Even more extreme is the notion that an entire soundtrack--dialogue, music, sound effects--might be considered a musical event, apart from the film. And the venturesome German ECM label, best known for its recordings of Keith Jarrett and Arvo Part, has just made this experiment with Jean-Luc Godard's 1990 film "Nouvelle Vague." The French art film uses a wide variety of classical and pop music, from Hindemith to Patti Smith, and the effect is that of brilliant collage.
On the soundtrack disc, sound effects intrude and modulate into music and voices, like electronic music. Music becomes part of real life, and the music invades the dialogue. "That cornball music gets on my nerves. What shall do?" a woman asks in French. "Admire the architecture," her lover replies. The booklet notes are the "visualization" of the film by a blind writer. Everything we have ever thought about what we see in film and what we hear in film is turned fascinatingly upside down.
