Larry Sider

R E V I E W S

The Voice in Cinema, Michel Chion

 
The Austrian filmmaker, Peter Kubelka, says that nature is inherently synchronous, cinema is not. Whenever you clap your hands or take a step, the corresponding sounds are in sync and always will be in sync. Nothing can change that. But cinema is special in this respect because it can separate sound from picture, and it is in that gap where meaning - and metaphor - lie. (Editor and sound-designer Walter Murch goes a step further to suggest that the greater the distance between an image and its sound, the more interest they create for the audience).

This simple explanation of the relationship between sound and the film image helps to explain why as audio technology advances and soundtracks become more complex they are, by and large, less engaging. Videotape and digital technology provide sound and image (most commonly in the form of dialogue) as a package. This is not to say they cannot be separated but it takes a wilful action to do so. To shoot and edit synchronous sound is more straightforward than to structure films around voices and bodies that are not necessarily connected. And this is precisely the territory that Michel Chion has chosen to explore in The Voice in Cinema: "(The) sounds and voices that wander the surface of the screen, awaiting a place to attach to, belong to the cinema and to it alone."

Chion wrote La Voix au Cinéma in 1982, less than a decade after the introduction of Dolby sound. "Sound Designer" was becoming a common film credit, sound design being recognised as a distinct craft of filmmaking. 17 years later Chion's text has been translated into English by Claudia Gorbman. It is ironic that as sound design and soundtracks have evolved during that period, most of its effort has concentrated on sound effects and surrounding atmospheres - on the spaces between voices. The voice has been left under the jurisdiction of the editor and the picture edit.

"Discussions of sound films rarely mention the voice, speaking instead of the 'soundtrack.' A deceptive and sloppy notion, which postulates that all the audio elements recorded together onto the optical track of the film are presented to the spectator as a sort of bloc or coalition, across from the other bloc, a no-less fictive 'image track.'"

It is not only discussions of sound films that take this approach, but the writing, direction and editing that create them, too. Though it is the dominant element in a film's soundscape, the voice is rarely considered when building a soundtrack. Hence, with notably few exceptions, voice has come to equal dialogue, part of the steady stream of sound that binds most films. This attitude ignores the mysterious bond between sound and image, what Walter Murch calls "conceptual resonance", where the two basic ingredients of film continually redefine each other in a symbiotic partnership. This is the essence of sound film but it is neglected in most film production (and in most film schools), relegated to "art house" cinema. Through his notion of the acousmêtre, the voice without a corresponding face, and its various permutations, Chion presents an elegant interpretation of the sound film that is valuable to both the academic and the practitioner.

At the centre of his investigation Chion uses two recurring examples, Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and Hitchcock's Psycho. Mabuse, made in the talkies early years as a sequel to the silent Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, is structured around the use of the acousmêtre. For Chion, Mabuse is "a sort of template for the voice in cinema." Psycho is a film parallel in structure to Mabuse but about the anacousmêtre, the coming together of filmed body and dislocated voice. Between these two analyses are five chapters loosely grouped around the role of the mother's voice in Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff, essays in which Chion sets out cinema's classic roles for voice (telephone conversations, screams, siren calls, mute characters) and dexterously considers the techniques of certain voice "masters": Welles, Tati, Bresson and Fellini.

The significance of Chion's work lies not only in the fact that he takes on a subject avoided by both theorists and practitioners, but also in his method of analysis. His theoretical stance is informed by his experience as a composer and filmmaker, while his observations are imbued with a fascination of filmmaking's mechanics. As in his Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Chion always presents film-making and viewing as an active, vital process. He infuses a concept as familiar as screen space (on-screen, off-screen, the background orchestra's "pit", the limbo inhabited by the narrator) with a theatrical life where voices and sounds, removed from the images, wait to take their turn at centre stage. "The situation changes precisely when the voice is 'engaged,' to a greater or lesser degree, with the screen space, when the voice and the image dance in a dynamic relationship, now coming within a hair's breadth of entering the visual field, now hiding from the camera's eye."

His discussion ranges from Lacan to Mel Brooks making comparisons as inspired as Syberberg's Parsifal with The Jazz Singer. He frankly admits to not being aware of grouping "art" with popular entertainment. But this is practical theory, revealing how cinema operates on all levels. Like a scientist proving a hypothesis, he goes through films from different periods, different genres, different nationalities, convincing you that his insights will be found in any and every film. He makes all cinema seem as one collective film which manifests itself in endless variations.

Chion's study begins with psychoanalysis but he eventually confronts the technical developments that affect voice recording and mixing. "One must always view the relationship between technological possibilities and aesthetic and dramatic expression as a dialectic." The introduction of Dolby and digital recording has removed the hiss on optical tracks resulting in a silent background from which the soundtrack emerges. The voice comes across differently now than it did in the 40's or 50's or even the 60's. It is cleaner, clearer and more intimate. It has a new, dramatic presence. Most importantly, the space between the words becomes more pronounced. And it is exactly these gaps (where the "meaning" lies) that sound designers hone in on, filling them with layers of effects, atmospheres, music, footsteps, etc., which technology lends not only audibility but also an often inappropriate seductive sensuality.

The voice, therefore, may have to find a new role amongst the special effects - visual and aural - that have redefined the cinematic experience. As Chion concludes, "The cinema could be losing the authenticity that allowed movies until now to engage the voice in such immediate and striking ways. Films like The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Psycho, Sansho the Bailiff, and India Song, in which the powers of the voice are brought into play with singular imaginative force, belong perhaps to an age forever past - the voice's Age of Innocence."

Larry Sider is a film editor and sound designer having worked extensively with film-makers Patrick Keiller, the Brothers Quay, Keith Griffiths, Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey. He is also co-founder and curator of the School of Sound symposium.