The art of sound pictures (1930)

ig8 THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES men call for help by this speedy system of codes. Or again, watch the excited interest of the audience rise to nervous pitch as the noise of a whirring taxi rushes to their ears. Now look carefully at another type of sound effect successfully used in portraying a psychic event in the experience of one of the screen characters. Here, trick effects in sight and sound are deftly intermingled in the marvelous scene of the third degree, when a stool pigeon is being cross-examined by the police captain. Note how the speeding up of the nagging voices, combined with the dizzy picture of countless insistent inquisitors, conveys a total impression of the psychic bewilderment and exhaustion that led the stool pigeon to succumb to the interminable questioning of the captain. Again, here is a very simple illustration of the subtle differences which develop in the use of a device as simple as whispering, first, in the short story, second, in the play, and third, in the talkie. We read in a short story that Ethelbert, the evil-minded waiter in the roadhouse, slinks up to Bettina, the hard-working cloakroom girl, and whispers into her little ear, ‘T love you. You must marry me, or I shall put some shellac in your cocktails.” Here we get no special dramatic effect from the whispering. The threat of Ethelbert is conveyed almost entirely by the mere meaning of his words. To be sure, the author tells us that he whispers them, but this does not convey to most readers a feeling significantly different from the one which they would have if the author had said, “Ethelbert bellowed into her ear.” Most of us would probably be led to think more or less hazily that Ethelbert was whispering for no other purpose than to prevent