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IntroductionAuthor(s): Rick AltmanSource: Yale French Studies, No. 60, Cinema/Sound (1980), pp. 3-15Published by: Yale University Press

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Introduction

More

than half century fter hecoming

f sound,film riticism

nd

theory

tillremainresolutely mage-bound. arly filmmakers'kep-

ticism bout the value of sound has been indirectly erpetuated y

generations f critics

orwhom

he cinema

s an essentially isual rt,

sound serving

s littlemore

than a superfluous ccompaniment.

n

recentyears

the reasons underlying

hishegemony f the

visualhave

continued o

multiply.With ach new visually

riented nalysis,with

each newimage-inspiredheory,

ilm tudy's

xclusive mageorienta-

tion gains ground.

The role of this ssue of

Yale French tudies

s thus

remedial; by concentrating ttentionon a neglectedarea it will

perhaps

suggestnew directions

nd

possibilities

or more

ntegrated

approach to the entire

film xperience.

The source

of the image's

current ominance

s

closely

inked

o

the

vocabulary developed

by three-quarters

f a

century

f

film

critics.

With few exceptions

film

terminology

s

camera-oriented.

The

distance

of the camera

from ts

object,

its vertical

ttitude,

horizontal

movement,ens,

and focus

ll

depend quite specifically

n

the camera's

characteristics

nd

provide

the

fieldof cinema

studies

with

basic

language. Another et

of terms oncentrates

n

the

non-

camera

aspect

of the

film's isual

omponent:

ilm

tock,

unctuation,

aspect ratio, ighting,pecial

effects,

nd so forth.Whilethese

terms

and

many

others onstitute art of any

ntroductory

ilm

ourse, the

corresponding

udio

terms

emainvirtually

nknown. he type

nd

placement

of

microphones,

methods of recording

ound, mixing

practices, oudspeaker arieties,ndmany ther undamentalonsider-

ations are the province

f a fewspecialists.

This

general

situation

has

been

strongly einforced y the

con-

cerns evinced

by

influential

ilm

ritics ver the

ast half

entury.

o

choose

only

a well

known

pair

of

examples,

we

find

hat

Eisenstein

and

Bazin,

considered rom he

standpoint

f

the

ound

track, ppear

strikingly

imilar n

their nterests.

hough

Eisenstein tresses

mon-

tage

and

Bazin

prefersong

takes

and

deep-focus hotography,

oth

constantlymphasizethe visualcomponent ffilm-making.ike its

vocabulary,

film riticism's

roblematics

ave remained

onsistently

visual

in

nature. Outside

of a

spate

of reaction

to

the coming

of

sound,

the concerns

f the

sound

trackhave remained

xcluded

from

3





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Yale FrenchStudies

the nodal points of film riticism. n recentyears this ituation

has

grown even more one-sided, due to the strongly isual emphasisof

recent French film theory. The strain which analyzes the film

apparatus beginningwith he workof Jean-LouisBaudry nd Jean-

Louis Comolli) usuallydefines ilm pparatus s camera and projec-

tor,

with

the

mechanicsof

sound reproductionefton the margin.

The justification or his pproach s said to lie in theWesternworld's

privileging f visionover all other enses; thecinema, t s claimed, s

no more than a child ofRenaissance perspective.According o this

approach the spectator s placed, within hefilm s well as within he

world

at

large, primarily y

visual

markers; ven

within

he

imits f

this

method

of handling pectator lacement, owever,

t s

surprising

that more emphasishas not been placed on the sound track's ole n

splitting

nd

complicating

he

spectator,

n

contesting

s

well

as

reinforcing he lessons of the image tract.Recent theoryhas been

pushed even further

n a

visual direction

y

the

adoption

of

Jacques

Lacan's

visual

metaphors first y Baudry

and Christian

Metz, then

by virtually

he entire

Paris

school). Developing

a

fascinating

nd

logical tie betweenthe

"mirror

tage"

as

described y

Lacan and the

film-viewingxperience tself, hese

critics ind

hemselves

imited o

visual

language alone. Now, the

mirror

metaphor

ould

easily

be

applied to sound

as well

as to

vision

the

Narcissus

myth

ncludes

Echo as

well,

as I

have

pointed

out

in

a recent

review'), but, given

the

image-consciousness lready present

n

previous

criticism

nd

theory like, themirrornalogyhas been restrictedo visualexper-

iences. As

a

result, he ancillary ole previously layed by the

sound

track

has

been

diminished

till

more.

