One particular film theorist who I have thought a lot about in the past is David Bordwell and his idea of how films use cues and schemas in order to create meaning. This idea suggests that films depend on visual and narrative hints at what is going on so that the audience can elaborate upon what they see. However, as I have thought about Bordwell’s ideas, I have come to the realization that cues can operate on a much more advanced level than what he suggests. In fact, I believe that cues can also operate in film on a musical level. With this in mind, I decided to analyze a musical film called Top Hat to see how musical cues might contribute to a film’s plot and character development. As I did so, I discovered that this film uses structural and instrumental musical cues in order to illustrate the theme that “falling in love can never be a one sided process; it takes two for love to succeed.”
Before I continue with the rest of my analysis, I would like to start by describing the specific concepts behind David Bordwell’s ideas and how he sees them as operating. During this part I will explain how he believes cues function to create meaning in film. This will be followed by a description of my beliefs on how musical cues can function in film. Finally, I will link these two ideas to my thesis by examining in depth how musical films, such as Top Hat, use musical cues to illustrate a theme and to create meaning.
The original article which Bordwell’s ideas come from is an article entitled “Cognition and Comprehension: Viewing and Forgetting in Mildred Pierce.” This article was written in 1992. In this article, David Bordwell uses a classical Hollywood film called Mildred Pierce in order to discuss his ideas of how films can communicate a message through the use of cues and schemas.
According to Bordwell, meaning is not created in film through the use of codes or through psychoanalysis, as some other film theorists would believe. Rather, he believes that films tend to “leave a trail of narrative and characteristic breadcrumbs (or cues)” for the viewer to follow. These cues provide the audience member with hints as to what could happen. After a cue is given, the audience member then goes through a 5 step process in order to “actively elaborate upon what the film sets forth.” This process occurs as the viewer sees what is presented, as they categorize what they are seeing, as they draw upon prior knowledge, as they make inferences about the situation, and as they hypothesize what will happen next. This process allows the viewer to get meaning out of a film because it gives them an opportunity to apply their own experiences to what they are viewing so that they can draw their own conclusions from it (Bordwell, 427-444).
While I do feel there is some merit to Bordwell’s ideas, I also think that he fails to recognize all the circumstances in which cues can take place in film. In his essay, Bordwell seems to make the statement that cues can only operate from a visual perspective. However, as I stated before, I believe that cues operate on a much more advanced level than what Bordwell suggests. According to my belief, the reason why visual and narrative cues are able to function as well as they do is because there are musical cues which also exist. These musical cues are important because they serve to emphasize how and why the visual and narrative cues take place. This is especially the case with musical films because their plots cannot move forward without some kind of musical cue. For this reason, I have chosen to use a musical film called Top Hat to illustrate my ideas of how Bordwell’s concepts can apply to musical cues in film.
Now that I have summarized both Bordwell’s and my own ideas of how cues operate, I would like to go into more detail as to how musical cues specifically operate in the movie Top Hat. However, before I begin analyzing this film, I must first start by explaining a little bit about the background behind it and why I have chosen it for my analysis. In doing so, I hope to make it a little clearer as to how this film supports my thesis.
Top Hat is one of the many musical films which were produced within the first 7 years after sound first came into film. This film is a Hollywood film which was directed by Mark Sandrich in 1935. In this film, Fred Astaire plays a rich showman named Jerry Travers who falls in love with a woman named Dale Tremont (played by Ginger Rogers). However, soon after Jerry and Dale meet, Dale mistakes Jerry for being the husband of her good friend Madge Hardwick. This creates many complications throughout the film, in which Dale continuously tries to resist her feelings for Jerry as he continues to pursue her. Finally, at the end of the film, the couple is able to come together as Dale realizes that her assumptions of Jerry are false and as she finally learns to acknowledge her love back to him.
