Matthew McConway

In La Haine, director Mathieu Kassovitz transitions from non-diegetic to diegetic sound to deepen audience immersion. The film starts with non-diegetic music, Bob Marley’s “Burnin’ and Lootin’,” playing over riot scenes. This music sets a contrasting tone to the violent imagery.

After the opening credits, the same song transitions to diegetic as it plays faintly in the background when Saïd appears. This change makes the music part of the characters’ environment, drawing viewers into the story.

Kassovitz’s use of this technique connects the initial detached view of the riots with the personal story of the teenagers, maintaining thematic continuity. It reminds viewers of the prior violence and foreshadows the characters’ potential involvement in similar events, enhancing engagement and narrative depth.

Notes relating to music

-“The music on La Haine is basically the music that you can hear within the scenes… within ‘real life’

-“A good movie shouldn’t have music”

“If you are a good enough director, you should make people cry without the use of music.”

-“[Kassovitz wanted to] use a lot of surround sounds and make it as wide as we can by having sounds we don’t see and we don’t know where they come from.”

-“Everything was written, there was no improv. We improved everything by living the movie way before we started shooting.”

-“we cant be listened to so we are going to burn and loot”

“La Haine is both stylised and naturalistic, placing the audience deep within its banlieue setting, so that it becomes an observer of what the then-president Jacques Chirac had described disparagingly a couple of years earlier in his career as “le bruit et l’odeur” (the noise and the stench) of such working-class areas. It’s this layer of banlieue noise – piercing police sirens, smashing glass, the shouts of street fights echoing between concrete high-rises – that blends so effectively with the film’s soundtrack. The combination of the two clearly evokes the simmering brutality that in France was ready to boil over by the mid-1990s.”

“Kassovitz recruited the hardcore rap collective Assassin – a group that emerged from the banlieues in the mid-1980s – to oversee the film’s soundtrack.”

“This presented a real opportunity to put French rap at the forefront; to spit out a uniquely French take on the passion and anger of gangster rap.”

La Haine’s soundtrack is one rooted in rebellion and struggle.

“These French artists, often of African and North African ancestry, rewrote bleu-blanc-rouge – the blue-white-red of the French flag – as black-blanc-beur, ‘black-white-Arab’, and espoused a rap rooted in diaspora and protest. And so, when a fresh wave of riots exploded on the capital’s outskirts again a decade later in 2005, the then-minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, found a scapegoat: not just the citizens themselves, but the French rappers who radicalised them. This resulted in rappers facing legal action.”

“La Haine’s opening scene depicts real footage of demonstrations and riots in the banlieues of Paris over the previous decade, set to Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Burnin’ and Lootin’. Kassovitz said that he wanted city sounds to become a sort of music of their own, “a growl, a layer of sound but a natural sound”.”

“Reggae has historically been a vehicle for sociopolitical commentary, so the tune was a natural choice to introduce Kassovitz’s blistering treatise on police-on-banlieue brutality.”

Auteur – A film director who influences their films so much that they rank as their authors.

-treat music as “a key thematic element and a marker of authorial style”

-“Auteur melomania is a specific historical phenomenon”

-Melomania is an inordinate liking for music or melody.

-‘…the ‘auteur director’ has placed a premium on asserting control of the texture, rhythm and tonality of his or her work, and of the social identifications, made available through music choices.”

-“advent of digital recording… as well as digital video editing have made it possible for directors to exert much greater control over the selection and placement of music in their films.”

-“Liberated the music soundtrack”

-“music is a platform for the idiosyncratic expression of taste and thus it conveys not only meaning in terms of plot and theme, but meaning as authorial signature itself.”

-In ‘Jackie Brown’ Max Cherry “tenderly acquires” the Delfonic’s song ‘Didn’t I (Blow your mind this time)’ after hearing Jackie play it. From then on “their” song “takes on resonance as a repeated theme, a special kind of diagetic resonance involving characters knowledge or lack of knowledge, and characters openness (or not) to ‘hearing’ one another”

-“the music’s arbitrary segmentation not only reflects and aesthetic negation but it also yields another kind of expressive depth.”

-“the auteur can write in cinema, using sound as well as camera.”