t is

difficulto

imagine

how the

auditorydimension

f cinema

might t

this

ate date be reinstated.

Perhaps

the most

important ingle requirement

or

a

revivalof

interest

n

the

sound track s

an

increased

ensitivity

o

problems

f

sound technology. Paradoxically,

book

after

book chronicles he

technological,economic,and artistic nnovationswhich ed to the

coming

of

sound, yet subsequentdevelopments

ave been

neglected

by

all

but

a

minusculegroup

of

technicians. veryone knows that

'Charles

F. Altman, "Psychoanalysis

nd

Cinema:

The

Imaginary

iscourse,"

Quarterly

Review

of Film Studies,

2, No.

3

(August,

1977),

257-72.

4






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Rick

Altman

Edison

intended

sound and

image reproduction

s a

synchronized

pair, and thatvarious nfluences elayed fordecades the acceptance

of his original oncept. Stresshas repeatedly een placed on Lee de

Forest's early nvention f the audion tube and his ater ollaboration

with Theodore Case and Earl Sponable. Economic historians

ave

pointed

out

the mportance fpatentdisputeswith heGerman

Tri-

Ergon group and,

in

a general way, the dilatory ffects

f the

capitalist ystem's rofit-consciousness.

n

fact,nearly veryhistory

of the cinema devotesan entire hapter o theperiod tretchingrom

Warner'sexperiment ith ound-on-discnDon Juan August,1926)

through ox's highly uccessful se of sound-on-film

n ts

Movietone

News

series to the

supposed

landmark

of

Warner's

Jazz Singer

(October, 1927).

As a

generalrule,

these

chapters o

on

to mention

the 1928 Lights of New York ("the first ompletely ialogued

full-

length film") and the 1929 fascinationwith the musical, but

in

keeping

with

tandard

film

history's reoccupation

with

firsts" he

chapter nds withno more hanbrief eferenceo the arly xperiments

with sound conducted

by King Vidor, Rouben Mamoulian,

Ernst

Lubitsch, and Walt Disney.

Though this s hardly he place for full-fledgedistory f sound

technologyduring the last half-century,t will nevertheless rove

useful

to

provide

an

outline

of

major developments nd concerns.2

The

early history

f

sound

film s

markedby the limitations f the

carbon and condenser microphones hen in use. Non-directional,

fragile,sensitive to wind and other ambient noises, needing an

amplification tage very close to the microphone, these mikes

required very special recording onditions.Providing hese condi-

tions heavily nfluenced mage recording s well as sound. Simply

put,

the

problem ay

n

thedifficultiesf producing high uality nd

complex sound track (includingdialogue, music, effects)with an

unselective microphoneat a time when the technology f sound

mixing practically

forbade

post-mixing

f

multiple

tracks

without

2This

summary s heavilydependent on

many of the

items isted in Claudia

Gorbman's

excellentbibliography, specially

Edward W. Kellogg,

"History

f

Sound

Motion Pictures," repr. from

Journal f the

Societyof Motion PictureEngineers

n

Raymond

Fielding, ed., A

TechnologicalHistory f Motion

Pictures nd

Television

(Berkeley:

Univ. of California

Press, 1967).

