Hymns for the Fallen: Combat Movie Music and Sound after VietnamIn Hymns for the Fallen, Todd Decker listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in the midst of battle and to provoke reflection on the experience of combat. Considering landmark movies—such as Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper—as well as lesser-known films, Decker shows how the domain of sound, an experientially rich and culturally resonant aspect of cinema, not only invokes the realities of war, but also shapes the American audience’s engagement with soldiers and veterans as flesh-and-blood representatives of the nation. Hymns for the Fallen explores all three elements of film sound—dialogue, sound effects, music—and considers how expressive and formal choices in the soundtrack have turned the serious war film into a patriotic ritual enacted in the commercial space of the cinema. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 9 | |
PART II DIALOGUE | 63 |
PART III SOUND EFFECTS | 123 |
PART IV MUSIC | 171 |
Acknowledgments | 267 |
Abbreviations | 269 |
Notes | 271 |
| 289 | |
| 295 | |
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84 Charlie MoPic Act of Valor American Sniper American soldiers AMPAS Apocalypse audience Band of Brothers Barber's Adagio battle battlefield beat beat-driven Black Hawk Boys in Company cadence Casualties chapter characters Chris cinematic close combat films context Coppola Courage Under Fire cycle dead death Deer Hunter dialogue diegetic sound director elegiac music elegiac register end titles episode explosion film's final Flags Full Metal Jacket genre Green Zone GWOT Hamburger Hill heard helicopter helo Hollywood Hurt Locker image track Iraq Iraqi Iwo Jima Japanese Jarhead jungle Kill listening Lone Survivor Marines melody military move movie narrative Oanh opening Platoon plays popular music rotors Saving Private Ryan scene score album script SEALs sequence shot singing song sonic sound effects soundtrack story strings subgenre texture theme Thin Red Line unfolds United 93 veil cues veil music veterans Vietnam Vietnamese viewer visual voice voice-over watching words Zero Dark Thirty Zimmer