Abstract

Although expression in films includes temporal and aural content, film study has attached much more importance to spatial and visual components in films. In an attempt to correct for this indifference towards temporal and aural content in film study, this paper analyzes Rythmetic , an animated film of Norman McLaren , from the perspective of music analysis. In Rythmetic, wherein numerical characters engage in arithmetical operations on the screen, six kinds of scratched sound on the film are the main part of aural expression. The cut-paper animation for mathematical activity on the film frame results in an innovative rhythm structure that is quite different from traditional notation. That is where we realize the ingenuity of McLaren who defined animation as "the art of manipulating the invisible interstices that lie between the frames." Not a few appreciative of Rythmetic ranked this animated film "First Prize ofFilms" , or "Diploma of Merit" . This film, however, has been often described only as a work "for education" because of its visual impression of chalkboard in the class of arithmetic. This paper threads out the seesaw between the arithmetical regularity and the aesthetical joke of the numbers, and reveals the process from the stark contrast into cross-fertilization of them