5





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Yale FrenchStudies

audible loss of quality. In fact, until approximately 933 it was

extremely are for music and dialogue

to

appear simultaneously

n

the sound trackunless theywere recorded imultaneously. he latter

solution of course presents ther difficulties.he amount

of

rever-

beration generally required for dialogue varies greatlyfrom that

which s appropriate

or

music

dialogue

needs

the fast nd relatively

limited reverberation f familiar pholstered nterior paces, while

we expect orchestralmusic to have the slow reverbprovidedby a

large auditorium); similarly, ialogue and music require different

amplification nd thusare difficulto recordwiththe same micro-

phone(s). The industry's olution o thisproblem, lreadygenerally

operational by late 1929,was to recordthe musicseparately-in an

atmosphere

conducive

to

propermusic recording-then

to

play

the

recordedmusicback

whilethe scene was

being

cted and its

dialogue

recorded. This so-called "playback"system ad the mmediate

ffect

of

separating

he

sound

track

from

he

image-a primary

actor

n

the

constitution

f

film

deology. By facilitating

he

matching

f a

performer

with

a

sound

which

he

had not

necessarily reated,

the

playback permitted mmediate capitalization

on the sound

film's

fundamental ie:

the

implication

hat the sound is

produced by

the

image when

in

fact t remains ndependent

rom t.

While

the

playback system

serves

as an

early

model

of the

prestidigitation hich haracterizes he atermultiple-channel ixing

of

effects, ialogue,

and music

first erfected

n

the

ate

thirties),

t

was not able to solve the problemofoutdoor ynchronized ialogue

recording.

The

early

mikescontinued

o

pick up

unwantednoises

n

all

but the most

carefully

elected

outdoor

ites

the

new directional

ribbon or velocitymikes were even more sensitive

o

wind pressure

than the familiar arbon and condenser

mikes). Simply

to move

indoors, however,deprivedthe filmmaker

f location

photography.

Here

again,

the

relatively rimitive

tate

of

sound

technology

eter-

mined the development

of

major aspects

of

image technology.

n

order

to

benefit rom he controlled

tmosphere rovidedby

thenew

heavily

insulated sound

studios,

without

givingup

outdoor scenes

entirely,

esearch

n

the

area of back

projection

was

accelerated,

with

acceptable

results chieved

as

early

as 1932. That

the

technique

of

6






7/23/2019 2930000


Rick Altman

back projection

s

modeled

on thatof

the playback eems incontro-

vertible. In both cases the material pre-recordedunder special

conditions

music needing pecial miking

n a

properroom, ocation

photography nvolvingmovementand distances nconsistent

with

current ound practices) s inserted

n

the final ecording y virtue f

a hidden reproductiondevice (the playback speaker, the back

projector). It is thus on the model of sound track practicesthat

Hollywood's

habit

of

constructingeality as opposed

to

observingt)

is based.

Throughout the thirties,nearly every important echnological

innovation an be tracedback to the desire to produce a persuasive

illusionof real people speaking eal words.Not only ound stagesbut

camera

blimps, microphonebooms,

incandescent

ights replacing

the

noisier

arc

lamps), and the development

f

highly

irectional

microphones

erivefrom feltneed to reduce

ll

traces

f the ound-

work

from

the sound track. This effacement f work, commonly

recognizedas a standardtraitof bourgeois deology, providesthe

technological counterpart

o

the inaudible sound editingpractices

developed during

his

period (blooping, cutting

o

sound, carrying

sound

over the cut, raising ialogue volume evelswhilereducing he

level of sounds whichdon't directly ervethe plot). These technolog-

ical

and technical ontributionso inaudible ound editing

f

course

parallel the well known standards f invisible mage editingdevel-

oped during

the same

period. The technical spects of

this visual

practice have received regular omment-match-cutting,utting n

movement,

1800

rule,

300

rule,

and so forth-but

the technological

aspects deserve to be more widely recognized: finergrain film o

reduce

graininess, aster

ilm

o reduce degree of artificialighting,

color

film

o simulatenatural

vision,coated lenses

to

reduce

distor-

tion and

glare, more mobile cameras to reproducevariety f human

motion.

