DI - Sound, editing, production (Assessment) Flashcards
Wilder has said that the score for a film should be ‘________’ – that its ability to accentuate and punctuate a film should occur at a subconscious level, emphasizing moods without us being aware.
Invisible
The music sets the _____ powerfully with its strident tones in the opening credits.
Tone
The music generally functions as parallel sound. When Neff makes his first two journeys to the Dietrichson house, the music has a more romantic, almost pastoral tone. As Phyllis makes her first appearance in the towel and Neff makes his rather corny joke, ‘I’d hate to think of your having a smashed fender or something while you’re not, fully covered’, his innuendo is underlined by a rather playful _____.
Flute
Contrapuntal sound is used more sparingly in the film. One of the most powerful examples occurs in the penultimate scene, immediately after Phyllis has shot Neff. Her apparent sentiment and regret is captured in the return of the return of the more romantic, pastoral music which characterized their earlier exchanges.
However, as the music builds and they embrace for the final time, Phyllis suddenly feels the gun and her expression changes to shock. At this point, the music ceases immediately and two loud shots resonate, followed by silence and stillness.
The music has lulled the audience into false security, wrongly signalling a romantic denouement before a brutal realism reinforces itself through the ________ sound of the gun.
Diegetic
Most sound in the film is diegetic, integral to the action in the scene with the music functioning as the main non-diegetic support. Neff’s voice-overs have already been discussed in considerations of narrative but it is unusual that they have both diegetic and non-diegetic qualities.
His confession to Keyes takes place in the present diegetically but the switch to the past through dissolve the bridging music subtly gives the voice-over non-diegetic qualities as it contextualizes the events we are about to see. In montage sequences, the _____-_____ is more conventional and exclusively non-diegetic in its operation.
Voice-over
We can look at aspects of editing in the scene where Neff goes to the Dietrichson house to gain Mr Dietrichson’s signature. While analysing the scene, it is also worth considering aspects of _______ and focus. The scene begins with an establishing shot, where the camera pans back from Lola and Phyllis playing checkers, to Dietrichson lying on the sofa, to Neff sitting on the armchair in the foreground.
Framing
This apparently stable mise-en-scene is quickly fragmented through dialogue, costume and telling character contrast. The first close-up is of Dietrichson, who doesn’t even move to deliver his complaint that _______ wastes his money; an arch of the head simply captures his indolence. He then establishes an eyeline gaze that cuts us back to Neff, espousing the value of accident insurance.
Phyllis
A further cut back to include all four characters places Lola in the centre, framed by the rest of the characters.
Phyllis’s deliberately inflammatory reference to Lola’s possible liaison with Zachetti prompts a cut to a close-up of _________, as he attempts to assert his parental authority. Shot/reverse shot pattern is again established through the close-up on Lola as she replies in an assertive manner.
Dietrichson
Continuity editing almost seamlessly binds the _________ and captures character perspective and viewpoint.
Narrative
One of the fundamental legal challenges for Wilder was to produce a script which would placate the _____ Office, who were extremely doubtful that Double Indemnity could be filmed.
Breen
A self-regulatory code of ethics had been established in 1930 by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) in an attempt to improve the image of the industry. Hays had considerable power as head of the MPPDA, with Joseph Breen as director of the code administration. The Hays administration itself ended in 1945 but the code remained until _____, when civil liberty groups influenced a major revision, eventually leading to a ratings system in 1968.
1966
A key tenet of the Hays code which applied to Wilder’s film was its conviction that ‘no picture shall be made which will lower the standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, ____ or sin’.
Evil
The ambivalent tone of key scenes in Double Indemnity came close to contravening elements of the Hays code and perhaps it is only the fates of the ____ protagonists which allowed the film to be made.
Two
Other regulations which Wilder had to remain mindful of included ‘Methods of crime should not be explicitly presented’ and ‘excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embracing, _________ postures and gestures, are not shown’.
Suggestive
Some critics have suggested that the film requires more exchanges of passion between Neff and Phyllis to show how ________ obsession forces Neff to become involved in murder, and that censorship may have adversely affected this depiction of character motivation.
Sexual
