The Rózsa Touch: Challenging Classical Hollywood Norms Through Music Open Access

Abstract

If film noir is a body of work that is partially characterized by its difference from other Classical Hollywood films, many of the scores for these films work to reinforce that difference. Miklós Rózsa's music exemplifies this claim more than that of his contemporary composers; while he was not the only innovative film composer at the time, Rózsa exerted a greater influence. Like the films noir themselves, they criticize Classical Hollywood style. According to David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, various narrative and visual techniques of films noir challenge this style's "neutrality and 'invisibility'"; Rózsa's scores, with all of their modernist traits, deviate from the romanticism and post-romanticism of the music that typically accompanies these films.

I will examine Rózsa's music for The Lost Weekend (Paramount, 1945), The Killers (Universal, 1946), Brute Force (Universal, 1947) and The Naked City (Universal, 1948). I choose these scores because no other film music scholar has examined them at length, but I also hope to fill in a broader gap. As Robert Miklitsch writes, film noir has almost exclusively been defined in terms of its visuals and its narratives. The music for these films, on the other hand, has been largely neglected. My thesis works, in part, to address this oversight.

Table of Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................................1

"The Official 'Voice' of Dipsomania": The Music for The Lost Weekend ...............15

Enter Mark Hellinger: The Killers and Brute Force.................................................33

An Amalgam of Styles: The Naked City...................................................................58

Conclusion ...............................................................................................................72

Bibliography ..............................................................................................................77

Filmography................................................................................................................81

Tables and Figures

Figure 1: The "Alcohol Theme" (The Lost Weekend) .....................................................19

Figure 2: Woodwind Ostinato ( The Lost Weekend) .........................................................20

Figure 3: Dissonances ( The Lost Weekend) ......................................................................23

Figure 4: The Love Theme ( The Lost Weekend) ..............................................................25

Figure 5: Dotted Rhythms ( The Lost Weekend)................................................................26

Figure 6: From Concerto for Strings ................................................................................29

Figure 7: Four-Note Motif ( The Killers)...........................................................................34

Figure 8: Syncopated Motif ( The Killers).........................................................................35

Figure 9: Theme for Solo Violin ( The Killers) .................................................................39

Figure 10: Opening Theme ( Brute Force) ........................................................................44

Figure 11: Variant of Main Theme from Double Indemnity ( Brute Force) .....................45

Figure 12: Theme for Solo Violin ( Brute Force)..............................................................52

Figure 13: Solo Trumpet Theme ( The Naked City) ..........................................................61

Figure 14: Melody for Woodwinds and Strings ( The Naked City)...................................63

Figure 15: Accented Figure for Strings ( The Naked City) ...............................................66

Figure 16: "A Tense, Hard-Hitting Fugato" ( The Naked City).........................................68

Figure 17: "The Song of a Great City" ( The Naked City).................................................70

About this Master's Thesis

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Film and Media Studies
Degree	MA
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Cinema
Keyword	Hellinger, Mark film noir Rózsa, Miklós film music
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Bernstein, Matthew, Emory University
Committee Members	Oeler, Karla, Emory University Schreiber, Michele, Emory University

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