Indeed, many

of these

nnovations, suallymentioned nly

from he

mage-improvementtandpoint, ave correspondingffects

on sound

reproduction.

o

mention nly a few, the experiments

n

film

arriedout

by Eastman, Dupont, and others mmediately efore

the war

resulted not

only

in

the fasterpanchromatic ilmswhich

permitted

he

cinematographers f the period to increase depth of

7





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Yale FrenchStudies

focus, but also in marked mprovementsn the quality f sound-on-

filmrecording.Fine-grain ilm tock, ike Eastman's No. 1302 and

Dupont's

No.

222,

contributed

markedly,

s did the new

coated

lenses, to the ncrease n quality f sound recording uring nd after

the war. (It

is

too seldom remembered hat ound technology uring

the thirties

nd forties

s

also image technology: ll sounds,whether

coded

as

variable density

r

variable area, were expressed

n

optical

terms, nd thushad to be recordedphotographicallyn thefilm, nd

ultimately ead by means of a lamp in the projector.Thus nearly

every advance

in

image technology-film, ens, printer, amp-

resulted

n

a correspondingeap in sound quality.)

In termsof sound quality, the average filmof the mid-forties,

whether n Hollywood,France, or England,

represented significant

improvement n the originalefforts f the late twenties. n more

general terms,however, he

films

f

the forties emained he

direct

descendants

f

those earlierfilms.

very tep

of

the

process

had

been

improved-from microphones o printers, rom mplifiers o loud-

speakers-yet

the

fundamental

ptical recording

nd

printing

ech-

nologyremainedbasically he same.

Not until fter he

war,

thanks

n

part to German wartime echnology, id the sound recordingndus-

try

n

general and the

film

ound track

n

particular ake

a

quantum

leap

forward

with the

perfection

f

magnetic ecording echniques.

As

with

all

important echnologicaldevelopments,however,

the

magnetic recording

evolutionmet

with

mmediate

conomic resis-

tance. There

was

no

question

that

magneticrecording

was

easier,

used lighter, more mobile equipment, cost less, and produced

markedly

better

results; theaters,however,

were

not

equipped

to

play films whichsubstituted magnetic tripeforthe traditional

optical

sound track.Just

s

Hollywood delayed

the

coming

f

sound

for

years,

it has

for

economic

reasons

delayed

the

coming

f

better

sound

for

decades. Over

a

quarter

of

a

century

fter

he

general

availabilityof magnetic recordingtechnology,veryfew theaters

(usually only

the

highpriced,

first

un,big city ariety)

re

equipped

with

magnetic sound equipment. ronically,

or

years

the

average

amateur filmmaker

working

with

super-8

sound

equipment

has

possessed better and more advanced sound reproduction acilities

8






7/23/2019 2930000


Rick Altman

than

his

neighborhood inema.

Nevertheless, Hollywood was able to capitalize on the new

technology n another way. Though filmmakers round the world

continued

o

use optical sound

fordistribution

rints, hey ery arly

began

to

do all

their wn

recording

n

the

magnetic

mode

(by

theend

of

1951, 75%

of

Hollywod's originalproduction ecording,

music

scoring, nd dubbing

was

being

done on

magnetic ecording quip-

ment). Finishing

what the

playback

had

begun, magnetic ecording

divorced

the

sound

track

tillfurther

rom he

image

and from he

image's optical technology. ow, anynumber f soundsources ould

easily be separately ecorded,mixed, nd remixed ndependently

f

the image (thus simplifyinghe manipulation

f

stereophonic ound,

now often

coupled

with

he new side-screen

ormats).

Ironically,

he

verytechnology

which

permitted ollywood

and

other

studio

systems

all

over

the world

further

o

separate

the

production

of

sound

and

image

tracks

encouraged independent

filmmakers

o

tie

the

recording

f

the

two

tracks

ightlyogether.

s

inexpensive s they re portable,magnetic ecorderswere oonmade

a

part

of

the

standard

cne'ma-ve'ritj

it.

