Neorealist films attempt to create the illusion that the camera does not exist; that the viewers are truly in the scene. However, cameras are not the only barriers between films and audiences. In some movies, there is also an audio barrier. Non-diegetic sounds—music, in particular—can add emotion to a scene, but are also keen reminders of the cinematic illusion. After all, full orchestras don’t often follow people around in real life. Realizing this, neorealist directors Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Pier Pablo Pasolini sought to add tension to some scenes in ways that did not intrude on the authenticity of their viewers’ experiences. In Rome, Open City; Bicycle Thieves; and Mamma Roma; these three directors make creative use of fully diegetic music, whose source is woven into the scene, and silence to heighten the emotional intensity of crucial moments.
Rome, Open City (Roma, Cittá Aperta)
Although Rome, Open City has a distinctive soundtrack that permeates much of the first act (including Pina’s death scene), Rossellini makes use of diegetic music and its sudden absence to punctuate key moments in part two. This is consistent with the view that part two is wholly less dramatized than part one, which generally follows dramaturgical convention. Consider a scene near the beginning of part two in which Marina sits Manfredi and Francesco down for a drink. She tunes the radio to “una stazione americana.” Jazz fills the room and she dances away to the liquor cabinet. A few moments later, the doorbell rings and Marina goes to answer it. By reaching over and turning off the radio, Manfredi creates a foreboding sound vacuum in the room that is visceral. It is particularly real because the audience knows that the characters are experiencing it, as well. Lauretta drunkenly saturates the dry atmosphere when she enters the apartment.
This scene parallels a later one in the film, in which Marina and Ingrid relax with the Germans, who play cards in a salon-like atmosphere of high class and prestige. Meanwhile, Manfredi is being tortured in the other room. A German soldier plays classical music on the piano in the back. Hartmann sits next to the piano with a drink in his hand and begins talking to Bermann. After a few exchanges, it is clear that Hartmann is criticizing their commands from higher up. Bergmann shouts in German, “You’re drunk!” and the pianist abruptly stops playing. Just like last time, the music’s sudden disappearance increases the tension in the scene, resulting in a “calm before the storm” expectation for the audience. It is apparent from their reactions that the other characters in the room react similarly to the music’s sudden stoppage. In both scenes, the person who breaks the silence is drunk. The parallelism between the two scenes creates an expectation for a storm of haphazard sloppiness which Rossellini does not fulfill. Hartmann is eloquent and self-composed. Rossellini is evidently using this effect—a sudden break in diegetic music—to punctuate a key moment in the film. Once again, the effect is particularly realistic because, unlike with non-diegetic music, the experience is felt by the audience and characters alike.
Later in the scene, Rossellini uses the same soothing piano music as a counterpoint against the raw and bloody images of Manfredi’s torture. Creating a counterpoint between audio and visual elements in a scene is not a technique that is unique to Rossellini; nor is doing so with solely diegetic elements.
Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette)
Bicycle Thieves, too, is paired with a soundtrack; however, Vittorio De Sica uses diegetic music brilliantly to contrast with the events on screen. One clear example of this tendency occurs during the sobering communist meeting underground. Antonio attends, desperately looking for Baiocco. Antonio doesn’t find his friend until he seeks the source of the strangely upbeat and jangly music. Some people are rehearsing a musical. This frivolous activity, in the midst of large- (Italy) and small-scale (Antonio) economic crises results in an almost sickening juxtaposition. While Baiocco is coming down from the stage, a man puts up a poster nearby and informs Antonio that he’s taken his job. Antonio swallows, and nods helplessly, grateful for the bit of information. The song continues to play in the background, causing the viewer to wince in tandem with Antonio as everyone struggles to reconcile the ridiculous song with the desperate circumstance. The overall effect is amplified despair.
The church scene is another good example of this technique, with a very different result. Antonio and Bruno follow an old man into a church, hoping he will lead them to the thief of Antonio’s bicycle. Antonio squeezes his way across the pews until he is next to the old man. The man’s apathetic curses, disdainful body language, and clever comebacks are extremely comedic. The ensuing chase scene, and the consequent anxiety on the faces of the church’s volunteers, are made infinitely more funny by the glum hymn which the congregation sings throughout the scene in spite of the hilarity. Whereas the underground scene contrasted serious onscreen content with upbeat music, this scene juxtaposes comedic visuals with serious hymns. The results are diametric opposites, but the technique is the same in principle: using diegetic music in counterpoint with the plot to amplify the emotions of a scene.
Mamma Roma
In Mamma Roma, Pasolini takes this technique and turns it around. On Ettore’s first day in Rome, his mother teaches him how to tango. This is an extremely awkward scene to watch, due to the nature of the tango as an erotically-charged dance. Furthermore, Ettore seems to be burying his face into his mother’s neck the entire time. Charging the dance even further, Mamma Roma admits to Ettore that the record they are dancing to is a song which his father used to sing. Pasolini made Oedipus Rex in 1967, but he also seems to have made it in miniature here in 1962.
But what is that song? If one listens carefully, the Italian lyrics are about “perfumed nights” and “a love under a distant sky,” adding to the sexual tension. But the song is striking for another reason: the voice. It is a soprano, but sounds like a child. It turns out that the song is called “Violino Tzigano,” or “Gypsy Violin.” The singer on this record is a Spanish child star: a boy named Joselito. Here is a young boy singing a sensual love song, paralleling the events onscreen during Mamma Roma. Pasolini chose this track very intentionally, knowing that his viewers would understand the lyrics as quite mature and hear the voice as juvenile. In this scene, and indeed throughout the film, Pasolini (via Mamma Roma) places the young Ettore—who, as we know, looks even younger than he is because of his lean physique—into mature scenarios. By using Joselito’s recording of “Violino Tzigano,” Pasolini is underscoring the unnerving dynamic inherent in this scene and throughout the film.
There is a key difference between diegetic music and non-diegetic music: one affects characters and audience alike, while the other is merely for the audience. Developing a compelling counterpoint between music and image is central to the emotional complexity of a scene, and is a technique that continues to be used in films such as The Two Popes. It is somewhat surprising that these three neorealist directors, who strive to create the illusion that their audience is truly there in the scene, used as much non-diegetic music as they did. Although this essay focuses on their brilliant uses of fully diegetic music, each film still has a soundtrack, whether composed specifically for the film or taken from the classical literature. Of course, this type of music has certain capacities, not the least of which is to color the audience’s perceptions without the added trouble for the screenwriter of weaving the music into the plot (which, if done everywhere, would invariably come across as superficial and contrived). Still, non-diegetic music is a very strong reminder to the viewers that their experiences are not the same as those of the characters on screen. That is why Rossellini’s, De Sica’s, and Pasolini’s usages of diegetic music, and—in Rossellini’s case—the sudden withdrawal of that music, is so hypnotizing: it heightens the emotional intensity of a particular moment while allowing viewers to remain fully engaged in the film’s world.