La Science de Michel Gondry: online scholarship on his films & videos

Last updated April 19, 2010

Electric Dreams? Above and below, images from Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008)

 

Michel Gondry and Robert Stickgold discuss dreams, filmmaking and the scientific method (SeedMagazine.com, 2007).

Film Studies For Free presents un petit hommage -- en images, hypertexte, et vidéos --to one of its favourite filmmakers, Michel Gondry, French maestro of the music-video form, and also responsible, as director, for the audiovisual brilliance of the following films: Human Nature (2001); Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004); La Science des rêves/The Science of Sleep (2006); Be Kind Rewind (2008); and The Green Hornet (2010).

There are some truly wonderful scholarly resources linked to below: merci bien, as ever, to their authors, editors and publishers for making them freely accessible online.

• Dwayne Avery, 'The Future is behind you: the Reclamation of Place in Be Kind Rewind', Movement 1.1: the futures of cinema, 2009 
• Jim Batcho, 'Overlapping Levels of the Diegesis in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 11, Nos. 8-9, Aug/Sept 2007
• New Julia Driver, 'Memory, Desire, and Value in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', in Christopher Grau (ed), Philosophers on Film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (Routledge, 2009)
• New Michel Gondry, 'Foreword', in Christopher Grau (ed), Philosophers on Film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (Routledge, 2009)
• New Christopher Grau, 'Introduction' to Philosophers on Film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (Routledge, 2009)
• New Christopher Grau, 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the morality of memory',  Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64 (1), Winter 2006
• Carolyn Jess-Cooke, 'Narrative and Mediatized Memory in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', Scope, Issue 8, June 2007
• Brandon M. Hancock, 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 9, No. 1 April 2005
• Erin Hill-Parks, 'From Film to Life: The Construction of Identity in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I “Heart” Huckabees', From Camera Lens To Critical Lens A Collection Of Best Essays On Film Adaptation, edited by Rebecca Housel (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006) 
• Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - screenplay, 2003
• John Finlay Kerr, ‘Rereading’ Be Kind Rewind (USA 2008): How film history can be remapped through the social memories of popular culture', Screening the Past, Issue 24, 2009
• Mike Lim, 'Review of Garrett Stewart, Framed Time: Toward a Postfilmic Cinema. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007', Screening the Past, Issue 23, 2008
• Colm O'Shea, 'Out of His Head: Metaphysical Escape Attempts in the Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman ', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 63, February 2009 
• Heidi Peeters , 'The semiotics of music videos: it must be written in the stars', Image [and] Narrative, Issue 8, May 2004
• A Raz, and M Paasivirta, 'The Science and Fiction of Memory Removal', PsycCRITIQUES, Vol 50(42), 2005
• Richard Rushton, 'Cinema After Deleuze After 9/11', Postmodern Culture, Volume 19, No. 2, 2009 
• Fredericka Shulman, 'The Objects of Memory: Collecting Eternal Sunshine', Philament, Issue 5, 2005
• Jason Sperb, 'Be Kind Rewind / or, an incomplete essay on Off-Modern American Cinephilia', Jamais Vu, December 13, 2009
• Gunnar Strøm, 'The Two Golden Ages  of Animated Music Video', Animation Studies, Vol.2, 2007
• Dayton Taylor and Hector Macleod, Digital Air Techniques (2008)
• Scott Thrill, '"How My Brain Works": An Interview with Michel Gondry', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 53, August 2006
• José van Dijck, 'Memory Matters in the Digital Age', Configurations, Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2004
• Thomas E. Wartenberg, 'Film as Argument', Film Studies, Issue 8, Summer 2006

Matt Zoller Seitz shares his thoughts with fellow filmmaker critic Kevin B Lee while rewatching Michel Gondry's 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, May 2009

 

 The original music video of Gary Jules' and Michael Andrews' cover version of Tears for Fears' song Mad World, directed by Michel Gondry. This song features in the soundtrack of Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)

Music to the Eyes: Film Music Essays and Resources Online

Film Studies For Free silently but sonorously brings you its list of links to high-quality and freely accessible online scholarly writings pertaining to music, sound, film, video, and television (last updated 19 May 2009).

• Tim Anderson, 'Review of Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema'
  

• Raphael Atlas, 'That Loving Feeling Meets the Danger Zone: Men, Sex, and Music in Top Gun'


• David Baker, 'I'm glad I'm not me!" Marking transitivity in Don't look back'


• Randall Barnes, 'Barton Fink: Atmospheric Sounds of the Creative Mind'


• Giorgio Biancorosso, 'Beginning Credits and Beyond: Music and the Cinematic Imagination'


• Ian Biddle, 'Love thy Neighbour? The Political Economy of Musical Neighbours?'


