Résumé

This article adapts a study developed during a PhD project entitled “Musical Meaning in Cinema – Theories and Contexts,” completed in 2017 at the Faculty of Letters of Lisbon within the Doctoral Course in Arts, under the supervision of Professors João Maria Mendes, Jorge Ramos do Ó, and Ricardo Futre Pinheiro. The article examines the role of the soundtrack in structuring Alain Resnais’s diptych “Smoking/No Smoking,” emphasizing how music functions as an organizational and narrative element in both films. By exploring the interaction between soundtrack, rhythm, and permutational narrative form, the study seeks to demonstrate how musical structures reinforce the films system of variations, repetitions, and possibilities, ultimately contributing to the construction of meaning, coherence, and interpretation within Resnais’s cinematic universe.