Since the days of silent films, music has been integral to the cinematic experience, serving, variously, to allay audiences' fears of the dark and to heighten a film's emotional impact. Yet viewers are often unaware of its presence. In this bold, insightful book, film and music scholar and critic Royal S. Brown invites readers not only to "hear" the film score, but to understand it in relation to what they "see." Unlike earlier books, which offered historical, technical, and sociopolitical analyses, Overtones and Undertones draws on film, music, and narrative theory to provide the first comprehensive aesthetics of film music. Focusing on how the film/score interaction influences our response to cinematic situations, Brown traces the history of film music from its beginnings, covering both American and European cinema. At the heart of his book are close readings of several of the best film/score interactions, including Psycho, Laura, The Sea Hawk, Double Indemnity, and Pierrot le Fou. In revealing interviews with Bernard Herrmann, Mikls Rsza, Henry Mancini, and others, Brown also allows the composers to speak for themselves. A complete discography and bibliography conclude the volume.

本書作者是紐約昆斯學院的Royal S. Brown，很早就開始發錶關於電影音樂的論文。他的文筆犀利且不乏幽默，文章雖然信息量密集，讀來卻令人並不感到疲倦。他曾經齣過專著，似乎還沒有被翻譯成中文，幸運的是已經有零星的文章翻譯過來，而且譯得不錯。