• Alexander Binns, 'Music in the films of Wong Kar-wai'


• Baldur Bjarnason, 'An Audiovisual Heterotopia'
  

• David Butler, 'The Days Do Not End: Film Music, Time and Bernard Herrmann'


• Lesley Chow, 'What the Sound Is Saying: How Music Moves in Bertolucci'


• Lesley Chow, 'Music, Morricone, and Jack Nicholson's Voice: The Soundscape of Wolf'


• Rebecca Coyle and Michael Hannan, 'Marking time in the Barry McKenzie films' music'


• Rebecca Coyle, 'Identifying Film Scoring [review of Anahid Kassabian, Hearing Film]'
  

• Leonardo D'Amico, '"People and sounds”: Filming African music between visual anthropology and television documentary'
  

• Lynda Dee Dixon and Patricia A. Washington, 'Rap Music Videos: The Voices of Organic Intellectuals'
  

• Aniruddha Dutta, 'Nation, Liberalisation And Film Songs: Technology And Hybridisation In Contemporary Hindi Film Music'


• E. Todd Fiegel, 'Bernard Herrmann as Musical Colorist: A Musico-Dramatic Analysis of His Score for The Day the Earth Stood Still'


• Steve Fore, 'From Rock kids to Beijing bastards: PRC youth subcultures on film before and after June 4'


• Liz Garnett, 'Musical Meaning Revisited: Thoughts on an 'Epic' Critical Musicology'
• Ian Garwood, 'Sound and Space in the Split-Screen Movie'


• Claudia Gorbman, 'Vigo/Jaubert' (scroll to p. 69)
  

• Catherine Grant, '''The "Author Function" in Transnational Film Adaptation: the Case of El lugar sin límites' (Arturo Ripstein, Manuel Puig, José Donoso)'


• Andrew Grossman, 'How to Murder John Williams: Toward an Ideology of Contrapuntal Antirealism'


• Andrew Grossman, 'Finding Unlikely Ideology in Prokofiev: Polyphonic and Anti-Authoritarian Gestures in The Gambler'


• Andrew Grossman, 'False Consonance and False Consciousness: Contrarian Notes on the Ideology of Film Music'


• Amanda Howell, 'Spectacle, masculinity, and music in blaxploitation cinema'


• Randolph Jordan, 'Brakhage’s Silent Legacy for Sound Cinema'


• Randolph Jordan, 'Transcending the Fragmentation of Experience: The acousmêtre on the air in the films of Michael Snow'


• Randolph Jordan, 'The Work of Hildegard Westerkamp in the Films of Gus Van Sant'


• Brett Kashmere, 'Beyond Notes: On Music, Improvisation and Film, and Writing [Brakhage]'


• Brett Kashmere, 'Semi-Random Thoughts about Improvisation, Jazz, and/or (a) Film in No Real Particular Order (Then Again, Maybe So)'


• Anahid Kassabian, 'Songstruck: rethinking identifications in romantic comedies'


• Anahid Kassabian, 'Ubiquitous Listening and Networked Subjectivity'


• Andrew L. Kaye, 'The Film Score and the African Musical Experience: Some comments on a work in progress'


• Victoria Large, Clouds and Scattered Sun: Kelly and Donen's It's Always Fair Weather'


• Jerrold Levinson, 'Film Music and Narrative Agency', in David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (eds.) , Post-Theory (via Google Books)


• William Lawrence McGinney, 'The Whole as a Result of its Parts: Assembly in Aaron Copland's Score for The Red Pony' (e-thesis)


• Brian McMillan, 'Complicitous Critique: Dancer in the Dark as Postmodern Musical'


• Patricia Mellencamp, 'Spectacle and Spectator: Looking Through the American Musical Comedy'


• Miguel Mera, 'Reap What You Sow: "Perfect Day" [Lou Reed, 1973] / Trainspotting' in Matthew Caley and Steve Lannin (eds), Pop Fiction: The Song in Cinema (via Google Books)


• Cory Messenger, 'Act naturally: Elvis Presley, the Beatles and "rocksploitation"'


• Tony Mitchell, 'Minimalist menace: The Necks score The boys'


• Mladen Milicevic, 'Film Sound Beyond Reality: Subjective Sound in Narrative Cinema'
  

• Niall Moody, 'Motion as the Connection Between Audio and Visuals'


• Scott Murphy, 'The Major Tritone Progression in Recent Hollywood Science Fiction Films'


• Ellen J. Nasto, 'Bernard Herrmann: An Annotated Index of Materials'


• Andrew Patrick Nelson, 'Notes and Thoughts on the use of popular songs in John Hughes Sixteen Candles (1984)' Part One


