Musical Landscape of Attraction in the Heimatfilm

Abstract Since the early days of cinematography, the cinematic landscape has played an important role in exploring the affective relationship between men and space—in the broadest sense, this describes the search for a specific cultural identity and social belonging. In German and Austrian film history, the cinematic landscape even became a special trademark of the so-called Heimatfilm (sentimental film in an idealized regional setting). The expansive natural landscapes in Heimatfilme are constitutive of the genre, with the documentary-style depiction of nature resembling what Tom Gunning has called the “cinema of attraction.” A true expert at musically staging cinematic landscapes was the Italian composer Giuseppe Becce (1877–1973). In sound film, he preferred to work with directors of German Bergfilme and Heimatfilme and was artistically associated with the mountaineer and director Luis Trenker in particular for decades. Becce deployed recognizable topoi (some of which became shopworn clichés from overuse)—a mode of musically manufacturing Heimat that I will call (adapting Rick Altman's notion of “genrification” for a musical context) a sonic genrification of Heimat. The symphonic sounds of Heimat associated with idyllic nature have a prereflective effect in the Heimatfilm—they are usually perceived unconsciously. In this way, Becce coined a sound of Heimat in German culture after the Second World War. In this article, the music in German Heimatfilm is examined in terms of cultural memory and the cultural coding of music. In an interdisciplinary interplay of musicology, film aesthetics and cultural theory, the sound of Heimat, which is taken for granted, is revealed in its medial and aesthetic construction.