Perceiving

he

ideological

roots of Hollywood's splitbetween mage and sound re)production,

the

partisans

f

direct ound

developed

a

theory

f

the

naturalness

f

direct,

unedited

recording,

f

this

method's

deologically

ncontam-

inated nature. Though these theories are contestable on many

grounds,theyhad an enormous ffect, articularlyn France. Jean-

Luc Godard and other practitioners f the New Wave were soon

abandoning Hollywod's

characteristic

irectionalmicrophones nd

selective

amplification

n

favor

of the direct transcription f all

ambient sounds by means of a single omni-directional entrally

located

mike.

No doubt this approach neglects he extent o which

the human

ear

selects ounds,but tcertainly ad the mportantffect

of

foregrounding

he

artificiality,

.e. the

constructed

ature,

of

sound

practices

n

studio-producedlassicalnarrative ilms he world

over.

Of

all

those

influenced

y

Godard and

le

direct,

o one has

had

such an

important echnological nfluence s RobertAltman.Experi-

menting

from

the

very

first

with

multiple-channel mixing

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Yale French

Studies

(e.g. M.A.S.H.), Altman has at

least

since Nashvilleadopted the

eight-trackechnology eveloped bythepopular recordingndustry.

In

manyways,

thiswas an obvious

development, incefilm

oundhas

regularly profited from

parallel

developments n related sound

industries radio, phonograph, ape, etc.),

yet this

borrowingwas

longer

n

coming nd

promises

o

bear still

more fruit hanmost of

the

others. Over the past

quarter

f

a century he popular

recording

industry as been one of the most

profitablen the entire

ntertain-

ment

complex,

and thus has

benefitted rom echnological

evelop-

ments

far

surpassing

hose made available to the cinema

over the

same

period.

At

present,

t is not at

all

uncommon

or

twenty-four

separate tracks o

be used

in

the constitution

f the

final

ound

track

for

an inexpensive

record or tape. The

standards

of

mixing ech-

nology

have thus

grownrapidly,

o the

point

where

they

ar

urpass

those typical of the film

industry.

Whereas

nearly

all

previous

productionshad

necessitated

mechanical

connection

etween

the

microphoneand othersound apparatus whence the sound boom

required

for all

sound takes

since

the

early thirties),

ltman

ntro-

duced

the use of

radio mikes

broadcasting

o

the

eparate

racks f an

eight-track

ystem,

using

two

or

three times

the

basic

eight

when

necessary.

This

frees

the

actor

entirely

rom

the

tyranny

f

the

microphone,

nd

also,

thanks

o

microphone

echnology eveloped

for other

purposes, permits

Altman

to

restrict ach channel

to a

single,

carefully

ontrolled

nput a single

character's

oice).

Each

track can thenbe dealt with

eparately

n

any

of the

ways

n

which

sound

signals

have

traditionally

een

handled

filtered,

everb

dded,

amplified, tc.),

so that

the

finalmix

can

do

anything

rom

epro-

ducing

the exact

sound

actually

heard from a

specific point

to

constructing highly

ontradictory

et of

signs

which

tterlyplits

he

hearing ubject. By

manipulating

is

sound, whether hroughmicro-

phone

location, signal deformation,

r

editing trategies,

ltman-

and themanyotherswho now follow his ystem-is ina position o

manipulate

his

auditor

ndependently

romhis

spectator.

When the

two

sets

of

postioning ignals

are

combined

n

the

viewing/hearing

subject,

the full

possibilities

f

cinema's

audio-visual ollaboration

may

clearly

be

sensed.

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Rick

Altman

One

final

developmentdeservesmention,because it

represents

the most recentprogress nsolving n old problem.Whentherewas

only one microphone

nput for the sound track, the problem

of

ground noise already

existed. Indeed, throughout he thirties nd

forties,

one

of the

main concerns

of

sound

engineers

was that

of

ground noise reduction.

Many solutionswere proposed and indeed

put

into

effect,

ut none

capable

of

solving

he

problems

ndemic

o

the multipletracks and frequency anges possible

in

recent

equip-

ment.

