ABSTRACT
Tying together threads from throughout the book by invoking concepts from each chapter, this chapter focuses on the heritage of a single piece of music, Claude Debussy's “Clair de lune” from Suite bergamasque (1890–1905), which has often been treated cinematically as a stimulus of nostalgic longing. The chapter introduces the association between memory and Clair de lune through an analysis of Music for Millions (1944) that draws from Svetlana Boym's understanding of nostalgia and Marcel Proust's descriptions of involuntary memory. The second section analyzes the popular imagination of the work that may have informed the way spectators perceived these filmic representations. Reviews of concerts featuring “Clair de lune” from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s demonstrate that critics and advertisers tended to place the piece in one of two categories: trivial/commonplace or dream-like/enchanting. These seemingly paradoxical associations comprise key elements of nostalgia in Giant (1956). The chapter concludes by examining a pair of more recent “Clair de lune” films (Atonement (2007) and The Darjeeling Limited (2007)), which complicate both sincerity and transcendence through longing for an alternate rather than idealized past.
