I think it depends on how one interprets the use of the camera and how (or what) it records and its
effect on establishing the "real" within the diagesis. For if sounds/music are "extra" diagetic, does
that presuppose that what we encounter, as spectators, in a film like _Cherbourg_, is to be
understand as *not* part of the characters' reality? In other words, do we surrender to the falsity
(or fallacy) of the camera by rendering musical sound as that which is not part of the reality of the
mise-en-scene itself? If sounds are "extra-diagetic" in a film like _Cherbourg_ the fiction would
collapse, therefore rendering opposite of what it purports to be—a "musical." I think in its fictive
world, _Cherbourg_ is all musical *in* the diagesis (not outside of it [it can't have an outside, it's
all sealed within the logic of a sustained musical note]), therefore rendering the characters'
utterances as musically annotated.
Godard's _Une Femme Est Une Femme_ (Michel Legrand also worked in this film) banalizes the
notion of diagetic vs. extra diagetic in the "fictive world" of film. Purporting to be a musical,
_Femme_ is not a musical at all. In cutting the expected causality of one image (both visual and
aural) to the next, Godard seeks to sunder the link from either sound and vision. Rather than
following through with a song or a dance routine, the muscial score cuts to ambient noises of the
diagesis itself. In doing so, the world of _Femme_, rather than seeking to discover "truth" outside
of the "musical," leaves fiction intact. I think that's what is at the heart of both films, can there be
an "extra" in the diagesis? Or is everything sustained within the fiction itself? Can the camera tell
the truth, regardless of genre?
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