Recently, however,

the

Dolby system not

surprisingly,

n

innovationof the popular recording ndustry) as been applied to

film ound withvery

favorableresults.Basically, the Dolby system

reduces

distortion

y

artificiallymplifying

nd

then

reducing

ow

volume sounds

(compensating

or

differences

n

frequency ange),

thus

returning he sounds

to

their riginal olume

but

n

the

process

reducing ground noise. Used for the final

track

of

Nashville,

the

Dolby system

was first sed

throughout roduction

n

Star

Wars,

nd

since then fora number of otherexpensive Hollywood features,

including

Michael Cimino's Deer

Hunter. ndeed,

now thatthe

film

industryhas at last begun

to take its cue

from

the area which

represents

he

state-of-the-sound-art-popularecording-it

s

to

be

expected

that

new

technology

will continueto be made

available.

Whether or not

local theaterswill

ever

be

equipped

with

he sound

systems necessary

to use

these innovations o their fullestmust

remain a

separate-and economically roblematic-question.

Just

as

attention

o

the

technology f sound has largelybeen

concentrated

n

the

innovations

eading up

to

the

coming

f

sound,

so reflection n

the

role of

the

sound track s

concentrated

n

the

years immediately ollowing he sound revolution. hough

partsof

this

early commentary

re

all

too familiar

how many

imes

must

we

read about Rene Clair's praise of asynchronous ound in Broadway

Melody?),

its overall

logic

and ramifications

ave never been

fully

explored. Briefly,

et

me recall

the major figures nd statementsn

the

history f sound

aesthetics.As early as August, 1928,

Sergei

Eisenstein set

the

tone

in

a

joint statementmade withPudovkin

nd

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Alexandrov. Stressing ound's threat to montage, this manifesto

called for n asynchronous, ontrapuntal se of sound. The following

year

Pudovkin

explained

this

theory

n

full

n

a chapter

f his

Film

Technique entitled"Asynchronism s a Principleof Sound Film,"

while at the same time

Rene

Clair was independently rriving

t

similar onclusions. hortly, similar heorywas to be propounded n

Bela Balazs'

Der Geistdes Films.The polemic gainst hetendency f

sound film to imitate the theater, already apparent

n

Clair and

Balazs, reached its height n the work of another arly critic fthe

sound cinema, Rudolf Arnheim, espeically in his 1938 "A New

Laocoon:

Artistic omposites

and

the Talking

Film"3

Working

n

the wake of such important ormulatorsf prescrip-

tive cinema theory,other more modest individuals ike Raymond

Spottiswoodeforged matching escriptive heory. ividing ounds

into realistic/non-realisticnd parallel/contrastiveategories, pottis-

woode also elaborated on previoususage by separating he

notion f

counterpoint rom hatof asynchronism,husclearing hepathfor

the

terminologyenerally mployed oday,

hat f

Siegfried

racauer.

Borrowing freelyfrom Spottiswoode,

as well as

Pudovkin,

Clair,

Arnheim,

and Karel Reisz's standard

editing manual,4

Kracauer

provides threepairs

of

terms, ach predicated

n

the primacy

f

the

image but designed to describe sound: synchronism/asynchronism,

actual/commentative,

nd

parallelism/counterpoint.

hat

the basic

vocabulary for film sound should derive froma line of critics

profoundly uspicious

f

sound

and that his

erminology

hould

take

the

mage

as its

point

of

departure

re matters f concernwhichhave

been

too

infrequently

ddressed

in

the

history

f criticism n

the

sound track.

3Eisenstein,

Film Form

(New

York:

Harcourt,

Brace and

World, 1949), p. 258;

Pudovkin, Film Technique New York: Grove, 1960), pp. 155-65; Clair,

Reflexion

faite

Paris: Gallimard,1951), passim, and

Cinema

d'hier,

inema

d'aujourd'hui Paris:

Gallimard, 1970), pp. 195-218; Balazs, Theory f theFilm New York: Dover, 1970),

pp. 194ff.;Arnheim, ilm As Art Berkeley:Univ. of California, 957), pp. 199-230.