The reason why I have chosen to use Top Hat to illustrate my points is because of the way in which it uses musical cues to communicate its theme. As I mentioned before, the main theme of this film is that “falling in love can never be a one sided process; it takes two for love to succeed.” This message is revealed as the film uses 2 different types of musical cues to provide us with insight into the various stages of how the two main characters (Astaire and Rogers) fall in love. These two types of cues are referred to as structural and instrumental cues.
One interesting thing about the structural and instrumental cues in Top Hat is that they always work together in order to create meaning. Structural cues are the basic elements which make up both the sound and the feel of any type of music. They include things such as the tone, the rhythm, the pitch, the beat, the tempo, the crescendos, the decrescendos, and the major and minor modes. On the other hand, instrumental cues are also very important because they are the tools which bring the structural cues into existence. This is because the instrumental cues are the tools which allow the overall sound to be produced, controlled, and manipulated. These cues include the four main different types of instrumental categories such as strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. As these two types of cues are used together, they help to emphasize the visual and narrative cues because they bring us deeper into what is going on within both the plot and the characters.
One thing I noticed as I watched Top Hat was that the structural and instrumental cues took place during the course of 5 different songs. In order, these songs are called “No Strings (I’m Fancy Free),” “Isn’t This a Lovely Day,” “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails,” “Cheek to Cheek,” and “The Piccolino.” Each song uses a slightly different combination of structural and instrumental cues in order to emphasize a different key event which will bring the couple closer together. As this occurs, we also get to see the deeper thoughts, feelings, and intentions of the characters in relation to those events. These feelings and intensions are revealed by how much and in what ways each character responds to the musical cues through song and dance, and through how much the musical cues highlight the character’s actions. As this pattern takes place, we can then come to understand the film’s overriding theme by comparing and contrasting how the characters change in relation to each other from the first song to the last.
As Top Hat progresses, it is very interesting to see how each song contributes to the overall theme. The first song which uses musical cues in Top Hat is “No Strings (I’m Fancy Free).” This song takes place during the first 8 to 15 minutes of the film and marks the very first stage of the relationship between Jerry Travers and Dale Tremont. This stage is the key event in which Jerry and Dale first meet. In this song the musical cues are used to bring us into the mind of both characters so that we can understand how they feel about each other when they first meet.
On Jerry’s part, the musical cues start as he sings and dances around the room to suggest his excited feeling of being single and having no commitments to love. Then, after he meets Dale, the musical cues change a little in order to suggest that he is capable of loving a woman after all (specifically Dale). On the other hand, the structural and instrumental cues also occur on Dale’s part as she refuses to sing or dance at all on the first song. Rather, she seems to remain deaf to the majority of the music, as she can only hear and respond to the rhythm of Jerry’s dancing. This lack of being able to hear or respond to the music suggests that Dale is a lot more reserved about showing her love back to Jerry. This reveals the theme by showing how love can only begin when at least one person changes their views on life and decides to make an initial effort. It is also suggested through the character’s responses to the music that the Male is the one who should start this process.
The song which marks the 2nd stage in Jerry’s and Dale’s relationship is called “Isn’t This a Lovely Day.” This song takes place at about 23 minutes into the film and represents the key event in which Dale actually starts to have romantic feelings back for Jerry. During the scene in which this song takes place, Jerry and Dale are both taking shelter in a gazebo after it has just started to rain very heavily. While they are there, Jerry decides to use the rain storm as a way to express his feelings for Dale. It is at this point in which the musical cues then come into play as Jerry begins to sing and dance to his own metaphor. This is done to show his inner desire for winning over Dale’s heart.
As Jerry starts to sing and dance for Dale, her inner feelings for him are then shown through how her responses change to him and to the music over time. At the beginning of the song Dale starts this process by turning away from Jerry and ignoring the music as he sings to her. However, soon after Jerry starts dancing she then begins to show some interest back by mimicking his moves and following his lead through whistling and dancing to the music with him. This marks a change in her because is causes her to go from a point of completely ignoring the music to a point in which she can at least dance to it. This transition illustrates the theme because it shows that Dale is finally starting to accept Jerry back for who he is.
