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Article Dans Une Revue Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration (MSJ) Année : 2019

The "Perfect Discords" of Billy Wilder’s Comedy Films

Résumé

Wilder had a passion for jazz and he attached the utmost importance to music in his movies. He used to say: "I cannot whistle, I cannot sing, I cannot play the piano. I am totally unmusical. But I am musical as far as the song or the music for a picture is concerned. In that I am very, very finicky" (Crowe 107). Indeed, from the beginning of his career, he chose to work with some of the greatest soundtrack composers; what would his dramas and film noirs be without the collaboration of Miklós Rózsa or Franz Waxman? But Wilder was also a celebrated scriptwriter and director of comedy films in which diegetic music plays a key role. In a number of his movies, protagonists are atypical musicians or singers; in others, romantic tunes are in fact not so romantic after all; and finally, source music can be such an obsession that it turns into background music, the melodies the characters hear or hum becoming a leitmotiv and affecting the story in a practical way. My analysis deliberately omitsWilder's only musical, The Emperor Waltz (1948), as well as his most famous and certainly most analyzed comedy involving professional musicians, Some Like It Hot (1959), to concentrate on his other comedic movies, whether acclaimed or undervalued. Thoughvery little has been written on that specific subject, I argue that diegetic music is fundamental at all levels in the language of Billy Wilder's comedy filmsby giving the action its tempo, introducing humor, but also from a metaphorical or lyrical point of view.
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hal-03868389 , version 1 (14-02-2024)

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Julie Michot. The "Perfect Discords" of Billy Wilder’s Comedy Films. Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration (MSJ), 2019, 4 (1), pp.36-49. ⟨hal-03868389⟩

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