4Spottiswoode,

A

Grammar f theFilm Berkeley:Univ. of California, 950),

pp.

176ff.;Kracauer, Theory f Film (New York: Oxford, 1960), pp. 111ff.;Reisz, The

Techniqueof Film Editing New York: HastingsHouse, 1968; second enlarged dition

with new sectionby Gavin Millar).

5See Claudia

Gorbman,

"Clair's Sound

Hierarchy

nd the Creationof

Auditory

Space,"

Purdue

Film Studies

Annual,

1

(1976), 113-23,

for

refreshingxception

o

this rule.

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In order to understand he

source

of

early uspicion

f

sound,

as

well as the subsequentdisenfranchisementfsoundin the realmof

theoretical peculation,we must

onsider he role which ound-and

especially anguage-had played

during he heyday f the silent

ilm.

The

earliest days

of

the cinema were markedby a practical

nd

all-

consuming esirefor imple

urvival,

ut as soon as

the

new artfound

the

leisure to contemplate ts own position it felt

compelled to

differentiatetself rom ts

renowned

parent,

the

theater.Munster-

berg

constantly pposes the

virtues f

the cinema

to

those

of

the

stage, while Vachel Lindsay devotes a chapterof his Art of the

Moving

Picture

o

"Thirty

ifferences etween

the

Photoplays

nd

the

Stage."6 Later we findEisenstein nd many thers

ttempting

o

put away

the

threat

to

the

cinema's individuality

epresented y

theater.7 heories of montage n

particular alorizethe

very reas

in

which

cinema easily outshines he stage. Increasingly,

elf-conscious

filmmakers ttempted o reduce the effect f

intertitles,hunning

direct transcription f dialogue in favor of commentarywhose

graphic

design

often

arried

as

important message

as

its

semantic

content.

To such

a

world,

devoted

to

minimalizationf the

anguage

whichrecallsfilm's ompetitor

nd parent, hetheater,

hecoming

f

sound could

hardly

have

represented welcome nnovation.

For

the

oming f

sound

represents

he

return

f

the ilent inema's

repressed.

t is thus

hardly urprisinghatsound

should be seen by

silentfilmmakers ore as

a threat han s an opportunity.

epeatedly

warning against the temptation o return o the theatricalmodel,

represented y the dominanceof

synchronizedound

and especially

of

dialogue, early

critics f sound devised two

strategies hich ie at

the

root

of

nearly ll subsequent

eflection n the sound

track.Eager

to

relegate language

and

theatricality

nce more

to the shadows

whence they came, these early critics

nitiated wo

fallacieswhose

power

and

durability re effectively rounded n their

repressive

6Munsterberg, he Film: A Psychological tudy New York:

Dover, 1970; orig.

1916); Lindsay, Art of the Moving Picture New York: Liveright,

970; orig. 1915).

7Eisenstein, Film Form, pp. 15ff.; Clair Riflexion

faite,

pp.

116 and

passim,

Cinema d'hier, cinema d'aujourd'hui, pp. 33, 60, 78,

and

passim;

Lev Kuleshov,

Kuleshov on Film Writings y Lev Kuleshov,trans.Ron Levaco (Berkeley: Univ. of

CaliforniaPress, 1974), pp. 56ff.

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Yale

French

Studies

function.

he first f

these shallterm hehistorical

allacy.

A

proper

theory of sound cinema, one might xpect,would begin with the

observation hat ound

films re composed of two simultaneous nd

parallel phenomena, image

and

sound. Such,

however,has

rarely

been the case.

Fromthe veryfirst,riticswho had lived through he

coming

of

sound took the historical rocess

whereby n art which

once

lacked sound had the capabilities f sound

reproductiondded

to

it)

as an

adequate

model for theoretical

eflection. nstead of

treating ound and image as simultaneous ndcoexistent, he histor-

ical fallacy rders hem hronologically,

hus

mplicitly ierarchizing

them.Historically, ound was added to the mage;

ergo n the nalysis

of sound

cinema

we maytreat ound as an afterthought,supplement

which the imageis freeto take or leave as

it chooses.