The song which marks the 3rd stage of Jerry’s and Dale’s relationship in Top Hat is called “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails.” This song is presented at about 40 to 45 minutes into the film and represents a key event in which Jerry continues to show his persistence for Dale. The interesting thing about this song is that it takes place just after the point where Dale had slapped Jerry for flirting with her. This happened because of an inner scruple which she was facing due to her own misassumption that Jerry was the married Mr. Hardwick. In this third song Jerry sings and dances around on a stage as he is surrounded by a whole bunch of other men on both the stage and in the audience. This lack of women suggests that Jerry is all alone and that he has no real woman to sing to or to dance with because of the fact that Dale has left for Italy.
One interesting thing that takes place during this song is that many of the other men on stage tend to mimic many of Jerry’s moves as he sings and dances to the structural and instrumental cues. This suggests that there could be other man who Dale could fall in love with. Then, shortly after this mimicking takes place, there is a part where Jerry pretends that his cane is a gun. As he does so, he proceeds to shoot down all the other men who are on the stage in the background behind him. These men then helplessly collapse as if they were really shot. When these two parts are combined, it shows Jerry’s inner persistence for Dale because it suggests his willingness to do everything within his power to get rid of all the other men who might also be competing for her heart. This supports the theme of love not being a one sided process because it shows how persistent a person must be if they want love to succeed.
The 4th song which uses musical cues to illustrate a stage in the relationship between Jerry and Dale is a song called “Cheek to Cheek.” This song takes place a while after Jerry has found Dale again in Italy at about 64 minutes into the film. It is used to emphasize two key events which are going on simultaneously. One key event that this song emphasizes is the fact that Dale is still falling more in love with Jerry. The second key event it emphasizes is the fact that she is inwardly becoming more confused and concerned with what she should do about the misconception she has that he is married. These events are both key in this scene because one expresses her desire to be with Jerry, and yet the other one shows the inward scruples and obstacles that she is still facing due to her misconceptions of him. This complication is also illustrated in the music as Jerry and Dale dance together by the way in which the structural and instrumental cues are constantly at odds with each other throughout the course of the song. This also supports the theme by suggesting that Dale can only commit to her end of being in love once her inward obstacles and concerns are resolved.
The 5th and final song which uses musical cues to emphasize a stage in the relationship between Jerry Travers and Dale Tremont is a song called “The Piccolino.” This song takes place during the last 10 minutes of the film, and occurs just after Dale’s misassumptions of Jerry have been resolved. What is really interesting about this scene is that this is the first time out of the entire film in which Dale is finally willing to listen to the structural and instrumental cues and sing along with them on her own. This is demonstrated as she sings to Jerry and he just sits and listens to her. It is this key event which brings the film full circle because it illustrates the fact that Dale’s concerns and inner scruples are finally resolved. As a result, Dale can now finally love Jerry wholeheartedly for who he is. Thus, it also illustrates the theme because it shows how the love between Jerry and Dale has finally evolved to a point in which it can succeed because they can finally both give love everything they have.
Now that I have given a general description of how each of the 5 theme songs in Top Hat operates to tell us more about the plot and character progression, I would like to go into more detail as to how the structural and instrumental cues help to emphasize these events so that the theme can be illustrated. This occurs as the various types of instrumental cues work together in order to bring the various structural cues into existence. In to order analyze this I am going to specifically look at how the structural and instrumental cues operate in the 1st, the 4th, and the 5th songs. This way we can get a better idea of how the cues are influencing the direction of the story from the beginning to the end.