“In conventional cinema, music’s syntax is surely secondary to narrative syntax. The arc and timing of music is normally subordinated to the demands of the scene, but a set of long established rules “softens” the way the narrative flow determines the length of music cues, making music fit the form of the scene…” “For Godard, music is a montage element, subject to radical disruption and placed in dialectical relationships with the image and the other soundtrack elements.”

-“…music carries cultural meaning…”

I decided to read this article after reading about Mathieu Kassovitz as an ‘Auteur’, to develop an understanding of how auteur’s use music within their films. These ways of thinking around music in cinema as more than just a soundtrack is fascinating. The short case studies on each director in this essay made this information accessible in a way that simply defining concepts wouldn’t. In my next reading I would like to find out how Kassovitz wished to use music in La Haine himself, and find out other academics views on it.

“La Haine” is a 1995 French film directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. Set in the Parisian suburbs, it follows three friends—Vinz, Hubert, and Saïd—over the course of 24 hours after a riot. The film delves into themes of police brutality, racism, and social inequality. With its gritty realism and social commentary, “La Haine” has become a cult classic. “La Haine” has an interesting approach to sound an music, which reflects it’s themes and other stylistic choices. I wish to approach the sound in a similar way to Kassovitz, as I feel it would be a interesting exercise to dive into the world of sound in La haine.

Gaze was a fascinating short film, with some very interesting sonic points to extract.

-The film, as a whole takes, on a very quiet and passive soundscape (distant atmospheric sounds, the sounds of the bus.) This gives it a very intimate feeling, which is emphasised by the lack of soundtrack. The mundanity of sonics, implies the mundanity of a daily commute.

-After a period of quietness, loud vocal chaos ensues when the protagonist decides to confront the pickpocket. This contrast in loudness really intensifies the drama of the scene. The fall back to near silence leaves the viewer feeling even more unsettled, analysing what has just happened.

-The sound of the motorcycle is fascinating. When the viewer sees the pickpocket is on the motorcycle following the bus, danger then becomes connected to that sound. The fading in and out of this sound further emphasises the unease, making it impossible for the protagonist, and therefore the view to feel settled and safe.

-The sound of the motorcycle takes on so much power that even after the protagonist has made it back home to safety, the sound of the motorcycle still makes her and the viewer uneasy.

-What I took away from this short film is the importance of contrast. Contrast between quiet, passive sounds, to loud and much more active sounds.

-I also recognise the importance of a connection between and sound and what is implied by said sound. The sound of the motorcycle almost becomes a character in the film, a character that will no doubt bring pain. I feel this evokes a sense of danger and anxiety more than dialogue could.

Foley: the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to films, videos, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality.

-“it’s like memetics, you have to recreate the characters that are on screen, and put them into your performances”

-Everything is planned once footage is received, so it becomes a “huge map of sound”

-Not all the foley recorded is used in the final mix, but recording it all is recquired to “give the mixers as much ammunition as possible”

-Foley is broken into 3 main sections:

       -Feet: Foley artists will select a shoe that matches the characters, and will walk in time with the character on the screen.

       -Moves: Cloth movements are recorded with fabrics that match the screen.

       -Spot: Anything interesting that happens on screen that needs a sound.

-Foley has to follow and be stylistically compatible with the rest of the sound in the film.

Initially, when reading that “archival footage sits between history and myth…”, I assumed that it would be because of an over saturation and lack of access from the general public, though this was quickly changed. This article sparked many thoughts and questions within my mind around the power of sound. When reading about how severing the sound from its initial image is “forging a new path to signification” it made me think of sound as a potential weapon, something that can alter persuasion. I got thinking thar perhaps the archived footage holds more meaning when its reinstated with all it’s “instability”, as it tells more information within the context of history. We can detract more from the original audio, whether we agree with it or not. Though within a cinematic context, the interference generates perhaps a more emotional or entertaining response. Another thing that really got me thinking, was the implication that altering the sound emphasises the limitation of the footage alone to tell a full story. Finally, by both the potential & the shortcomings of sound being on display means that “dislocation and discord are embedded into the very form of the film.” I think is incredible and adds such a poetic layer of complexity to the film, so much so that I question whether this was fully intended, or is it simply over analysis.