By adhering

to the historicalfallacy,

early critics succeeded

admirably

n

marginalizing

ound. Withthe rapid universalization

f

sound

technology,

however,

the

force

of the

historical rgument

necessarily ubsided; once the silent ra faded nto thebackground

the

primacy

of the silent mage

no

longer appeared

self-evident.

Another

argument

was called

for, strategy

ied not to film's

history

but

to

the medium'svery

essence. Thus was born the

ontological

fallacy.

The version of the

ontological

fallacyregularly pplied

to

cinema

claims that

film s

a visual

medium nd that he

mages

must

be/are

the

primary arriersof the film's

meaning and

structure.

Already present

n

capsule

form

uring

he

earlyyears

f

sound,

this

argument

reaches

its

height

in Arnheim's

"New Laocoon" and

Kracauer's Theory f

Film

"films

with ound ive

up

to the

spirit

f

the

mediumonly

f

the visualstake the ead

in them"p. 103). Today

the primacy

f

the image continues o

be taken

as

a

given,

even by

practitioners

f

advanced methodologies.

Witness,

for

example,

GianfrancoBettetini:

The

essence

of

the cinema

s

basicallyvisual,

and

every

sonic intervention

ught

to

limit

tself

o

a

justified

nd

necessary ct ofexpressiventegration."8 ow,what s at issue here

is not whether

he

image is essential

to a definition f

cinema,

but

whether

or

not notions of a

form's

ssence

provide a proper and

8Bettetini, heLanguageand Technique f theFilm

The Hague: Mouton, 1973),

p.

111.

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Rick

Altman

sufficient asis for

egislation f thatform's ctivity nd for

descrip-

tion of its structure. nstead of developinga logical methodof

describing he actual characteristics

f

a

compositeform,

he

onto-

logical fallacy represents clever

strategy

or

dissembling ound

film's ompositenature-in short or

epressing et gain thescandal

of

theatrical

anguage.

No

matter

hat

the practice

f

fifty ears

of

film making has clearly established

the dominant

position

of

dia-

logue, along withthe initial

position

of thescreenwriter,

o

matter

thatthe most

characteristic ractice

f

classical

film arrative hould

be the normally edundant echniqueofpointing he camera at the

speaker,

no

matter

hat ritics

ommonly uote

a

film

word-for-word

but

rarely llustrate heir

ommentswith rame

nlargements

usually

preferring hebetterqualitybut

largely rrelevant

roduction till).

In

short,

he historical nd

ontological

allacies

re the

prescrip-

tive

arguments

f silent

ilmmakersntent

n

preservinghe

purity

f

their "poetic" medium. That such

strategies

hould have been

devisedis understandable; hat hey houldhaveprovided he model

for a

descriptive heory

s

entirely

nacceptable.By

perpetuating

n

image-oriented tance, film riticism as failedto

provide

ither

he

theory

or

the

terminology ecessary

or

proper

treatment

f

sound

cinema

as it

exists

and

not

as

earlytheoreticians redicted

t

would

develop-we

must not

forget

hat

the

same

Arnheimwho

willingly

invoked the

authority

f

Lessingclaimed hat hefuture

f soundfilm

lay

in animated

cartoons ).

In order to deal intelligentlyith he soundtrackwe need a new

beginning.

We need to

start,for

once, not with the

self-serving

pronouncementsof

silent film

directorsand fans, but with the

phenomenon

of

sound film

tself,

analyzing

ts

practices

and its

possibilities

rather

than

prescribing ts supposed duties

and draw-

backs. This

issue

of

Yale French

tudiesrepresents,

hope, a step n

that

direction.These sort

essays should

provide newstarting oint

forreflectionn thesoundtrack, new set ofgivens ndproblems,

new

and differentoice

bound to be echoed in future

iscussions n

problems

of

sound

in

the cinema.

Rick

Altman

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