The ritornello in cinematographic songs: listening, imaginary and imagination

Abstract

The empathic resonance between the song and the cinema has provided a significant source for the exploration of different imbrications between fiction, pictorial rhythms and the universe of singing in the movies. This article examines the formal singularity of the song and its creative consubstantiation among other sounds and the cinematographic narrative. The theoretical discussion is supported by the ideas of Michel Chion about how the song diversifies the expressive prism of the cinema and the concept of ritornello developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1997) as to conceive the cinematographic listening of the song as an implication of rhythms of time – memories and “becomings” – materialized as rhythms of image, sonorities, fiction and the singing word.