The Most Romantic Art of All: Music in the Classical Hollywood Cinema: Cinema Journal: Vol. 29, No. 4, p. 35

Carol Flinn discusses the relationship between the film music practices of classical Hollywood and romantic aesthetics, arguing that Classical Hollywood felt nostalgia for a romantic past in which the subject’s ability to express himself through art was prized. She analyzes what critics and composers said of film music during the Classical Hollywood period; she does not analyze any films. Hollywood’s most obvious connection to romanticism is the adoption of Wagner’s leitmotifs. However, according to Flinn, Wagner’s music achieves unity through “additive blending” while film music achieves unity through “redundancy and overdetermination.” In Classical Hollywood, that is, the music should support what is already present in the image and narrative, running parallel rather than in counterpoint. Critics and composers repeatedly emphasize that film music should go unnoticed. This is at odds with the romantic privileging of music’s autonomy and ability to express the ineffable. Flinn reconciles this conflict by arguing that rhetoric about the deficiency of film music in fact refers to an anxiety about deficiencies in the film medium itself, namely in its inability to create the illusion of “fullness and cohesion.” Music succeeds in promoting as sense of fullness and cohesion in film.
Flinn’s psychoanalytical reading of Classical Hollywood film music is fairly convincing. The article is particularly useful for its copious quotation of critics and composers from the Classical Hollywood period on music.

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The Most Romantic Art of All: Music in the Classical Hollywood Cinema: Cinema Journal: Vol. 29, No. 4, p. 35