Cradle Will Rock Soundtrack (Page 2)

Another interesting thing that takes place in the soundtrack takes place shortly after the opening credits while the jazz intro is still in effect and deals both with the theories of space and fidelity. What first happens is a slow transfer from non-diegetic to diegetic sound. As the music is dying down, the piano in the piece continues to play until it is the sole instrument in the arrangement. As this is happening, the camera that has been winding down the street begins to slowly enter the window of an apartment building. What the audience is then viewing is a man playing the piano in his bedroom, and there was no noticeable cut in the music only a smooth transition. The music transfers from a typical background music into an actual composition coming from a piano. This helps back up the ideas of Bordwell and Thompson, "that the film's narration deliberatly blurs boundaries between different spatial categories". The man that the focus is on is the eventual composer of the movie's namesake Cradle Will Rock and is shown actually working on his musical.
An interesting twist in the music occurs while he is working in the very same scene. As he is working out and singing through his composition, he looks over to a model scale play set that includes small props and dolls for actors and actresses. As he continues to play, he focuses in on one of the actress dolls and listens to her belt out a beautiful line of his song. There exists "a disparity between sound and image" that Bordwell and Thompson describe as fidelity. This use of fidelity helps show how lost in his work the composer really is.

Continue to page 3 of Cradle Will Rock Soundtrack, 4