The Musicality of Narrative Film

Film is often compared to music, explained by the use of musical terms and even conceived and structured using music as a model. The Musicality of Narrative Film is the first book to offer an in-depth examination of the film/music analogy through comparative analysis of both arts' common denominators: time, rhythm and movement. Drawing on a number of examples from contemporary art-house and mainstream cinema, Kulezic-Wilson argues that film's musical potential can be realized through various cinematic devices, with or without music. The book's final section contains detailed case studies of Darren Aronofsky's π, Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man and Joe Wright's Anna Karenina, which demonstrate how various factors contribute to achieving the effect of musicality in a large-scale form and how contrasting approaches to film time, rhythm and movement can create very different examples of film musicality.