_ _—

m
bm ifci

-----= '*---
J- l-.fLJpt----- =
— Pn BnrV-^r:-~
>A -ff-y^- TI"T >vy. »p
# f t e - r-U T -f^ S a
J y u- - g * } r = £
*m . - V p —_ .tfc
'----- p v ]
s =
...
iM t **Wli trtge-
■t-T----
W 0
i - m s & -i f e s p
*p w .
JT~-
>— *■-»_
^ » p r
H s g
-j-s r r > y -s
5 ^ *
=^J==== =~ 1 ------ r & =
p y -■ -
u - .. *
K p = feud t e = = d

Cut t o hotel. ’Tadzio on

Ertii Vui
beach.
£ * » lU V if l

Tliln.
PPauMe

•otf

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 259

A s c h e n b a c h o n beach.
178 1 FIIes?cnd.

InUVWl.

SS

- . ...-— ""' v «». ir— = l5===£

> SS
gg-gjfai i f a ^ l :
^ t en ta p fe i
V"
^ 9tr*+*. (65T
'v / "W <* .^ - z.unirKnniirna
r.urfrkhnltrnd ( 7'0
\ v) . .•
tiw iw i.
/jc. TPfhii* ~~ I"^■
’" wr«lf

^ i-fie . ppruto/0
m m *«
"•-• ET*fs=§^ i3«|p] tjW$f'~
Trvllf,

^Gumi
WVif»di<»
Cut! to
Alpine
7*£.
?j'F‘-.d— 3.
J ............... ^f- TpmrnI.(ir.M'.oAJuplo.)
lodjje. ft*r«L ie”£ ^ T t , t* t ^ p |~ t^ 't^“’^2"r - r y t t i_
S M t f f w 1ii’wi iiyBf inf f f ..
?,M»VV>1.

l«lMT*). jfcTJg&fS

M I 1II

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 260

Te I -
S t o r m clouds race by. Music ends.
(85) f
rif. _
«J/r

,S!j W m -=pSrfrjz^j^r-w
Zop*md.

z -iu tk . \i4^^[
r+Um. m
r«
«n*

§S9=ag>*:'^^jte^
*r
---- T— v ♦__
i^^£&J§3Eg
4

■ . .Snclilanpaimer.

S)ffj077:
t w t * « VmI
fet*'-
VliHi. km>K- p ••*» a fvn

iWII*. ffWfcrtigaiiftiiilii?! ftflfitrfiitu

is
'
1t»i
prrt
fay
■ z ~ '7 = ~ z UT:
~ H 3 ===?.*

l*^.. ^ ____
-■E." - — -

^jj ^ »<**>T**^»d«*li
r.ra|rVi«t|
XT'™*P uj—
:*#™-sfew9
-•- -." 7 ------------------ jw *t- _ J
*•*>• ***»•»>• • _____ _

Jj' ■
— ^ jfr*»ii » r i r ~ ""x^T ~t>_’'*'.
M d m m m M r n t k m , n 4 ..«
.k*»r^
— r - = W « ^ 2 » 9 j / *"'S
L- jmT/i XfTirl*rn-
’ ~*vr*/f
HttWrra R ftttfn F m » l*

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 261

Third presentation: Begins during flashback to h is daughter's

funeral.

m.
m
Cut to .
4. Adagietto. barber' shop.
[A]
nolto rit. & tcapo (aollo Adagio.)
— _ _____ (5)
99

I • tM*ArU«g*4M)

~TP
Bu m .

(10 )
Nii'btMhli'ppt'D.
fluvilgcraU xu Antkiig)

==^53^==;
g m m

0 x 3 ?

99

99
ISO* b* C f Hun
Cito'*™ >|C f feua
CC(iM«W ««< nA “ '** “n C
* l*
Cw-r< id (Ml h t *

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 262

«7fl (1 5 )

t n u T ..I.
kfM*rRl»Jrfc
t« « M V**l, L
i ^ W
*i£fe -&nt? S?£
?v t S r ‘^wrr#n
W
:
!k .

^ ~ ****»« -
trr>«A'

^ V..CZQJ r»y_ . S u w rv t litncsam. / ^ ,- \

---------

E**M T*l.
A .cnSfl W ■»*r-’tfw-r _ mmm
pp IMM »m
x«*iwvui P^J23^rM:y-

***«•

9|5f&f9 te~=i i
I.IV*

-Jv ~ - — — — 'rn..
3rI-=#l&hB£=
- .n >m.
.n >m, _ ••«— ffjwo m ;
)
> *
<—
• ctwiiz drSipfnd. ( S p f f ' l e s.scnd^ xtmirkhMli-nl QUt tO C a n a l .
F a l s e n e s s m otif s
" And n o V the "•"••
Signore? m a y fall h ! ^ § S m
i n love! "
'4/>as?s^ifl»!?^a«35TrfTii«arfe^B>an>?gBiy> m i
* r^f' ■ ■i; - — -y JJ,<— V* "*■" ■-" T

f?T- y.J^-. i . ..*& • >) TT

IUm*.

fM>e»M m«
11
i'.

(
.i
i-.j_

R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 263

A s c h e n b a c h fo l l o w s t he Polish children a n d their

governess.
(35) 8 [ C ] . .177
Fltawfffcr. (40)

wit wSmf. o-un».

w
Aschenbacl l walks
E w is drSngeod. (45)_
past fires;

it».s*n#>

«mAs/
Iw*lt*T1»j.

i^Sjp %gg~£i

(50
CMt*vI*|.

V |.J .
- r'y'Jr-
TT*r+hto
ri-if*.

V c *;> .

!«««

f«w»

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 264

B e g g a r s pursue A s c h e n b a c h a few steps.

