A film score can tell us something the camera cannot yet show. In Jaws, John Williams makes the unseen shark present through two notes. In Vertigo, Bernard Herrmann gives romantic longing a troubling undertow. In No Country for Old Men, Carter Burwell and the sound team make us listen harder by keeping the music almost unrecognisable. These are different ways of deciding what the audience knows, whose experience it shares and how long a moment lasts.
The most revealing question is seldom whether the music is beautiful. It is: what would this scene mean if the cue arrived earlier, changed shape or vanished? Here are five places to listen for the answer.
The shark is often out of sight in Jaws, but the film has another way of placing it in the water. Williams's two-note figure does not describe teeth or tell us where to look. It gives movement and intention to an apparently empty stretch of sea. We begin scanning the image for a threat we can hear but cannot see. As the American Film Institute's account of Williams and Spielberg explains, the shark was kept largely off-screen and the score carried much of that approach's menace.
The cue changes the information available to us. It puts us ahead of the people in the water and makes ordinary movement on its surface look vulnerable.
Listen to the entrance rather than the famous notes in isolation. What can you infer, and what does the image still refuse to confirm?
We often call a recurring musical idea a motif. That sounds neat, as though each character has a label and the composer simply plays it on cue. The richer possibilities begin when a motif belongs to an object, a place or an idea, and when the surrounding story changes what we hear in it.
Howard Shore said that while writing The Lord of the Rings, he kept Tolkien's book open and returned to it while shaping themes for particular scenes. In his interview with Rhino, he notes that the Ring itself has three motifs. One object can therefore carry more than one musical thought. The score has room for the Ring's significance to shift with the situation, rather than repeatedly announcing its presence.
On a rewatch, follow one idea through its appearances. Hear the instruments around it and when it enters. A familiar sound can feel secure in one scene and uneasy in the next. Film music remembers earlier scenes for us, then asks us to reconsider them.
For readers who want to get close to the actual construction of cues, Andy Hill's Scoring the Screen: The Secret Language of Music for Film and Visual Media examines music from films measure by measure and includes composer interviews. It is a substantial craft book, especially rewarding if you want to follow the composer's choices in detail.
Herrmann's music for Vertigo is a useful test of the idea that a lush score must be endorsing a romance. The film follows a man's obsession and his attempt to remake a woman according to an image in his mind. Its music can sweep us into his longing while leaving us uncomfortable with it. That tension matters: a score can make a point of view seductive without making it trustworthy.
The opening music's circling quality seems to move without finding rest. Listen for the distance between what Scottie wants and what the woman on screen might want. The music makes that gap harder to ignore. This is a reading of the film, rather than a secret message decoded from a chord.
Steven C. Smith's research on Vertigo for Hitchcock and Herrmann puts romantic obsession at the centre of their collaboration and examines the score in detail. Hitchcock and Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores that Changed Cinema is the book here for readers drawn to the creative relationship behind the films, as well as to what the music does inside them.
A film cue is written for images that move and cut. The first bicycle flight in E.T. makes the point wonderfully. The music builds while the boys are still travelling towards the cliff. Then the picture opens out and Williams's theme releases. The BFI's close look at the sequence traces the build and the cut to the wide shot. We feel the lift because the score and the image have prepared it together.
There is a revealing production detail, too: AFI notes that Spielberg re-edited the film's final sequence to fit Williams's music. Music can influence the cut itself.
An album cannot quite reproduce this exchange with the image. Return to the scene and notice where music anticipates a cut or makes a change in scale feel larger.
Royal S. Brown's Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music is an analytical companion for that kind of viewing. Brown reads music alongside the image in films including Psycho and Laura, rather than treating the score as a set of memorable tracks.
In No Country for Old Men, the quiet is built, not simply left over. Burwell describes his work on the film as sustained tones that blend with the effects, entering and receding almost below conscious notice. He says that through the main film there are no songs or identifiable score. Wind, boots and the sounds of a room can therefore demand the sort of attention a musical theme might otherwise command.
Burwell also wrote for the end titles. Calling it a film with “no score” misses the craft of keeping those tones close to the sound design. Its restraint gives us fewer musical signs for when to brace ourselves or when a threat has passed.
If a cue enters after a long stretch of apparent quiet, its presence becomes an event. If it never offers the release you expect, unease follows you out of the scene.
Choose one relationship between sound and picture and follow it through a scene.
| Film | Listen for | What changes in the storytelling |
|---|---|---|
| Jaws | The two-note figure before a clear sight of the shark | The unseen water gains a threatening presence |
| The Lord of the Rings | A familiar idea in a new context | An object or place can carry more than one meaning |
| Vertigo | Romantic intensity around an obsessive gaze | The character's longing becomes compelling and troubling |
| E.T. | The build towards the wide shot of flight | The cut and the musical release make the lift feel earned |
| No Country for Old Men | Tones merging with footsteps, wind and effects | We lose the usual musical signals of safety or danger |
For more of the people and decisions behind a film, see our guide to behind-the-scenes film books.
A score usually means music composed for the film. Soundtrack can mean all recorded sound, though it often means an album of songs and score cues.
No. Start with a cue's entrance, a returning sound, or the point where music meets an edit. Technical terms can sharpen an observation later.
A radio or band within the story is usually called source or diegetic music. A composed score generally plays for the audience. Films sometimes cross that boundary.
Yes. Burwell's sustained tones in No Country for Old Men are a fine example. They sit so close to the sound effects that a conventional tune would change the film's texture and its suspense.
The next time a piece of film music stays with you, return to the scene rather than the track alone. Watch what the camera lets you know, then listen for what the score asks you to suspect. That exchange is where much of the storytelling lives. Explore our film craft books.
