I can remember being very little and being shown the movie Jumanji, which is a pretty scary movie to show a very little kid. Well, when it got to the scary parts (so, like, 3/4 of the film) I would never close my eyes, because then all I could see was darkness while I could hear the sounds of the movie going on. In fact, closing my eyes always made it even scarier, because then I would be faced with the awful possibility of imagining what was going on based on the horrific sounds. So, instead I used to put my hands over my ears, and even though I could see the action on the screen I felt comfortable and in control. I think it was from that day onward that I wanted to be a film composer, wanted to understand and wield that awesome power sound has over our senses and emotions.


M was my favorite of all the movies we've screened so far. Because of this week's topic I was actually expecting an elaborate musical score, and when it struck me that there might not be any music at all I was at first disappointed. Eventually, though, the silence grew on me until it became an accompaniment of its own. In the completely silent moment when we saw Elsie Beckmann's balloon float away in some wires a chill passed down my spine and I experienced one of those great moments in the cinema where a movie really touches an individual. There's something very disturbing and dark about silence, derivative perhaps of a thousand black nights during which the imagination becomes vivid reality. What I also liked about M was how carefully it treated silence, almost like a cue. In Walt Disney's masterpiece Bambi, the viewer is swept along by an almost unending symphony of beautiful orchestral music and lush natural sounds... but in the midst of all this Bambi employs to great effect two 13-second periods of complete silence. One is when Bambi's mother explains that "Man has entered the forest", during which both deer look into the distance and are still, and then the music cautiously begins again. The other occurs at one of the most powerful moments in animation history as Bambi realizes his mother has been shot; one tear trickles down his cheek, and a violin quietly plays his childhood theme as he walks into the center of the frame, surrounded by white snow and disappearing into the haze. Silence by itself means nothing... but when it is surrounded by wall-to-wall music each 13 seconds feels like a moment suspended in time forever. Lang's genius is obvious, and his masterpiece of sound demonstrates his intuitive understanding of the medium, which at its best (as in M) it can support, challenge, and anticipate.