Nondiegetic Sound In The Film 'Breathless'

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Originally, I watched the film Breathless prior to receiving the assignment. Interestingly, in regards to the assignment: cinematic listening, when I closed my eyes to recollect portions of the film I couldn’t actually ‘see’ it but I could, ‘hear’ it. The loud sirens, the congested streets of Paris, the obnoxious gun shots, all intertwined with the beauty of the french cadence and a suspenseful jazzy, soundtrack. Similar, to the revolutionary jump cuts, director Jean-Luc Godard employed both nondiegetic and diegetic sound to create a casual, almost effortless style, emulating the Parisian attitude and spearheading the french new wave film era. Nondiegetic sound refers to sound that, “is represented as coming from a source outside the story world” (284). We notice nondiegetic sound in Breathless immediately when the film opens. In the background, a nondiegetic jazzy, gangster like musical score by Martial Solal dominates the ‘feel’ of Breathless. Trumpets, piano, chimes, and orchestra music cue the audience to suspenseful events such as, the chase in the first act. For example, sleepy jazz music is suddenly transformed into …show more content…

External sound refers to any sound that has a physical source in the scene. Internal diegetic sound is subjective and, “comes from inside the mind of the character,” an interior monologue that gives us the characters inner thoughts (288). Breathless introduces us to Michael’s inner thoughts in the opening scene when he thinks, “after all I’m an asshole.” We ‘hear’ it, Michel ‘thinks’ it. Similarly, when he’s driving from Marseille, he mysteriously peers in the camera as if he is actually talking to the audience, this is an example of when it becomes external diegetic sound. In this scene he goes in and out of external and internal diegetic when Michel speaks about France, the women hitchhikers, the bad driving, the police, all an inner monologue that we hear as

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