Music, madness and modernity in Karl Freund's Mad Love (1935)

Music and musical instruments play a significant role in the 1935 film Mad Love. Dimitri Tiomkin provided the score for Mad Love. The score lacks the level of sophistication of the composer's later scores, and he makes significant use of pre-existing music in this early work. By using pre-existing music, the music, its composers and their history help to create a network of meaning in which the characters of Mad Love can be interpreted. More than merely accompanying and emphasizing the plot, music, instruments, compositions and their historical entailments enhance and even create narrative layers in the film. This article focuses on the historical musical elements of the film's score and narrative, and discusses how they bring depth and breadth to the film's characters, augmenting the hermeneutic web in which we can interpret the work.