,r~i c*N Flle»md. (60)

t
f
*

C«t*Ci
iQ;G. ^ <?'•*«• p tfi p

Ipras
fit*- •

V f f i * '. .

^ -- >v"' (65)_ „ _ ~ _ zurickfi.Keni

<&h ifr ^ y l s

▼uv*.
»r'”’r- ffXw/»

«»■
pr— r.. . r f - >•-— - i- /m.

— s
m m> m
P^*o*n4c
:.*$

A s c h e n b a c h ----- ^— a ^ pD]. . . . (75^. TempoI.(MonoAdagio.)

loses tight y r ~ -‘f t
o f Tadtzio. tiE$6
I ttJUvMpMm* rrttr..*..*7 F *

___

i f-'—:— •£■— '-T **

TU*n m^¥m

tKiM*>U«( tots

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 265

[E]
(85)
(80)

brjpiwiiin||i|iir mil il f t tetkavitfrtlfaizLmdem

Zo£*md.
'"'j
fMTM/d

V«1J*. ™ = - Mi'
f c■“ S‘ M S f r '• f Q:__fl3_e- •*g*
- -- ' ——•••
RaIW /'f-— — __
4 ...
.Nochjanpwioer (90) Man in laboratory coat appears*
Aschenbach sinks i
street at base gazes at Aschen­
of fountain. bach and leaves.
8* v•*;«»*

U » tt* Vial.
fei ‘
V|*Wn.

mm pr-ro

Princend. (100)^*
■ = f ~ ; :t \. 1 Cut to
rts I end of
ZT.r.w.zr- ■TT^L' r*=J
concert.

F^T: SlfE

jft1*1 R »t*l •*»**•!»

- ~ paoTiT fTnri
F0*1>b k p *la r» .
Rno4"Fm«f*-

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 266

F o u r t h P r e s e n t a t i o n t Asche n b a c h is sitting on the beach

•watching Tadzio and Jaschu, who are fighting. (Falseness motif).

HI. ‘w
J a schu pushes Tadzio. Cut to Aschen b a c h / t o Tad Z3JO i
I 4. Adagietto. * c— ------- 1
[A]
Sriir laoRsam. nollo rit. «. (capo (nolio Admgio.)

H irfe.

f eUu r>t
*(tm/c(M*rUmg*4mt
E rst. VioUotn.

.Zvtite Viollnes.

Violen.

violoncello.

V i e w of sea (nirvana motif) ......fn'hlcppto.

^lfot
(ti«a* fiuMi^crala m Ar.fluirf)
S^=a
VfFP
w-
FP
3=3
#P
«s#jisaeis -

m m m •ifcyjT -u f- B -tdlfi t f
fP-*“ tfp\rtUn\'Ui
m m m ±r-^r:l:y 99
m l k
190409 C I few*
ttl**» C I teats
IVfi l | C. t tears
0«r-(W m**M I M •* C f. tears

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 26 7

Cut to A schenbach/ to Tadzio-/ to Aschenbach

'I'. 1
to Tadzio
wading in
ocean.
Kh *» vt«*l
RlHfi

Rif’f fr

r*i*iu

1)Aschen-
Tadzio turns . . Mipfor fin«snr*l Iwngsum .'• bach.
towaild Aschen- 2) Tadzio;
bach.I (raises
arm) .
t Ml* V*1
Pft*ut f*ffinau*£
IvtR*V|«|

Vc*JW.
I.ir«> t
n »>». mm*
Atnngpnti.^ _ T S o j lleswnd. xtiriiehhn((<>nd.

Aschenbach
1 H«rf«
Long shot
attempts to _•. - *■$ - J?.~ — - jf J j of camera
rise,?; sand b o a t .
i
!
reaches toward. ■••1 lUg#*
r»»* . — y JJ
Tadzie.
| VM,

TmWb. »£fcs “

^•nxi . . . r ,'rr-,.;.i:> S F T : " — ..

i;
i
f
1

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 268

Aschenbach
i
collapeses*LC],Lifeguard 17?
finds
Flkwifndcr.- Aschenbach.
....—- jr ..-
■ "

-- ---

IK F .L -W s s - — ~ -—

& 1 &
f-ess*T
— ■
*"-\i T /”
rfiSi 3 5 2 ^
- PT «*

1
/ * r = ^

r»

#
XL 2 ^
& = = = r= £ l ---- -_MTL — ■• _~ r~ • -

5 * S ^ = S = = = = = ----------------- : = ■ « *"
f s ^ ~ 2 L

;E £ § = = i= e d - t = i = s = = = = ^ E =

Woman motio^j E = s s » i = = q - , —J . —T trr

—______ :; ‘ r ----- ] = ~ r=
j rr.
“Aschenbach is
child awayt' carried from
7s iJ Is F - - fcjeach.
1

= d K
[

(O-fetU)

Tain

Cr e d i t s .
ZfcU V|«i y m

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 269

pp ■ - ‘& o ~!
~:i5-»=» ••H
« B ? p
p <"« . .
f i j i iK ii ^• <£feT ‘ . / V i:* ^ » /j '
««i

• r r ••*'*> iy
m
zururiih*Itrnd
’
.^ZlZa^\1J*»&*i*!s•+p<
/V'<*r»T. .
S*jiF;

«•£
« J kte
1E&-5- * 3 ^
k TS k ^ J s i s

pSglpIii
k*wh

i^jj. ^r ^j* ^ rmT)0*•^^j?°Ad"~^

gC wT=3=
-^ ^ #•! 1
-

♦ ■! '~Lr£
f-- *~>-- **“1----f’r“

M u »

»"•• p:?=
M l

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
 270

Zog*md.

KmfftHhtPg

Wilt.

Prancend.

Vlttft.

m tvfn Rot^n-Final*

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.