The first notable use of ironic juxtaposition between a scene and its soundtrack was in the final scene of the James Cagney film Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931) wherein Cagney winds up his gramophone and selects an instrumental version of John Kellette’s Broadway classic I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, which then continues to play out during his unexpectedly violent death. The shock of the scene (and the subsequent notoriety of the film) was as much due to the jarring contrast with the traditional emotions associated with a showtune as it was to the brutality of the character’s execution (and consequent downbeat ending). Since then, the technique has been deployed with alacrity by many a director and with mixed results.

For one of the best examples of ironic juxtaposition, we have to turn to film makers who have made the confusion of genres and audience expectations into their own personal hallmark: the Coen Brothers. Their films might appear on their face to be firmly placed in clearly definable categories, whether it be film noir (Blood Simple (1984), Fargo (1996)) comedy (Raising Arizona (1987), The Big Lebowski (1998)) or period fresco (Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)) but to lovers of their work, their voice is so unique (and so richly varied) as to be uncategorisable. None of the abovementioned films can be so easily nailed down. They play with audiences’ preconceptions of genres within all their films and continually mix and match different dramatic impulses to create a fully sensurramic experience for the viewer.

But this isn’t all playful nonsense or overt artistry. There is a deeply uncomfortable scene in the Coen’s latest, highly-decorated and engaged film No Country for Old Men (2007) wherein the psycopathic Anton Chigurh toys with an elderly gas station attendant and invites him to toss a coin for what the audience knows to be his life. The scene is satisfying because it provides the thrill of danger (the fear of death) with the quotidien humour of misunderstanding and the sadness intrinsic in the film’s title: the audience finds itself genuinely laughing, genuinely frightened and genuinely sad. The mix of emotions intended for the entire duration of the film is thus brought down to a micro-level.

But lest we forget ourselves, back to the SMIC. In the Coen’s uber-stylish Irish gangster film Miller’s Crossing (1990) Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney) is a wanted man, and two men are despatched to dispose of him, but O’Bannon, who has just put on folk classic ‘Danny Boy’ and settled into bed with a cigar, is having none of it. A moment of pure pleasure and indulgence, quite apart from its virtuosic mise-en-scene, the sequence has suspense, slapstick humour, pathos and what amounts to ultraviolence, all underscored with the purest, sweetest of tunes. Enjoy.