Before I continue, I must start by describing how I noticed the instrumental and structural cues being used throughout all the songs in the film. One interesting thing I notice about the instrumental cues in all the songs of this film was that there were specific instrumental cues which seemed to be assigned to each character. On one hand, Jerry’s character mainly seemed to use the instrumental cues of brass and woodwind instruments to help communicate his thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, Dale’s characters seemed to use a lot of string instruments to communicate what she was thinking and feeling. Then, when the characters were together, there were also occasional hints of percussion to hint at what was going on between the two of them. As these types of instrumental cues were used together, it then created the structural cues of rhythm, pitch, beat, tone, crescendos, decrescendos, and so forth. These structural cues then served to emphasize the feeling of what was going on in the story.
Now I will discuss how Top Hat specifically used structural and instrumental cues to contribute to the story during the first song of the film. As I mentioned before, this song is called “No Strings (I’m Fancy Free).” It emphasizes the key event in which the two main characters (Jerry and Dale) meet and how each of them feels in relation to that event. One interesting thing that this song does in order to emphasize this key event occurs from the way in which the instrumental cues for Jerry and the instrumental cues for Dale are combined.
At the beginning of this scene there is a part where Mr. Hardwick is telling Jerry that his wife wants to set Jerry up with her friend. As this is going on, the instrumental cues alternate back and forth between brass instruments and string instruments in order to provide an interlude for the upcoming song and to suggest that Mrs. Hardwick’s friend (Dale) is the one who Jerry will eventually meet and fall in love with. This alternating interlude between the two types of instrumental cues is then followed by a fast crescendo (gradual increasing) build into the part of the song where Jerry starts singing and dancing around the room. As this happens, Jerry’s instrumental cues of woodwinds and brass instruments then take over in order to start playing a very fast paced and rhythmic, staccato song which has a very happy tone (or feeling). This song continues to increase in pace and crescendo in volume over time. As stated a little earlier, this is done to emphasize Jerry’s overly excited feelings of being single and having no commitments to love. These musical cues then continue to grow more out of control right up until the point where Jerry meets Dale.
After Jerry meets Dale, it is very interesting to see the way that the musical cues instantly changes in order to emphasize his thought process. This process starts with an instant pause of both types of musical cues as soon as Dale walks into the room. This is done to show how surprised Jerry is to see her. As Jerry starts talking to Dale, I then noticed that the music started picking up again. Shortly after this happened, the stringed instruments started joining in with the woodwind and the brass instruments to follow their lead in some parts, and even to play in unison with them at other parts as Dale begins to walk off. These instruments also played the same happy tone in the same pitch as they had before. However, the tempo and rhythm were slowed down a bit. Finally, as Dale finishes walking down the stairs and as Jerry watches her leave, the rhythm and tempo slow down even more and the music switches to just using stringed instruments for a while. The music also becomes a lot more legato (smooth flowing) during this part. This gives the music a very peaceful and tranquil tone in order to emphasize that Jerry is now starting to think less of his exciting single lifestyle, and to show that he is starting to think more of what it would be like to have a girl in his life. By using both instrumental and structural cues in this way, the music serves to emphasize what is going on in the story because it signals to us that Jerry and Dale are the ones who will eventually end up together at the end of the film.
The next song which I would like to discuss from Top Hat in terms of how the specific structural and instrumental cues operate is the 4th song of the film. This song is called “Cheek to Cheek.” As I stated a while ago, this song takes place during a time when Dale is feeling mixed emotions for Jerry. On one hand, she is deeply in love with him. On the other hand, she is facing many inner scruples and concerns due to her misassumption that he is married. As a result, she is kind of on the fence in terms of whether or not she wants to give her whole heart to him. This is illustrated by the way in which the structural and instrumental cues are used both with and against each other throughout much of this song.
