One From the Heart

Contemporary Traces of the Modern Soundtrack

Developed for RMIT Media Arts

Close analysis

1. First, the sound of a ball rolling on a roulette wheel, then a close-up of a red recording light. The title appears in neon: Once Upon A Time – over the image curtain intro sung by Tom Waites and Crystal Gaye. Their song-score is based on the bluesy bar music typically heard in Las Vegas bars. The songs carry a certain ennui and sadness. The instruments are piano, double-bass, occasional solo sax, and sometimes drums. (Fuller arrangements include either a surging string section, or a brass band ensemble. These embellishments mix sadness with sexiness in varying degrees in later stages of the film as the characters’ are developed.)

2. Credits: a series of prop/model Casino facades depicting the film’s credits like attractions at the Las Vegas casinos. The images of these buildings are often reflected in pools of water in the sand, like mirages. Waites/Gaye sing about gambling, life and love ‘down through the ages’. They operate like a chorus, setting the scene for Las Vegas as a place full of unfufilled fantasies and mirages.

3. Frannie (Terri Garr) setting up the fake NYC diorama in the store window of her travel agent store. She looks at herself in the mirror; the light changes and we see Hank (Forrest Whittaker) doing the same at the same time. This is the first instance of showing the two characters engaged in simultaneous actions in separate places. This dual-staging actualises in set-design how music/song ‘carries over/across’ dual scenes.

4. Reality Wrecking: the name of the car yard where Hank works with Moe (Harry Dean Stanton).

5. A jazz combo plays over a montage of Frannie and Hank driving home from their work on the eve of the July 4th weekend.

6. They arrive home – Waites/Gaye sing a bluesy number evoking the banal repetition of their relationship. The bluesy tone sounds drained, reflecting how they have lost connection with each other. This tone is also the dominant style of music throughout the film, evoking the solitude and isolation of bar piano playing which accompanies lost soul drowning their sorrows at the bar.

7. Hank practices his trumpet (badly) while the Waites/Gaye bluesy number continues. The music subsides; dialogue ensues, and their fractured relationship is exposed. They kiss, and a new piano theme commences, blending with a sax solo as they move on to making love.

8. As they argue after making love, comical orchestration builds up from a tuba. Tom Waites intones over a double-bass as they argue; Frannie drives off. Waites’ voice is mixed at the same level of their dialogue; the songs interpolate the action both narratively and acoustically. The mix is crucial in maintaining this fusion.

9. As Hank and Moe argue then make-up with buddy-talk, they sit on a couch in front of a wall painting. Suddenly the lights change and we see Frannie and Becky (Lannie Kazan) at Becky’s place, having chick-talk. We see simultaneously what each is doing, plus equally hear their overlapping dialogue.

10. Frannie by herself at Becky’s apartment: a Waites/Gaye number starts, with them singing in harmony with each other (as opposed to the call/response dialogue of the previous numbers. As she sits alone, moping, the scrim-wall lighting changes to reveal simultaneously Hank by himself. In a spatial variation of (6), each is alone in their thoughts, but their emotional estrangement is identical.

11. Hank at work the next day/evening: Waites sings the blues; a freight train is heard in the distance, symbolizing how he has been left behind.

12. Frannie working in the store window: she is alone in her thoughts. Suddenly Ray (Raul Ruiz) appears reflected in the window. Then the rest of the Las Vegas street lights appear as she becomes more aware of her surroundings. Light piano music starts up. Conversation starts up between Ray and Frannie: he’s a bar singer with a smooth voice.

13. Hank sees Leila (Natasha Kinski) shooting a commercial. A light brass band theme starts up and plays underneath, referencing her background in the circus.

14. In a variation of (10) Frannie returns home to pick up her things. Waites sings a bluesy number with swirling strings and trumpet solo. As they argue and depart, the number continues as an instrumental arrangement underneath their dialogue.

15. Frannie leaves: Hank is alone; we hear the sound of a ball rolling on the roulette table, as in the opening of the film.

16. Frannie and Hank moving through the city at night. The sounds of whistles, fire-crackers, car horns, people yacking is mixed with a montage of musical moments – string bursts, reverberant sax, etc. The harmony is dissonant and chaotic: they are each lost in the noise of the city.

17. This dissonance continues as the music becomes more chromatic and jazzy as Hank and Frannie wander around, searching for what they don’t know. At one point, he is framed against a detuned piano; she against a harshly reverberant trumpet. The montage is like an enviromental recording, sampling all the different fragments of bar and club music playing in the town that night. 18. When Frannie finally finds the Tropicana Club where Ray works (as a waiter, not a piano player) the score functions as diegetic music for that location. Throughout the film, piano and small combo music functions simultaneously as score, song and diegetic music. The song-score is thus derived from the musicological status of music heard in the Las Vegas bar/club/restaurant/casino environments.

