Music and Cinema in Times of Pandemic: the Reuse of Music in La voz humana (2020) by Pedro Almodóvar The Reuse of Music in La voz humana (2020) by Pedro Almodóvar

Abstract

The film industry is one of the audiovisual sectors most affected by the effects of the coronavirus. The pandemic has closed movie theaters, suspended premieres and paralyzed filming.  In this article, our goal is to understand the impact of the pandemic on film products by focusing on their music. In these exceptional times that we live in, the filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar shoots and premieres La voz humana (2020), a short film that freely adapts the homonymous monologue by Jean Cocteau (1930), with which he has opted to maintain the traditional model of cinema consumption in screening rooms at a reduced price. We will analyze the music of the composer Alberto Iglesias for La voz humana to understand how several pre-existing musical themes from the films Hable con ella (2002), Los abrazos rotos (2009) and La piel que habito (2011) are recycled. Finally, we have established the intertextual dialogues that are established in the music as a consequence of its "recontextualization" in the new short film in the context of the pandemic.