The Perception of a Shorter Length of Time through the Use of a Rapid Tempo - Text 2
As the course of the music is determinant, every other stream deprived of this trunk will appear dispossessed of its essence, and the scene as a whole will appear wobbly at best and at worst interminable.
Narrative music in the background, diluting the contours of the scene
In this case music, slightly set back from the action or dialogue, can irrigate the film with rhythmic continuity underlying the narrative stream, as in the opening of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which would not have the same mysterious aura without the swaying, exotic and intriguing aura of John Williams’ music, whose incantatory and yet uncertain melody, produced by an alto flute and a bassoon, foretells trouble where we expect it least. Like the camera movements, we can see in this a foreshadowing of the serpent, symbolic at one and the same time of the traitor’s deception, his fawning and reserved character, and Indiana Jones’ great fear of this animal slipping through the tropical vegetation.
