Further, film music shapes our very perception. Visual representation can be vague and unspecific. Are Mr. Blonde’s facial expressions, for instance, really encoding sadism, or is it perhaps insanity or maybe it’s just a blank stare? Film has developed an arsenal of weapons for controlling narrative implication including acting, dialogue cues, expressive configurations of mise-en-scène and cinematography, and specific editing patterns. Music, however, remains among the most reliable of them. It is the music, its ebullience and joyfulness, in conjunction with the grisly torture, that helps us to interpret the facial expression of Mr. Blonde as sadistic.
