The Sound and its Fury: Classical Hollywood Practice in Rear Window and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Sound and its Fury: Classical Hollywood Practice in Rear Window
and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Although the natural progress of classical Hollywood narrative has both been revered and disregarded over the film industry’s long history, comparatively few films have experimented extensively with audio. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), the soundtracks are elevated in their roles from a mere background contribution to become significant narrative devices. Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind both support Claudia Gorbman’s principles of classical Hollywood sound and music: the former, through the use of continuous diegetic sound that creates universal continuity; and the latter, through the vibrant use of varied narrative levels of music and sound that establishes ontological and illocutionary boundaries (and crosses them) in addition to engendering an empathic response in the viewer.

To begin, it is necessary to define classical film music: Gorbman posits that classical Hollywood music seeks to anchor the film’s meaning, highlight the spectacle happening onscreen, and create a pleasurable bonding experience for the audience (“Classical” 166). She outlines seven principles of film music that composition, mixing, and editing strive to create. The source of the music strives to be invisible, as well as figuratively inaudible, i.e. subordinate to the dialogue and visuals. Also, the music should be a signifier for emotion—by changing tonality or tempo to match what is happening on-screen—as well as serve as a form of narrative cueing, by punctuating or reflecting actions of the characters (“Classical” 169). Continuity and Unity merely refer to the idea that music should strive to construct a contiguous narrative whole, with the use of formal and rhythmic continuity or repetition and variation of motifs to aid in the reconstruction of the story. Finally, Gorbman is careful to note that violation of any one of the principles of film audio does not preclude a film from being classified as Classical, so long as it serves to uphold any other principles (“Classical” 183). On a secondary note, there are some unconventional terms that require elucidation. First, the realms of the extradiegetic (the ontological level of narration), the intradiegetic (the level of the story as it unfolds), and the metadiegetic (embedded narratives within the diegetic world) are used as technical terms to explain narrative hierarchy (Campora 124). Second, film audio is comprised of music, which refers to the melodic (or dissonant) soundtrack of the movie, while film sound strictly refers to diegetic noises (either through foley or other means of audio manipulation).

Of course, it is also important to note that Rear Window and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are two very different films, both with regards to narration as well as sound. Rear Window at heart follows the tenets of David Bordwell’s idea of a “classical” narration with a clearly defined linear storyline of “beginning-middle-end.” Eternal Sunshine is definitely less so, as it relies mostly on nonlinear narration and forces the viewer into a surreal point-of-view in order to explore the fragmented psyche of a heartbroken man. However, both these films support and uphold principles of Classical film music as set forth by Gorbman. Both are comparable due to the way sound functions as a bridge between the illocutionary and the ontological; in Rear Window, the world of the intradiegetic apartment of the protagonist is crossed with the metadiegetic sound of the apartments surrounding it, while in Eternal Sunshine, the lines become blurred with the aural overlap between the real world (intradiegetic) and dream world (metadiegetic). In essence, Rear Window can be analyzed using Campora’s terminology, where the intradiegetic world of LB Jeffries (James Stewart) is where much of the narrative takes place, and the audience is forced to experience everything from the protagonist’s point of view; likewise, the metadiegetic worlds of the neighbors that Jeffries is privy to exist outside of his immediate reality, and is only able to be seen and understood through his perspective, his windows and his camera. Despite some superficial deviations from the classical paradigm, the use of ambient sound to create specific emotional atmospheres as well as modulation of existing sound is also important in understanding Gondry’s film in a classical sense.

The invisibility and inaudibility of Rear Window’s soundtrack has been argued to be both classical and less-than-classical (Weis 108). However, evidence suggests that the music present in the film subordinates itself to the dialogue just enough to be considered a work of classical Hollywood practice. Though the myriad songs and tunes that echo through the courtyard and through the windows of LB Jeffries’ apartment seem to dominate the soundstage, instances where the music is notably muted while the camera is “inside” Jeffries’ apartment and louder “outside” is indicative of the film’s classical sound design. However, the soundtrack remains insistent on itself by reminding the audience of its existence, such as around 1:03:00, where Jeffries’ and Lisa Freemont’s (Grace Kelly) conversation is underscored by the party across the courtyard, yet it remains merely part of the background atmosphere and carefully avoids overshadowing Jeffries’ and Lisa’s romantic conversation. “Underscoring” in this film heavily permeates the fabrication of the diegetic world of Rear Window; Hitchcock deliberately used this sort of asynchronous sound instead of redundantly showing the origin of the sound (Weis 109). This disassociation between sound and image, particularly through the use of “underscoring” and layering as opposed to consecutively processed sound is crucial to helping the audience establish a cohesive world within the film. Hitchcock went through great lengths to draw the audience into the film without creating any situations where important dialogue would be drowned out by diegetic music or noise.

