Transfer of media characteristics in Preston Sturges’s screwball comedy Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Abstract

Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges, 1948) is a complex film with an intricate play on the transfer of media characteristics among dissimilar media. In this article, the source of the theoretical approach is mainly Lars Elleström’s (2014); its presentation in Bruhn and Schirrmacher (2022) is also used as a reference. The case study focuses on the performance of two Overtures of operas and a tone poem for a concert. In the film, they are used both in the representation of the concert, and as film music, the main character being an orchestra conductor who eventually imagines secret revenge dramas and becomes the sound recorder of three fiction films. The four modalities of media interact in Sturges’s film with great variety, during the rehearsal of Rossini’s Overture before the concert, or during the concert as we share the conductor’s mind busy satisfying his secret obsessions, and even, after the concert, when the material and sensorial modalities of sounds appear in the screening of objects. The main point of the transfer of these media characteristics is how they interact in the spectator’s mind; moreover, they either arouse emotions that are shared with the characters, or laughter owing to burlesque effects thus created.