Nondiegetic Music Of The Doors In The Scene Waiting In Saigon

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Nondiegetic music of the Doors in the scene waiting in Saigon

Sound plays a significant part in all movies and one of the most interesting of all the sound techniques would be the use of nondiegetic music. In the movie Apocalypse Now, there is a double disc soundtrack with thirty tracks on it. The one song on there that has the most meaning would The Doors song “The End”. This song not only set the mood for the scene waiting in Saigon and the move as a whole but is also used to foreshadow the death of Coronal Kurtis. Mr. Coppola, the director of the film, was a genius for picking this song to represent the movie. It not only fits the movie with the sounds of helicopter but the words alone have significant meaning to the movie. Along with it serving as a premise for the movie, Mr. Coppola plays with the viewer’s perception of diegetic sounds and nondiegetic music.
The scene as a whole is a montage of overlapping dissolve sequence. It is set in Saigon but is more of a delusional state of mind of Willard, the main character. We get a sense of the upcoming climatic part of the movie through the visions and music of the scene. The opening scene starts out with a diegetic sound of a helicopter passing in front of a jungle. We get the sense that the helicopter sounds that we will be hearing are going to be diegetic until Mr. Coppola brings in The Doors song “The End”. Which brings the sounds of the helicopter into the music. He uses the helicopter as a set up for the music ensemble that is forth coming. As the electric guitar starts to play a psychedelic tune with the sounds of the synthesized helicopter, you feel like you’re in a somewhat delusional state of mind. As if your mind is being carried away by the music to a dreamlike place. The dirt in the scene is doing some mysterious dance to the beat making the jungle in the background seem somewhat fuzzy and dreamlike. The first minute of the song is used to set the viewers for the montages sequence that is coming up next in the scene. Its purpose is to make us feel delusional and somewhat drugged. The guitar solo and synthesized helicopter sounds then leads us into the world and mind of the main character, captain Willard.
As the sequence moves along you hear the voice of Jim Morrison sing, “ This is the end Beautiful friend This is the end My only friend, the end,” to the flaming sights of war are seen at th...

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...es start off with the digetic sound of a helicopter, which is then used to lead into the nondiegetic sound of a synthesized helicopter within the song. As the scene moves along about two minutes into the scene we come to see the blades of a ceiling fan whirling around. This is where the helicopter sounds in the music change back into the diegetic sound of the whirling ceiling fan blades. The second motif is that the song reoccurs again about two hours into the movie. This is the scene where Willard is killing Kurtz and the caribou is being sacrificed. Which goes back to the function of the song in the beginning, which was to foreshadow the death or “The End” of Kurtz death.
Thus the nondiegetic use of music is indeed a very useful technique in the scene waiting in Saigon. The Doors song, “The End,” not only is used to foreshow what is going to happen at the end of the movie but is also used to set the mood of the movie. Along with setting the mood, Mr. Coppola plays with the use of diegetic music turning it into nondiegetic music. These are all key functions for using a song in a movie and Mr. Coppola is a genius for choosing “The End” to play a significant part in Apocalypse Now.

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