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Metafilm Music in Jean-Luc Godard's Cinema

Michael Baumgartner author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:12th Oct '22

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Metafilm Music in Jean-Luc Godard's Cinema cover

Hailed as a leading innovator of visual montage, unique storytelling style, and ground-breaking cinematography, Jean-Luc Godard is a prominent pioneer in sculpting complex soundtracks altering the familiar relationship between sound and image, but his achievements in sound have been largely overlooked. Such a lacuna in the extensive research on Godard's work is unfortunate, as Godard's lifelong preoccupation of exploring self-reflexively all aspects of filmmaking particularly affects film music. With the novel approach of metafilm music, extrapolated from Jean-Luc Godard's oeuvre, this book not only closes up a crucial gap in Godard research, but also offers detailed analyses of the music as metafilm music in Contempt, Alphaville, Band of Outsiders, Pierrot le fou, First Name: Carmen, Histoire(s) du cinéma, among other films and video productions. The innovative scholarly concept of metafilm music, enriching the burgeoning field of music in audio-visual media, describes how Godard thinks about film music with film music. This book thus provides a thorough examination of Godard's self-reflexive approach to film music which has resulted in a lifelong creation of multi-layered soundtracks pushing the envelope of film music and sound to the limit.

Brilliantly informed and boldly written, this magisterial study gets to the heart of Godard's pioneering, multilayered practice of 'metafilm music'. Baumgartner reveals in rich and fascinating detail the remarkable consistency of Godard's self-reflexive musical strategies and their significance for understanding both the ontology of film music and the critical challenges of audioviewing. * James S. Williams, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK *

ISBN: 9780190497163

Dimensions: 157mm x 236mm x 27mm

Weight: 771g

520 pages