Music cognition and the cognitive psychology of film structure

Canadian Psychology, Nov 2002 by Annabel J Cohen

Munsterberg took a serious interest in film in 1915 at 52 years of age (M. Munsterberg, 1922). He believed that film provided psychologists two opportunities: the theoretical opportunity for studying the impact of a new art in the making and the practical opportunity for disseminating mental tests and demonstrations of psychological phenomena to a wide audience. He met members of film production companies such as Vitagraph and Paramount. His appreciation of film was so respected by the industry that he was asked to judge a competition for screenwriters sponsored by a major Boston newspaper.

Of particular interest to the present article, however, are Munsterberg's references to music in The Photoplay. Munsterberg was acquainted with music, practicing the cello as a child (Hale, 1980). His writings on aesthetics indicate a rudimentary knowledge of music theory. His introductory textbook for psychology indicates his appreciation of basic psychoacoustics.

In The Photoplay, Munsterberg states specifically that although film might seem similar to photography or drama, it is actually more similar to music:

... we come nearer to the understanding of its true position in the esthetic world, if we think at the same time of..the art of the musical tones. They have overcome the outer world and the social world entirely, they unfold our inner life, our mental play, with its feelings and emotions, its memories and fancies, in a material which seems exempt from the laws of the world of substance and material, tones which are fluttering and fleeting like our own mental states. (pp. 168-169)

He argued that in moving pictures

... the freedom with which the pictures replace one another is to a large degree comparable to the sparkling and streaming of the musical tones. The yielding to the play of the mental energies, to the attention and emotion which is felt in the film pictures, is still more complete in the musical melodies and harmonies in which the tones themselves are merely the expressions of the ideas and feelings and will impulses of the mind. (pp. 185-186)

Thus, perceiving a sequence of shots is like perceiving a musical chord. Munsterberg uses the example of a secretary and her employer. In the first scene, they enjoy an after-work get together in his office; the next scene depicts her parents wondering why she is late; and a third scene reveals the employer's wife anxiously awaiting her husband's return. Munsterberg states, "It is as if we saw one through another, as if three tones blended into one chord" (p. 105).

Authors who have discussed or quoted at length from The Photoplay never mention Munsterberg's attention to the unique relation between film and music, as if it were inconsequential (e.g., Andrew, 1976; Munsterberg, 1922; Nyyssonen, 1998; Wicclair, 1978.) Anderson (1996, p. 1) and Hale (1980, p. 145) do use a quotation - the same quotation - of Munsterberg's that refers to music, but without elaboration. However, Munsterberg's references to music, when taken together, are substantial, and they may provide insight into the mental processes underlying film perception.