Functions of dialogue underscoring in American feature film

This dissertation provides an analytical framework for understanding how music functions in a scene containing dialogue. Unlike previous studies, which largely ignore music's contribution to the interpretation of dialogue, often suggesting that music should simply get out of dialogue's way, this examination identifies methods by which music enriches the meaning of dialogue. Four broad functions of dialogue underscoring are presented: the clarification of scene structure, the communication of feeling, the accentuation of speech, and the reinforcement of dialogue meaning. Each function represents a task that music performs when accompanying dialogue.; After these functions are discussed individually, analyses of all underscored dialogue passages in two films are provided in order to illustrate how the functions operate in tandem. These films are Mervyn LeRoy's epic drama Anthony Adverse (1936), which contains a traditional Hollywood Classical film score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Phil Alden Robinson's modern cyberthriller Sneakers (1992), which contains a stylistically eclectic score by James Horner. Films from a variety of genres and historical epochs were also chosen for shorter analyses, including: King Kong (1933), Captain Blood (1935), The Sea Hawk (1940), Rebecca (1940), Mildred Pierce (1945), Born to be Bad (1950), Touch of Evil (1958), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Groundhog Day (1993), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Legally Blonde (2001), and Without a Paddle (2004).