Music and Memory in Cinema – The topos of Mourning in The Dead (John Huston, 1987), Broken Lullaby (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932) and Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1948)

Abstract

The relations between the two concepts are examined through a single topos, mourning, which the three films have in common. Huston’s film follows Joyce’s key scene in which a voice which is heard singing a ballad has an emotional impact on the heroine by awakening her memory of her dead lover. Lubitsch uses a similar device, when Schumann’s Lullaby is played and arouses the hearers’ memory of the dead soldier. The cinema’s use of music and memory is brought to greater complexity in the third film, owing to inner monologue, while Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto is adapted to the film’s narrative and becomes film music.