One of the things he did amazingly well was using music to either punctuate or contrast the visuals of what was going on in a scene. It's nothing new NOW, two of my favorite instances are from the Lion in Winter and West Wing. In the former, Henry and Eleanor are going into dinner in a banquet hall and, as it is the dark ages, there are several live dogs present. At first they seem to be just atmosphere, look how rough and rustic this period is. Then, as Henry and Eleanor continue to spat with these painted smiles on their faces, Henry says something really low, and there's a cut to Eleanor, close up, frozen smile-and we hear one of those dogs snarling. It's f-ing beautiful. West Wing did it a lot, but one of the best has to be in the season 2 episode "Shiboleth." It's Thanksgiving and much has been made of these school kids coming in and C.J. as the press secretary being expected to "lead the children in song," her quest to learn what the traditional Thanksgiving song might be, and so on. It's an amusing subplot, but then it surprisingly sprouts a beautiful blossom in the main story when Bartlet is resolving a situation with Chinese immigrants. The children's voices warbling "We Gather Together" drift in from the next room while he's talking. It would have been unforgivably hokey if Sorkin hadn't spent the entire episode setting it up.
While these are both clever and skillfully done, it's a lot more impressive when Kurisawa did it, simply because he did it in 1949. There wasn't that much physical space for sound on the film, and rich, elaborate soundtracks just weren't going to happen. So we have him spending a very limited good with great care. In Ikiru, when the protagonist has an epiphany and realizes how he can finally do something meaningful with his life, a nearby group sings happy birthday to their friend who is just arriving for a party. It is his rebirth that is marked, but so simply and naturally. In (I think) Stray Dog, a police detective finally tracks down the murderer he's been hunting, the man pulls a gun, the confrontation is at its most dramatic… and there's a tinkle of a badly played piece of classical music. The incongruity is bizarre, until we see the men are equally puzzled. They hear it too - and it's coming from a woman practicing in a nearby farmhouse. It's a WEIRD moment, definitely not a movie cliché, not really like anything we've seen before or since. And that uniqueness comes out of the contrast.
Comic books have a similar dynamic to play with. The pictures can work with the story or against it. Compliment or contrast. And that dynamic can make the comic itself - the words and the pictures - more than the sum of its parts. Nice, right?
But it doesn't seem to happen often, and it certainly isn't done well very often. I'm tempted to say that's because so few comic writers make a study of their own medium. I've mentioned before that they are unique in that respect. I know no other group of creatives that, as a breed, have so little interest in their craft.
And yet, in this case, I can see another possible reason. Like the technological bounty that modern filmmakers enjoy compared to Kurisawa, there might just be too much that can be done too easily. If it were a limited good, they might recognize its value and spend it with more care.