The soundtrack of Rear Window also follows Claudia Gorbman’s principles of signifying emotion and cueing narrative action (“Classical” 169). There are quite a few scenes where the music reflects the emotions of the protagonist—or deuteragonist, e.g. person of secondary importance, or foil to the main character, in Lisa’s case. For instance, at around 25:00, Lisa’s theme can be heard as she sets the dinner plates and plates the food; however, the tonality of the song changes to a minor key, reflecting the hurt look on her face as Jeffries tells her sarcastically that the dinner is “Perfect… as always.” Another example can be seen even earlier, at around seven minutes in, where Jeffries is surveying the courtyard as usual and is suddenly attacked by the urge to scratch his leg beneath his cast; as he feels relief from using the scratching stick, the music relieves itself as well and slows in tempo and vitality. This use of connotative narration reinforces the fact that Rear Window utilizes techniques from classical Hollywood practice in order to create a believable and unified movie world.

In Rear Window, Hitchcock also used the sounds and music to create a sense of continuity and unity throughout the movie. For instance, since the movie relies heavily on shot/reverse shot editing, the omnipresent audio that floats throughout the apartment complex’s courtyard serves to create an audial, and therefore spatial, whole. The musical scores that seem to overlap each other throughout the movie serve as a counterpoint to the lack of interaction between the neighbors, juxtaposing the multiple intermingled and prevalent audio presences with their seemingly antagonistic relationships with each other. Additionally, transitions between scenes are also significant with regards to audial continuity. The use of “background” sounds such as city traffic, kids yelling and laughing, as well as an undisclosed woman singing scales create seamless transitions between scenes and diegetic songs. Moreover, motifs that are repeated multiple times, such as Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore” for the newlyweds, or the whistling of the dog-owning couple, or even the development of the “Lisa” song serve to aid the “construction of formal and narrative unity” (“Classical” 169). All of these attributes of continuity and unity are brought full circle by the music in the beginning and end credits; the music begins disguised as a non-diegetic jazz piece, which fades in quality and ends in a commercial, where it is revealed to be merely the radio playing in the studio apartment of the piano composer. To bring the narrative full circle, the effect is reversed in the very last minutes of the film, where the composer plays a recorded version of the “Lisa” theme, which builds from scratchy and tinny diegetic music into a non-diegetic and studio-produced soundtrack.

Claudia Gorbman’s tenets of invisibility and inaudibility with regards to Eternal Sunshine require slightly more forethought in explanation. It should be noted that the music does indeed overtake or is foisted upon the viewer with more emphasis than the dialogue in more than a few places within the film (which comes with the territory, since Michael Gondry was and is a respected music video director). That being said, these exceptions to the rule of “inaudibility” only serve to reinforce other tenets of the paradigm. For instance, at around twenty four minutes in, the crescendo of music swells over the dialogue and bubbles over Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and his friend, Rob Eakin’s (David Cross) conversation. While this particular example happens to violate the idea of “subordination to the voice,” the audience backseats the concern since the “spectator’s attention focuses on the action, the sound, or the very narrative change that the music is helping to dramatize” (“Classical” 172). In this case, the shrieking of the violins to induce suspense transform into an oboe of dejection when Joel reads a card that explains that Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) has erased all her memories of him . The same principle applies to the much of the dialogue within the metadiegetic plotline of the story, especially due to the distortion of the sound when Joel’s memory is being slowly wiped away.