At the start of this song, Mrs. Hardwick has just convinced Jerry and Dale to dance with each other and Dale agrees very reluctantly to do so. This dance starts out in a fancy restaurant among a relatively good size group of other people who are also dancing. During the first couple minutes after Jerry and Dale started dancing, I noticed that the music used the stringed instrumental cues of violins and some harps to play the song. However, some parts of the song’s verses also used some woodwind instrumental cues, such as clarinets and saxophones. These instruments were used to play a mostly legato melody (with some staccato) which moved forward at a very slow and steady tempo. This melody made a gradual upward movement in its pitch of the notes and a crescendo in its sound as Jerry sang to the progression of the chorus, followed by a decrescendo at the end of the chorus. When the structural and instrumental cues are used in this way, it creates a very happy and romantic tone in order to emphasize Jerry’s efforts to move his way into Dale’s heart.
After the first couple minutes of dancing, Jerry and Dale gradually move their way into an open an empty mezzanine area, where they can dance alone together. It is at this point where some new and conflicting moments are introduced into the music. These moments are marked by a sudden and shrill sounding crescendo of string, brass, and percussion instruments which play at a higher pitch and travel into a minor mode for a few measures. After these sudden conflicting moments, the music then makes a sudden decrescendo back into its original form. This pattern repeats itself over and over during the entire time that the couple is dancing in the mezzanine area. As the music uses this interesting pattern of cues, it adds to what is currently going on in the story because it creates a very dramatic and slightly uncomfortable tone. This is done to emphasize Dale’s current mixed inner feelings for Jerry so that we can relate to her complicated situation.
The final song from Top Hat which I will discuss in terms of its specific structural and instrumental cues is the 5th and final song of the film. This song is called “The Piccolino.” As I stated before, this scene occurs just after Dale’s concerns about Jerry have finally been resolved and marks the first and only time out of the entire film in which she actually sings back to him. This song is interesting because of the way in which it is almost completely opposite of the 1st song in the film in terms of its instrumental cues. However, it still has a very pleasant feel to it.
Unlike the song “No Strings (I’m Fancy Free)” which mainly uses Jerry’s instrumental cues of brass and woodwinds at the start of the film, this song mainly uses Dale’s instrumental cues of stringed instruments to play the dominant melody for most of the song. This happens as the song provides a crescendoing instrumental interlude of strings at the beginning, then as it uses more brass and woodwinds during the singing parts, then as it goes back to mostly strings again for the first half of Dale and Jerry’s dance after the singing is done. Each of these sections of this song also has a frequent use of percussion cues such as drums and cymbals. Then, during the 2nd half of Dale’s and Jerry’s dancing sequence in this scene, there starts to be a relatively even balance of all types of instrumental cues (woodwinds, brass, strings, and percussion) until the song finally came to a sudden decrescendo at the end.
As these instrumental cues were combined in this way, they then formed the structural cues by playing a song which had a very consistent and upbeat tempo, a very staccato rhythm, and a pretty wide range of pitch levels. These instrumental cues also played the song in a major mode key the entire time. When these instrumental and structural cues were played in this way, it added to what was going on in the story by creating a song which had a very triumphant and exciting tone to it. This was done to emphasize that the film had finally come full circle because Dale had finally overcome her inner conflicts. Thus, we come to the conclusion that the couple can finally be together.
In conclusion, as I analyzed the musical film called Top Hat, I realized that David Bordwell’s concept of cues could be applied to a lot more in film than just visual and narrative elements. Rather his concept can also be applied to audio elements such as film music. These musical cues are divided up into two categories, known as structural and instrumental cues. In Top Hat, these structural and instrumental cues are used throughout the course of 5 different songs as the film progresses. As we observe these two types of cues being used over the course of these five songs, we can then come to see how they serve to emphasize the visual and narrative elements of the film by the way in which the characters respond to the cues through singing and dancing. This also allows us to gain an overall understanding of the film’s overriding theme because it allows us as the audience members to come to our own conclusions based on what we have seen.
Works Cited
Bordwell, David. “Cognition and Comprehension: Viewing and Forgetting in Mildred Pierce.” 1992. Film Theory and Criticism. By Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 427-49. Print.
Top Hat. Dir. Mark Sandrich. Perf. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. RKO Radio Pictures, 1935. DVD.