19. Ray takes Frannie to a place where he practices piano. He performs for her, referencing the piano player Sam in Casablanca. He starts up a tango number: Frannie grabs him and the music becomes fully orchestrated as they dance in the empty ballroom space, talking and playing around. When they fully embrace, the score changes into a lush string arrangement. The sounds of waves and water birds are heard as the scene dissolves into seaside balcony setting. This is an instance of the music transporting them willingly into their fantasy realm. The scene references the functionality of musicals, which are predicated on how its characters generally will themselves into song and dance. The scene here also highlight the way that music generally is a ‘transportive’ medium (songs ‘take one somewhere’) in opposition to cinema being a ‘descriptive’ medium (films ‘place one somewhere’). The complexity of One From The Heart lies in its navigation of these opposed modes of transportation and description by fusing them into the singular audiovisual construct.

20. Frannie and Ray run through a corridor of fake trees and burst though a curtain to the ‘outside world’ of Las Vegas at night: a jazz band is on a truck playing upbeat contemporay jazz – an exhuberant difference to the brooding bluesy older style of numbers. Everyone outside is in a July 4th party mood, dancing in the street: the road is dotted with illuminated dance floor lights.

21. Hank stands in front of a giant neon light of a woman; it dissolves into a large image of Leila. In his mind, she appears like a giant goddess, luring him into bliss. She sings a song about Little Boy Blue, urging him to find someone else because he has been played a chump by Frannie. He is gradually seduced by his own paranoid notions of Frannie leaving him for someone else.

22. The music becomes hotter and jazzier and totally exuberant as the 4th of July celebrations peak, and as both Frannie and Hank succumb to their own willingness to fall for a new partner to address the shortcomings of their relationship.

23. Suddenly at this climax, Frannie and Hank pass each other in the main street: they suddenly are reminded of their connection to each other, yet they don’t speak to the other. Similar to (17), the noise of the music is drowning out their sense of loss from the other. As they move past each other, momentarily shocked by each seeing the other with a new partner, the lights grow dim as we watch Frannie in Ray’s arms. The sound of a lonely wind fades up.

24. As Ray attempts to seduce Frannie in the elevator later that night, the tango theme returns, rendered comically on the piano with exaggerated tone clusters.

25. Meanwhile, Leila performs her circus dance for Hank at Reality Wrecking. The props of his junkyard become the stage for her dance; the lights come on as the music takes on a circus theme with the accordion. Then Hank ‘conducts’ the junked cars by exciting their car horns: an ensemble of trombones and tubas plays with the accordion theme.

26. As Hank/Leila and Frannie/Ray kiss, a cross-cut is timed to the sound of an airplane taking off (a billboard image of a plane sits outside the hotel where Ray lives). The connection that each couple has with his/her partner is transitory, airy, at the point of moving on. They are all lost, only momentarily connecting each other.

27. Ray plays an old Latin song on the record player as he seduces Frannie on the bed. She gives in to him: the sound is reverberated over the shot of Hank and Leila kissing.

28. The next morning: roosters and a trumpet playing a wake-up theme. Hank is in the Chevy front seat with Leila. He wakes half-wondering what he’s done. He imagines Frannie with Ray: he gets all fired up and angry. The music dissipates. (Music disappears when conflict is at its most heated, as in (7).)

29. Leila looks into the giant fake ruby ring in the junkyard: she treats it as a fortune-teller’s crystal ball. Rich jazz-intoned chords tinkle: we see Frannie with Ray.

30. Hank goes to the hotel where Frannie and Ray have spent the night. Tom Waites intones a beat poem over timpani and double-bass, ridiculing Hank.

31. Hank returns home with Frannie: a bluesy trumpet/sax number plays as the sun rises. They depart again: she says Ray sings for her; Hank despairs that he would if he could, but he can't sing.

32. Hank goes to the airport to stop Frannie leaving with Ray for Bora Bora. Tom Waites reprises his warning jive from (30). The tension builds as Hank becomes agitated while Waites’ voice seems to mock his desperation. Hank starts yelling at her through the glass as he sees her. He then gets to the gangway entering into the plane. The double-bass continues alone as they talk. The double-bass stops; in final desperation Hank starts singing to Frannie, but she says its too late. Everyone enters the plane; all dialogue atmosphere ceases. The sound of thunder is heard. Hank’s loneliness is often framed with a coda of a single sound effect (thunder here, elsewhere the train whistle and the routlette ball).

33. Through the rain, Hank returns dejected to his car. Waites/Gaye sing One From The Heart. The theme articulates that in the world of artifice, charade, theatre and double-meanings in life, there is a moment of reality, which emotionally comes ‘from the heart’. The theme continues fully over images of Hank alone at home. The music volume supercedes location sound as Hank lies in bed.

34. Hank goes downstairs to burn Frannie’s baseball hat. He is at his darkest moment: there is no music only silence, and all lights are off in the house. Then Frannie enters the room: the lights come on full and Crystal Gaye sings Take Me Home. They embrace.

35. Cut to outside that night: we see Hank and Frannie on the balcony as the sun rises. A tinker box plays the opening melody; the curtains close. One From The Heart plays over the credit role.

Text © Philip Brophy.