• Andrew Patrick Nelson, 'Notes and Thoughts on the use of popular songs in John Hughes Sixteen Candles (1984)' Part Two


• David P. Neumeyer, 'Schoenberg at the Movies: Dodecaphony and Film'


• Louis Niebur, 'Review of Kay Dickinson (ed.), Movie Music: The Film Reader'


• Offscreen Journal's 'Favourite Moments of Film Sound': Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind By: Jim Batcho; Patriot Games By: Aden Evens; The Jazz Singer By: Claudia Gorbman ; La Maman et la putain By: André Habib; The Haunting By: Thomas Phillips; Love is the Devil By: Martin Shingler; Stalker By: Donato Totaro; Tati, Hitchcock, Antonioni By: Elisabeth Weis; The Exorcist By: William Whittington ; The Wilhelm Scream By: Benjamin Wright.


• Offscreen Journal's 'Discourses on Diegesis': The Success Story of a Misnomer By: Henry M. Taylor; Diegetic Commentaries By: Martin F. Norden; Constructing the Diegesis in a Multi-Channel World By: Mark Kerins; Does Anybody Hear? By: Randolph Jordan; Acoustics of the Soul By: Randy Thom.


• Offscreen Journal's 'The State of the Art [on integration between sound and image]': Visual Music as Performing Art By: Fred Collopy; Synchronous Form In Visual Music By: Michael Betancourt ; On Sound and Image as a Single Entity By: Barry Spinello


• Ted Pigeon, 'On the Cinema of Music'
  

• Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk, 'Apprehending Beauty [Review of Michel Chion, The Thin Red Line]
  

• Robert Robertson, 'Eisenstein on his audiovisual collaboration with Prokofiev'
  

• Karyn Charles Rybacki and Donald Jay Rybacki, 'Cultural Approaches to the Rhetorical Analysis of Selected Music Videos'
  


• Hannu Salmi, 'Composing the past: music and the sense of history in Hollywood spectacles of the 1950s and early 1960s'
  

• Diane Sandars, 'From the warehouse to the multiplex: techno and rave culture's reconfiguration of the late 1990s sci-fi spectacle as musical performance'
  

• Diana Sandars, 'Review of The Pop The Song in Cinema, edited by Matthew Caley and Steve Lannin'


• Tom Schneller, 'Death and Love: Bernard Herrmann's Score for Vertigo'
  

• Julia Schpinitskaya, 'Solaris by A. Tarkovsky: Musical-Visual Troping, Paradigmatism, Cognitive Stereoscopy'


• Linda Schubert, 'The Film Scores of Henry Vars in the United States: An Overview'
  

• Dennis C. Schweitzer, 'Ton and Traum: A Critical Analysis of the Use of Sound Effects and Music in Contemporaary Narrative Film' e-thesis
  

• 'Silent Jane', 'Beautiful Fragments of a Traumatic Memory: Synaesthesia, Sesame Street, and Hearing the Colors of an Abusive Past'
  

• Greg M. Smith, 'Streisand Shops the Museum Store: Consuming Art on Television'


• Jeff Smith 'The edge of seventeen: class, age, and popular music in Richard Linklater's School of Rock'


• Murray Smith, 'Music, Film, and Emotion'


• Robynn J. Stilwell, 'It May Look Like a Living Room…: The Musical Number and
  the Sitcom'


• Robynn J. Stilwell, 'Music in Films: A Critical Review of Literature, 1980-1996'


• Randy Thom, 'Designing a Movie for Sound [Soundscape: The School of Sound Lectures 1998-2001]'


• Gordon Thomas, 'Will the Shark Bite? G. W. Pabst and The Threepenny Opera'


• Boris Trbic, 'Norbert [Schultze], We Hardly Knew Ye: Rethinking the Late German Composer'
  

• Ben Turner, 'Acoustic Ambience in Cinematography: An Exploration of the Descriptive and Emotive Impact of the Aural Environment'


• Alan Vanneman, 'When Fred Met Red: Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, and Vera-Ellen Commingle in Three Little Words'


• Steve Vertlieb, 'Herrmann and Hitchcock: The Torn Curtain'


• Justin Vicari, 'Space Here We Come: P. J. Harvey's Please Leave Quietly Redefines the Concert Film DVD'


• James Wierzbicki, 'Review of Anahid Kassabian: Hearing Film'


• Ken Woodgate, '"Young and in love": music and memory in Leander Haussmann's Sun Alley'


• Bill Wrobel, 'The Nature of Bernard Herrmann's Music'


• Bill Wrobel, 'Herrmann Music in Have Gun Will Travel and Other Classic CBS Television Series'

Further essential resources may be found at FilmSound.Org, SonicObjects and USC Thornton Film Composers Know the Score (YouTube video).