Despite Eternal Sunshine’s anticlassical narration, the use of emotional signifiers and narrative cueing attests to the classical status of the film’s audio. Generally, most music (when it appears, as silence is given just as much emphasis as sound) within the film appears to add an emotional layer to the narrative that is happening on screen. For example, at around 42:30, Joel and Clementine have a particularly heated exchange about Clementine’s supposed ability to raise a child. The music, however, with its plucking cellos and awkward timing, only serve to align the audience with Joel’s perspective, reinforcing his confusion and reluctance to argue. Other examples can be seen even earlier in the film: at around five minutes in, when Joel and Clementine meet aboard the train for the “first” time, the cautious and tip-toeing oboe that interacts with the polka-like enthusiasm of the clarinets reflects the attitudes that the two characters possess onscreen, respectively, as well as start up only when the two are interacting, as opposed to the stark silence of their solitude. On the other hand, the specific distortion of music and sound is used in connotation with the loss of Joel’s memory; when things on screen begin to blur or disappear entirely, the audio begins to fade into static and become muddled. This use of forced sound perspective to imply spatial and ideological distance only serves to reinforce the shifting perspectives that happen onscreen. In these cases, Gorbman proposes that the music in a standard narrative film works “[invite] the spectator to contemplate,” and “[help] to make a spectacle of the images it accompanies,” as well as providing an extra dimension of emotional connotation (“Unheard” 68).

In addition to emotional layering, narrative cueing and continuity is utilized through the use of sound bridges, especially Campora’s idea of “sonic metalepsis.” A metalepsis, as contextualized by Campora, is a transgression of the boundaries between the ontological (separate realities entirely) or illocutionary (separate temporalities/spaces in similar realities). A perfect example of an ontological intrusion happens around 32:35, where Joel (and therefore the audience) hears the two Lacuna employees speaking to each other while he is recalling his trip to the “memory specialist”; their voices permeate into Joel’s immediate reality, even though their dialogue happens on a completely different level of the narrative. The same thing happens around 54:32, where Joel realizes what is happening, and intensely regrets his decision to remove his memories of Clementine—his wails of anguish are overlapped with “Something” by The Willowz, which reveals that his apartment has all but been taken over by the stoned Lacuna employees. Though Campora’s argument about sonic metalepsis emphasizes its alleged anti-classical and nonconventional use in a multi-strand narrative, his last paragraph on the matter explains that the sound bridges that shift between the intradiegetic and metadiegetic levels of the film are visibly and audibly marked (as opposed to art cinema) to reduce narrative complexity (128). A sound bridge by any other name is still a sound bridge—it still acts formally in the same way, by providing visual and rhythmic continuity between shots and filling the gap within scene or shot transitions. Ultimately, sonic metalepsis only reinforces Gorbman’s principle of narrative cueing through the use of shifted character subjectivity (point-of-view), supplying formal demarcations, and establishing setting and characters (169).

In Eternal Sunshine, Gondry sticks closely to Gorbman’s principle of unity through the use of specific motifs and recurring bits of music. For instance, the same dissonant orchestral piece plays when Joel and Clementine try to escape the looming and inexorable destruction of his memories, which leads to a sense of pressure and deadline within the audience. The example used earlier, where the oboe and clarinet engage in a sort of hesitant dialogue, is used again around 1:05:40, but is instead transposed for an entire string ensemble; the added depth of the characters’ agitation in holding together Joel’s fragmented psyche is reflected in the staccato’d strokes of the cellos and violins. Finally, the theme “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” by Beck is played at the chronological “beginning” of the movie seventeen minutes in, and reflects the intense sorrow that Joel feels when Clementine breaks up their relationship; however, the theme is played again at the end of the film, where they both hesitantly decide to rekindle their relationship. Much like Rear Window, this repetition and variation of musical themes “contributes much to the dramaturgy and [clarity] of [the film’s] formal” structure (Gorbman 183).

In the end, Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind both support Claudia Gorbman’s principles of classical Hollywood sound and music: Rear Window, through the use of continuous diegetic sound that creates universal continuity; and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, through the vibrant use of varied narrative levels of music and sound that establishes ontological and illocutionary boundaries (and crosses them) in addition to engendering an empathic response in the viewer.


Campora, Matthew. "Art Cinema and New Hollywood: Multiform Narrative and Sonic Metalepsis in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." New Review of Film and Television Studies 7.2 (2009): 119-31. Print.
Claudia Gorbman, “Classical Hollywood Practice,” in Critical Visions in Film Theory:
Classic and Contemporary Readings ed. Timothy Corrigan et al (Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2011), 165-185.
Claudia Gorbman, “Identification,” Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music
(London: BFI, 1987) 64-69.
Weis, Elisabeth. The Silent Scream: Alfred Hitchcock's Sound Track. Rutherford [N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1982. Print.