The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman's Film. By Heather Laing.

Abstract

Film-music studies and gender studies have come a long way in musicology. Each has established productive lines of enquiry, and each boasts important monographs whose influence extends well beyond the specific field. To take two famous examples, Susan McClary's Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis, 1991) and Claudia Gorbman's Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington, Ind., 1987) have become iconic in their respective area and spurred imaginative research across topical borders. Somewhat surprisingly, investigation of film music in terms of gender is only in its infancy. Heather Laing attempts to fill the gap through her study of gender and film music in 1940s films. The book is only partly successful in its ambitious goal, but at its best has a great deal to contribute. A pathbreaking study, it promises to jump-start further work on gender and film music. Laing's premiss is simple. In 1940s films in which a woman has a key role, specifically melodrama and the so-called woman's film, non-diegetic music crafts women's emotional make-up, while diegetic music is reserved for men, especially as performers and composers. This divide echoes long-standing ideological binaries between women's tie with emotions and men's connection with the mind and, by extension, artistic creativity and control. The core of the study consists of four interpretative chapters (2–5) on key repertory linked with certain functions of women's appearance in the films. Chapter 2 takes up the Hollywood tear-jerker Now, Voyager (1942) with respect to women and dialogue, which Laing confusedly refers to as ‘voice’, which can mean something quite different from spoken words. The next chapter explores the female listener in relation to the male performer in Max Ophuls's Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), an American film that is unfortunately unavailable at present in video format. Chapter 4 concerns the female musician—woman as musical agent—in the British war-time film Love Story (1944). Finally, chapter 5 addresses the male musician in another British war-time film, Dangerous Moonlight (1941). Laing justifies the inclusion of a masculine focus by arguing that this is needed to highlight the differences with the treatment of women, the stated focus of the book.