Leitmotif

In practice

A leitmotif is a recurring musical phrase, image or line that is tied to a particular character, place, object or idea, so that each time it returns it calls that thing to mind. In film, the clearest examples are musical: the two-note shark theme in Jaws or the Imperial March whenever Darth Vader is near. In writing, a leitmotif can be a phrase, a color or a gesture that comes back each time a character appears.

The word is German, Leitmotiv, "leading motif". It comes from opera criticism, where it described the short themes Richard Wagner assigned to characters and ideas in his Ring cycle. Writers and filmmakers borrowed the idea because it works the same way in any medium: once the audience has learned the association, the leitmotif can announce, foreshadow or comment on the story without a word of explanation.

A leitmotif is a kind of motif, but a more specific one. A motif is any recurring element that develops a theme; a leitmotif is attached to one particular thing and signals its presence. When the shark's music plays, the audience knows the shark is coming, even when it cannot be seen.

The song that means she's near

The four notes of the waltz are a leitmotif. The first time, the audience simply hears them. By the second, the notes mean she is here, and the kettle only has to come close to the tune for Ben and the audience to feel her presence. The writer never needs to say who she is or what she did: the recurring sound carries the dread.

What a leitmotif is

A leitmotif is a short, recognizable element that recurs through a work and is consistently linked to one character, place, object or idea. Its job is association: after the audience has met it a few times, the leitmotif alone is enough to bring its subject to mind.

Leitmotifs are not just repeated; they are developed. A composer may play a hero's theme in a major key in triumph and in a minor key in defeat, or slow it down when the character is old. Each variation comments on what has happened to the thing it stands for, which is why leitmotifs can carry so much of a story's emotion.

In literature and screenwriting, the same idea applies to words and images. A phrase a character always says, an object that appears whenever a memory surfaces, or a color that marks one family can all function as leitmotifs if they are tied to one subject and return with purpose.

Where the term comes from

The German word Leitmotiv was used by the critic F. W. Jähns in 1871 to describe themes in the operas of Carl Maria von Weber. It became widely known through Hans von Wolzogen, who in 1876 published a guide to the leitmotifs in Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, the four-opera cycle where the technique reached its fullest form.

Wagner himself preferred other terms, but his practice defined the idea: dozens of short themes for the ring, the sword, the gods, fire, fate and individual characters, woven together so that the orchestra could tell the audience what a character was thinking or what was about to happen.

From opera, the idea passed to the novel and then to film. Thomas Mann, a devoted Wagnerian, used recurring phrases and descriptions as leitmotifs in Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, and film composers adopted the technique wholesale when sound arrived.

Leitmotif vs motif

A motif is any recurring element (an image, sound, word or situation) that helps develop a work's theme. Birds in a novel about freedom, mirrors in a film about identity and rain in a story about grief can all be motifs. A motif points to an idea.

A leitmotif is narrower. It is tied to one specific subject and signals that subject's presence or influence. Every leitmotif is a motif, but not every motif is a leitmotif: rain that recurs throughout a sad film is a motif; a particular song that plays every time one character appears is a leitmotif.

The difference matters in practice. A motif can be scattered and loose; a leitmotif must be consistent enough that the audience learns the link. If the association is unclear, the device stops working, and the recurring element becomes background.

Examples of leitmotifs

John Williams is the best-known modern master. In Jaws (1975), the two alternating notes of the shark theme stand for the shark so completely that the film can scare the audience with music alone. In The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the Imperial March became Darth Vader's theme and the theme of the Empire itself.

Howard Shore's music for The Lord of the Rings films gives the Shire, the Fellowship, the Ring and individual peoples their own themes, and lets them return and change as the story moves. When the Shire theme comes back near the end, the audience hears home before the hobbits reach it.

Outside music, many novels and scripts use a spoken leitmotif. A phrase a dead parent used to say, repeated by their child years later, can carry the whole relationship in four words. So can an object: a pocket watch, a song on the radio, a smell that comes back each time a character is about to remember.

How to use a leitmotif in a script

Establish it clearly. The first appearance has to make the link obvious enough that the audience learns it: the phrase, sound or image appears with its subject, ideally more than once, before you rely on it.

Then let it work alone. The payoff comes when the leitmotif appears without its subject: the song plays and the character is not in the room, the phrase is spoken by someone else, the object turns up somewhere it should not be. That is when the audience feels the subject's presence, absence or influence.

Vary it with the story. A leitmotif that never changes becomes a label. Let it return distorted, interrupted, slowed or reversed as the story changes the thing it stands for. In a screenplay, write only the sounds and images that are part of the story; leave the score to the composer unless a song is truly part of the scene.