Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir

by Robert Miklitsch

Overview

Siren City engagingly illustrates how sound tracks in 1940s film noir are often just as compelling as the genre's vaunted graphics. Focusing on a wide range of celebrated and less well known films and offering an introductory discussion of film sound, it resonates with the sounds and source music of classic American noir-gunshots and sirens, swing riffs and canaries. Along with the proverbial private eye and femme fatale, these audiovisuals are central to the noir aesthetic and one important reason the genre reverberates with audiences around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813553924
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

ROBERT MIKLITSCH is a professor in the English department at Ohio University where he teaches film and media studies. He is the editor of Psycho-Marxism and the author of From Hegel to Madonna: Towards a General Economy of "Commodity Fetishism" and Roll Over Adorno: Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media.

Table of Contents

Preview ix

Credits xxi

Introduction: Sound and (Source) Music 1

Call Northsode 777

Among the Living

Prologue: Small World, Big Sign 19

Out of the Past

1 House Sound: Reverb, Offscreen Sound, and Voice-Over Narration in Early RKO Noir 24

Stranger on the Third Floor

Murder, My Sweet

2 Sonic Effects: Sound and Fury in Forties Noir 53

Out of the Past

The Naked City

The Street with No Name

Mildred Pierce

The Big Sleep

Kiss of Death

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Road House

The Dark Corner

Cornered

Possessed

Railroaded!

I Walk Alone

Cat People

Double Indemnity

Nightmare Alley

The Woman in the Window

The Bribe

Leave Her to Heaven

Undercurrent

Raw Deal

This Gun for Hire

The Crooked Way

The Chase

Kiss the Blood off My Hands

The Dark Past

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Manhandled

Act of Violence

Crack-Up

Border Incident

3 Audio Technologies: Intercoms and Dictaphones, Telephones and Radios, Phonographs and Jukeboxes 84

The Big Clock

Double Indemnity

Force of Evil

Sorry, Wrong Number

The Set-Up

Lady in the Lake

The Blue Dahlia

Raw Deal

White Heat

He Walked by Night

The Woman in the Window

Scarlet Street

Laura

The Unsuspected

Mildred Pierce

Black Angel

Dark Passage

The Blue Dahlia

The Locket

Detour

Fallen Angel

4 Blues in the Night: Popular and Classical Instrumental Source Music 128

Born to Kill

The Set-Up

Ride the Pink Horse

Crossfire

Brute Force

Dead Reckoning

The Dark Corner

Kiss of Death

Force of Evil

When Strangers Marry

Out of the Past

Leave Her to Heaven

Possessed

Undercurrent

Nocturne

5 Singing Detectives and Bluesmen, Black Jazzwomen and Torch Singers 164

The Naked City

House of Strangers

Key Largo

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Gilda

Moonrise

The Glass Key

House of Strangers

I Walk Alone

Road House

6 The Big Number (Side B): Killing Them Softly 192

Bewitched

Moonrise

They Live by Night

The Big Sleep

Scene of the Crime

Mildred Pierce

Race Street

The Bribe

Dead Reckoning

7 The Big Number (A Side): Siren City 222

Nora Prentiss

This Gun for Hire

Gilda

The Lady from Shanghai

Epilogue: Silences 251

Out of the Past

Notes 255

Index 275

Editorial Reviews

"Siren City succeeds because of its fine analyses. Miklitsch's work goes a long way in presenting us with equal measures of
variety, accessibility and entertainment."

Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media

"Amidst the sounds of echoing high heels, gunfire, and torch songs, Robert Miklitsch discovers the unheard rhythms of film noir. Siren City charts a new path through the genre to reveal how it was shaped equally by its audio aesthetics as by its visual tropes."

Carleton College - Jay Beck

"In this masterful book, Miklitsch explores the narrative and dramatic roles of sound and source music in 1940s film noir. With its emphasis on performance, song texts, and 'points of audition' rather than technical features of melodies and harmonies, this accessible book provides a more effective model for studying sound and music and their relationship to film images than does Gregg Redner's Deleuze and Film Music. Highly recommended."

Choice

"Robert Miklitsch has convinced me. Sound and music in film noir are every bit as important as the visuals. Siren City drives home this argument with authority and elegance. Highly recommended."

author of Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture - Krin Gabbard

"Siren City is the most extensive study of sound in film noir to date. This project is ideal scholarship; it is both groundbreaking work and has a wealth of prior work with which to engage. It is likely to attract readers interested in either film sound or the noir genre in addition to those drawn to their intersection."

Film Criticism

"Siren City succeeds because of its fine analyses. Miklitsch's work goes a long way in presenting us with equal measures of
variety, accessibility and entertainment."

Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media

"Siren City is the most extensive study of sound in film noir to date. This project is ideal scholarship; it is both groundbreaking work and has a wealth of prior work with which to engage. It is likely to attract readers interested in either film sound or the noir genre in addition to those drawn to their intersection."

From the Publisher

"Amidst the sounds of echoing high heels, gunfire, and torch songs, Robert Miklitsch discovers the unheard rhythms of film noir. Siren City charts a new path through the genre to reveal how it was shaped equally by its audio aesthetics as by its visual tropes."

— Jay Beck

Carleton College