Product Information
Classical music masterworks have long played a key supporting role in the movies-silent films were often accompanied by a pianist or even a full orchestra playing classical or theatrical repertory music-yet the complexity of this role has thus far been underappreciated. Sounds Like Helicopters corrects this oversight through close interpretations of classical music works in key modernist films by Francis Ford Coppola, Werner Herzog, Luis Bunuel, Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke, and Terrence Malick. Beginning with the famous example of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now, Matthew Lau demonstrates that there is a significant continuity between classical music and modernist cinema that belies their seemingly ironic juxtaposition. Though often regarded as a stuffy, conservative art form, classical music has a venerable avant-garde tradition, and key films by important directors show that modernist cinema restores the original subversive energy of these classical masterworks. These films, Lau argues, remind us of what this music sounded like when it was still new and difficult; they remind us that great music remains new music. The pattern of reliance on classical music by modernist directors suggests it is not enough to watch modernist cinema: one must listen to its music to sense its prehistory, its history, and its obscure, prophetic future.Product Identifiers
PublisherSTATE University of New York Press
ISBN-139781438476315
eBay Product ID (ePID)4046508616
Product Key Features
Book TitleSounds like Helicopters: Classical Music in Modernist Cinema
AuthorMatthew Lau
FormatHardcover
LanguageEnglish
TopicMusic
Publication Year2019
Dimensions
Item Height229mm
Item Width152mm
Additional Product Features
Title_AuthorMatthew Lau
Series TitleSuny Series, Horizons of Cinema
Country/Region of ManufactureUnited States