Miten sota soi? : sotaelokuva, ääni ja musiikki ; What Does War Sound Like? : War Films, Sound and Music

In this book, I discuss sound design and music in World War II combat films. My main object is to study audiovisual aesthetics and narration in war films from the point of view of sound and music and to demonstrate what a pivotal role music and sound design play in the construction of the ideological meanings of a film. World War II films represent a prototype of war film by which conceptions of history are narrated but also, as importantly, by which the conceptions of today’s world and the justice of the present wars and conflicts are negotiated. War films form a central cultural imagery and mythology through which the conceptions of national identity, history and future, among other things, are shaped, defined and re-negotiated. Moreover, war films are entries in the debate on the deepest perennial problems of mankind in general. Music plays a decisive role in this ideological communication in war films, and indeed music is an age-old vehicle for propaganda. Often it is the music that tells the audience what to think of the war, the historical events, the violence and the deaths on the screen. Of all the means a film uses to bind the viewer emotionally to the film, music often is the most powerful. It almost forces the audience to identify with the narrative, and for the most part it does so insidiously, without the audience noticing. The first chapter of the book outlines the field and scope of film music research and sound studies from the point of view of cultural musicology, the study of auditory culture and hermeneutic music analysis. After this introduction, I present detailed analyses on the following six WWII combat films: the first two versions of The Unknown Soldier (1955, dir. Edvin Laine; 1985, dir. Rauni Mollberg, Finland); The Iron Cross (1976, dir. Sam Peckinpah, UK/West Germany); Das Boot (1981/1997, dir. Wolfgang Petersen, [West] Germany); Come and See (1985, dir. Elem Klimov, USSR); and The Thin Red Line (1998, dir. Terrence Malick, USA). The focus in the analyses is on how the WWII combat ...