Light and Music: The Night of the Hunter

The song "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" was published in 1889 by American gospel composer Anthony Showalter, naturally inspired by a passage from the bible. The tune is simple, melodic, and warm. Many versions have been recorded in the intervening decades, but I think none is more haunting than that showcased in the film The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum. His religious fanatic serial killer idly hums this comforting hymn as he woos a recent widow in an attempt to locate some stolen money the woman's executed husband had stashed. The widow's young son is the only person in town wise to the violent pseudo-priest's ulterior motive and flees with his little sister and the loot. Giving chase, Mitchum smoothly morphs Showalter's reverent tune into a foreboding war cry as he pursues his quarry, sending its dulcet tones before him with a menacing grin. 

In this scene, Mitchum's smiling reverend is countered in righteous fashion by Lillian Gish as a steely, world-weary protector of wayward children. She takes back the beautiful hymn from the dapper snake, and the tables begin to turn.

Light and Music: Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction is a film about wrestling your own destiny from forces seemingly beyond your control. Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is a bland taxman whose meticulous life comes unraveled when he starts hearing a voice narrating his actions.

At this point in the film, Harold has fallen for Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a baker he was sent to audit. He has also recently started teaching himself the guitar, a lifelong dream. These threads reach their apex in this glorious scene. It's a great use of a simple song, first played quietly and unassumingly by our earnest hero, then cranked on the soundtrack as we get our sparkling screen kiss. It is another example of music being utilized as a dialect of the cinematic language.

Light and Music: The Man Who Knew Too Much

There is relatively untapped power in using music, specifically source music (that which is heard or played or sung by characters in a non-musical), as a cinematic storytelling tool.

I came upon this notion last night after watching Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), starring Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. Day being, at the time, more famous as a singer than an actress, I suppose it seemed only natural to try and incorporate her hit "Que Sera Sera" into the film some how. When it first appears early in the film, sung playfully by Day and her onscreen son, it reads as just a little forced and corny. But later, once the film has built to it's suspenseful climax, Day's character desperately recapitulates the song in an attempt to find her kidnapped child. Plunking percussively at a grand piano, she raggedly belts the tune until her son whistles back an answer.