ABSTRACT
Most critics agree that the term 'classical' was first used in relation to Hollywood cinema by French film critic and theorist Andre Bazin in lectures delivered in the 1950s. According to Bazin, classical cinema reaches its zenith in 1939, shifting to, or incorporating, a more 'baroque' form of filmmaking in the 1940s due, at least in part, to the influence of thematic and stylistic developments within various national cinemas. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson’s particular brand of historical poetics is founded upon assumptions formed by cognitive psychology rather than psychoanalysis. While the Marxist-psychoanalytic account makes no real attempt to consider the film soundtrack, for Bordwell et. al. music provides the best example of the assimilation of sound to the aesthetic norms which define classical Hollywood cinema: classical Hollywood scoring. A number of the scoring functions which gradually became standardized after the coming of sound can be traced back to practices which developed during the silent era.
