“Feeling comes first.” Music and Sounds as Entertaining Forces in The City, The River

Abstract

The nonfiction filmmaking that burgeoned in the U.S. in 1935 was deeply committed to the issues of truth and authenticity, in strong opposition to the commodities delivered by entertainment industries. However, the pervasive use of non-diegetic music at the expense of mere facts and scientific inquiry reveals how blurred the boundaries between historical data and creative storytelling were. As in the soundtrack of mainstream fiction films produced by Hollywood, the musical scores of The City (1939), The River (1938), and One Tenth of Our Nation (1940) dealt with the purpose of entertaining the audience not only adding humor and aural pleasure but also revealing some hints of a poetic quality apparently at odds with the films’ expository purposes.