'Man on Fire' (2004) and the Semiotic Duality of its Deployment of 'Clair de Lune'

Brent Ferguson, San Marcos, TX

Clair de Lune, the third movement of Claude Debussy's Suite Bergamasque (1910), remains a popular piano work often appearing on "classical favorite" collections, recital programs, and different multimedia soundtracks. Theorists Frank Dawes and Paul Roberts claim that Debussy's inspiration for Clair de Lune draws on Paul Verlaine's poem of the same name, in which Verlaine describes apparitions dancing on a moonlit terrace. Typically, the cinematic deployment of Clair de Lune aligns with intertextual connotations of night scenes with a placid atmosphere. Conversely, other uses of Clair de Lune in film transpire in scenes of action and suspense. Man on Fire (2004) includes three excerpts of Clair de Lune throughout the film, each occurring in scenes with tension or violence. However, upon further inspection, Clair de Lune evolves on a deeper level from an easily recognizable theme, noticeable only due to its friction with the rest of the soundtrack, into a dualistic motif symbolizing the life and death of the two main characters in Man on Fire. With further analysis, a lamento motif emerges in the excerpts of Clair de Lune from the film, supporting an intertextual association with death. The role of Clair de Lune in Man on Fire is to foreshadow and sometimes depict both life and hope contrasting with death and despair pertaining to either or both main characters. This paper illustrates this dualistic behavior of Clair de Lune in Man on Fire by utilizing voice-leading and harmonic analysis combined with semiotic approaches to define its relationship with the film.