Trailing Music

Since the audience is so visually aligned with Scotty, it makes sense that it would also align with him musically. All the cues of “Scotty Trails Madeleine,” “The Portrait,” "The Streets" and “The Forrest” have an “unvarying” and “directionless” feel, along with a “tonal ambiguity” that leaves the audience unsteady (Cooper 243). The beat is “slightly below the mean resting heart rate for an adult,” slowing our pace but also giving a deeper physical identification (Cooper 241).

While this stability is found underlying the trailing music, the melody overlaying it travels up and down, condensing and expanding back again, painting a vertigous journey while the characters on screen wander the streets up and down San Francisco. There is little movement away from the middle line, which shows what little progression Scotty makes away from Madeleine; he just gets closer and closer, obsessing and never leaving. Ostinatos used in most of the major themes also contribute to the falling (the up and down of the music illustrates how one might feel if affected by vertigo) and the obsession (always repeating a similar theme/never straying too far from the base note) motifs. The repetition found in the traveling pieces, and also the general repetition of themes, show the audience an obsessive stagnation. Madeleine’s theme ("Scotty Trails Madeleine") does thematically link itself to Carlotta’s theme, ("The Portrait") but this represents how these two characters transform and take over Scotty’s thoughts more and more (Cooper 241).