The piano mecanique in 1930s French cinema

Several French poetic realist films in the 1930s featured player pianos or other kinds of pianos mecaniques. Their visual and narrative presence often carried with it the potential for aural disruption: mechanical instruments like the player piano were ideal anempathetic musical sources, creating music that was both uncanny in its inhumanness and threatening in its indifference to on-screen events. The piano mecanique held additional extra-diegetic significance in France: its importance as a tool for modernist composition. This article traces the history of the piano mecanique in 1930s French cinema. It places the player piano's presence in several iconic films of the decade within a broader history of early twentieth-century avant-garde composition. The article additionally considers its role as a reflexive commentary on cinema's transition to synchronised sound in the early 1930s. It concludes with an analysis of scenes from two iconic films: Pepe le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937) and La Regle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939), which demonstrates the evolving reception of the player piano in 1930s France. The analysis reveals a strong connection between cinematic and modernist musical practices and demonstrates the effect of rapid technological and cultural change on the evolution of 1930s French film music.