A Critical Look at Sound in Film

Film theorists, in general, spend a relatively small amount of time writing about the aspect of sound in films. This being said, the ones that do talk about it leave their readers with striking opinions; opinions which will be discussed in this essay. They will be based around Rudolf Arnheim's “Film and Reality” written in 1933, and “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures” written in 1947 by Erwin Panofsky. Their views on sound in film will be treated, making comparisons as well as differentiations between the theorists' discussion points and arguments, analysing as we go along.

Let us start by looking at common opinions in the works of Panofsky and Arnheim, regarding sound. The two authors on the whole seem to take a critical view on the transition to sound. Panofsky approaches sound by saying that “any attempt to convey thought and feelings exclusively, or even primarily, by speech leaves us with a feeling of embarrassment, boredom or both.”¹ Arnheim, in a similar vein states that “by merely robbing the real event of something – the sound – the appeal of such an episode is greatly heightened.”² There is a negative attitude towards sound in film, and in their articles, the authors seem to be more than just arguing their case, they appear to be defending their opinions. Their angle on this discussion seems to be not so much that sound is bad, but rather that it takes away from the completeness of silent cinema. Arnheim and Panofsky do however differ in their way of treating sound as a part of the cinematic experience.

Arnheim hold strong opinions about sound in film, or more particularly, the lack thereof in silent films. He starts out by stating “No one who went unprejudiced to watch a silent film missed the noises which would have been heard if the same events had been taking place in real life.”³ This seems a fair judgement, as the absence of something that hasn't been there yet is not missed. However, Arnheim goes further to say that even with the arrival of sound, he believed that the silence of cinema was key, that a film was complete without a sound track, “in order to get a full impression it is not necessary for it [film] to be complete in the naturalistic sense (…) Only after one has known talkies is the lack of sound conspicuous in a silent film”.⁴ With this of course, he reiterates what he said before, that although in real life, people hear sounds, in film it does not become unnatural for there to be no sound at all, but this changes with the knowledge that there can be sound in film. And like Adam and Eve realising they were naked in the garden of Eden, the sound-era viewers realise there is something amiss when watching a silent film. This is true to some extent, that which before was perfectly adequate is now 'boring' or unnatural. Arnheim, however, leaves completely out of consideration the fact that silent film were never watched in silence. The audience was generally rowdier, as many silent films were at first shown in a vaudeville theatre where the audience reacted to what happened on stage or in this case, on screen. The theatre was not quiet in the way that it is nowadays, but the most important factor that Arnheim ignores is that every viewing was accompanied by at least a pianist. This pianist would give a varied but mostly energetic performance, based on what was going on on the screen. It is safe to say that today's film-going experience may in some ways be more tame than in the silent film era.⁵ Even Panofsky writes “even the silent film, then, was never mute.”⁶

Arnheim focusses more on silent film as being a complete entity, with sound as an extra feature that could be used, but that does little for the film, if not takes away from the visual aspect of the film, “if, however, the sound is also heard, the opening of the mouth appears obvious and its value as a means of expression is almost entirely lost.”⁷ For Arnheim, the visual aspect should, if it is a good film, leave the viewer understanding exactly what is going on. The director's job is to make something visual that by nature is not visual. For instance, the author repeatedly mentions a scene in the silent film The Docks of New York (1928) where a shot is fired, and instead of hearing a shot, we see a flock of birds taking flight. His claim, by using this example, is that although the audience doesn't physically hear the shot, they may feel like they have heard the shot because of the use of editing. Ironically, this film came out after The Jazz Singer (1928) did. This film was the very first popular sound film.

Panofsky, unlike Arnheim, discusses instances whereby sound, speech in particular, has the potential to ruin a scene. However, Panofsky takes a kinder view of sound. He doesn't show prejudice towards it, rather he disapproves of the way that people use sound in film. The author approaches sound in film from a theatrical and literary stance. Film scripts are completely different to books, and a theatre production of the same story would have to be cut differently in film. This means that to turn a play, for instance by Shakespeare, would have to take a completely different form. He brings this discussion towards our topic of sound by stressing that “wherever, as in so many other films, a poetic emotion, amusical outburst, or a literary conceit (…) entirely lose contact with visible movement, they strike the sensitive spectator as, literally, out of place.”⁸ Where an audience didn't see the characters up close on stage or in a book, this has become a main appeal of film. But with the transition to sound, the close-up has become redundant as the emotions can be expressed through what is said as well as what the facial expressions are saying. Panofsky puts a theatrical performance in direct opposition with the silent film, as in the theatrical performance, one may hear the emotions without having to “count the hairs in Romeo's mustache (sic).”⁹ On the other hand, the author makes a reference to Laurence Olivier's Henry V in which the close-up is used effectively with “Mr. Olivier's beautiful face inwardly listening to but not pronouncing the great soliloquy”.¹⁰ Here speech was unnecessary to show the audience what was happening and more particularly, what he is feeling.

