J ULIE B ROWN Haneke’s La Pianiste (2001), parody, and the limits of film music satire Towards the end of Michael Haneke’s La Pianiste Erika (Isabelle Huppert) seeks out her young would-be lover Walter (Benoît Magimel) at a skating rink. In an abject state, her demand that a sexual relationship between them must be on her sado-masochistic terms having been rebuffed, she begs his forgiveness and performs oral sex on him in the cleaning room, only to vomit it up. Disgusted, he rejects her again, suggesting that it would be best if she leaves town until she ceases to stink. She stumbles out onto the skating rink, arms flailing and barely able to walk, her lost and desperate figure starkly contrasted with the carefree young female figure-skaters twirling elegantly on the ice. Here Haneke’s original French language screenplay reads: Finalement, Schubert la prend en pitié et son Andantino [from the Piano Sonata in A major (D 959)], qui aurait dû en fait accompagner l’amour d’Erika pour Klemmer, donne à sa honte une certaine dignité et la grâce miséricordieuse du chagrin. 1 (Schubert finally takes pity on her and his Andantino, which should in fact have accompanied Erika’s love for Klemmer, lends her shame a certain dig- nity and the merciful grace of sorrow.) Yet despite the directions in the French screenplay, the specified music is omitted from the film itself and from the German language screenplay apparently assembled after the final cut (Die Klavierspielerin. Drehbuch, Gespräche, Essays). 2 This is only one of many such moments. (See Table 1, a broad comparison of the screenplay and the film itself from the point of view of the music. Parts of the screenplay ultimately omitted from the film are shaded grey, though small changes to dialogue without musical impli- cations are not noted.) I am interested in why Haneke might have made these cuts and what they might tell us about the symbolic use of music in film. By bringing to sonic reality music otherwise present only as words on 163