The Image of a Musician in a Film: Typological Analysis

Abstract

The article addresses one of the main problems of films about musicians, namely, the dramatic and directorial approach to the presenting an artistically authentic, lively image of a musician. A general overview of feature and documentary films about musicians reveals diverse ways of representing individuality and the inner world of a character, as well as identifying a certain personality type. Surveying the images of musicians in a fairly representative number of films, the author proposes a typology based on the protagonist's relationship with music and, through music, with society: creative and innovative (“creators”); performing (“reciters-translators”, “readers-dialogists”, “psychosomatics”, “dictators”, “divas”); intuitive-spiritual (“mediums”). The proposed definitions of the types (subtypes) of musicians are “frameworks” in nature, quite flexible and permeable, since we are dealing with the living individuality, which is subject to change due to the developments of the story and transforms due to internal personal evolution.