Erwin Panofsky delves further into the roles of sound in film; as means of explanation. Or rather, he explains why sound is not needed, by introducing iconography as an alternative. Iconography was used in most silent films, and is still being used today to make it easier for the audience to understand character traits; a bad man will be clad in black with a large moustache, an old man will be recognised by his walking stick, “a checkered (sic) tablecloth meant, once for all, a “poor but honest” milieu.”¹¹ In most silent films, the storyline was simple enough for these icons to play one of the roles that sound and speech may do today. In this sense, the cinematography has partially been replaced by sound, or in many cases Panofsky's ideas of being redundant, in the way that information is given to the audience, still stand true. He also discusses the effect that sound had on acting as it “suffered a sudden interruption by the invention of the talking film.”¹² Many popular actors in that time, for instance Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, came from a vaudeville background with a vast array of slapstick humour. This was less popular once sound had made way for musicals and other types of films with speech. It was only Harpo of the Marx brothers who remained silent in his films, although this was acceptable with his other brothers providing other sorts of comic relief, and Harpo himself did play music in his films, so the only exception to the rule is broken in that way. On this subject, a quick point of some frustration in Arnheim's work is his reference to a Charlie Chaplin quote, which apparently stated that “there was not a single scene where he “spoke”, that is, moved his lips.”¹³ Arnheim then ironically chooses to allude to Chaplin's famous bread roll dancing scene, in which he most definitely moves his lips as if he is talking. However, the point that Arnheim tries to make with this is quite clear; no sound is necessary for an audience to understand the meaning of a scene if it is well played and directed, a point akin to what Panofsky's article says.

Where Arnheim saw sound as an addition to film, Panofsky sees it as a transformation of the medium, “the transformation of musical sound in to articulate speech and, therefore, of quasi pantomime into an entirely new species of spectacle (…) this acoustic component is not detachable from the visual.”¹⁴ He sees silent film and the talkies as two different types with different potential. Although in his article Panofsky tends to speak of sound in film as something that can be negative, he clearly accepted sound as a part of film in a way that Arnheim couldn't. This difference in attitude could be based on the times that these two articles were written; Arnheim published his article in 1933, when sound had only recently become a success in film. Although the first films with sound were made around 1927 (namely Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer) it took at least a few more years before sound became a part of film and not just a novelty. In 1933 sound would have really begun to be a part of film, and the technology was well enough developed to attract an audience for whom the novelty period had run its course. Arnheim sees silent films as a type of art, as individual pictures placed in a particular order to make a story. Not only was sound something unnecessary for a film, adding sound ruined the artistic aspect and it became a commercial entity.

An important factor that contributes to the difference in theories is the time at which the theorist wrote their essay. Arnheim's opinions are stronger, they are more alternative to the general opinion at that time and they are based on the idea that sound is just momentarily popular as it was still in its infant stages. Panofsky's theory was written when it has become clear that sound was there to stay. This makes his opinions, given the context that they were written in, maybe even more alternative than Arnheim's theories. Their work is both valuable to the study of sound in cinema as it represents a very small amount of critical discussion about sound in film. And though we may not agree with everything that is written in these articles, they allow its readers to step into their mindset to see another point of view.

Bibliography

Arnheim, Rudolf. “Film and Reality,” in Film as Art. Berkeley: U.C. Press, (1967): 312-321

Furniss, Maureen. “Sound and the Silent Film.” In American Silent Film: Discovering Marginalized Voices, edited by Greg Bachmann, Thomas J. Slater. (Illinois: Southern Illinois UP, 2000) :115- 124.

Panofsky, E. “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by L. Baudry, M. Cohen and G. Mast (London: Oxford 1974): 151-169.