Film Music : History, Aesthetic-analysis, Typologies
Sergio MICELI

For all its relative slimness, what distinguishes this manual from the American counterparts that dominate mass media publishing is its "universalist" approach, transcending an ethnocentric view of culture.
Although the chapters dealing with Italy are naturally more indepth than others, considerable attention is paid to American and French output. Another feature is the volume's didactic vocation, for the three parts - History, Aesthetic - Analysis, Typologies - are essentially autonomous.
In addition, in order to avoid sterile classification and maximise the book's praticality, the same examples concerning film music recur above all in Parts 1 and II, illustrating the multiplicity of possible analytical and interpretative approaches concerning the phenomenon of music as a dramaturgical component of cinema.
In fact the book takes as its motto Eisenstein's acute remark : "At this point a question might arise : 'In the end, why is music so necessary ? Why do we talk here about music as something that is always indispendable and implied in the film ?' The answer seems to me quite obvious: the aim is not only to boost the action (even though, to a certain extent, it is also this), but also to finish telling emotionally what is inexpressible other means."