01
Apr
When motion pictures first transitioned to the sound era, film studios were divided about how to use music in the cinema. Should it only be diegetic (as in emanating from a source onscreen that the characters can hear)? Would non-diegetic music distract from the dialogue and characters? Universal mogul Carl Laemmle famously decreed that movies like 1931’s Frankenstein and Dracula should have no background whatsoever after their opening titles. Of course it didn’t take long for producers, and more importantly composers, to figure out that was nonsense. Musical compositions, leitmotifs, and even well-known songs can be a shorthand to heighten…