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THE ACOUSTIC WORLD 197
WHAT DO WE DEMAND?
Tt is this demand which grants recognition to the sound film as a new great art. The demand is that the sound film should not merely contribute sound to the silent film and thus make it even more like nature, but that it should approach the reality of life from a totally different angle and open up a new treasure-house of human experience. We do not as yet demand from the incipient sound film any technical perfection of performance, but we do demand new themes. What interests us in the first place is not how it sounds, but what it is that it endows with the power of vocal expression.
Tor if the sound film will merely speak, make music and imitate sounds as the theatre has already done for some thousands of years, then even at the peak of its technical perfection it will remain nothing but a copying device. But in art only that counts for a discovery which discovers, reveals something hitherto hidden from our eyes — or ears.
'The silent film, when it became an art, discovered for us an unknown visual world. It showed us the face of things, the mimicry of nature and the microdramatics of physiognomy. In the sequence of shots produced by editing a hitherto hidden interrelation of figures and movements was revealed to us and the linking of pictures evoked new powerful trains of association.
THE ACOUSTIC WORLD
'It is the business of the sound film to reveal for us our acoustic environment, the acoustic landscape in which we live, the speech of things and the intimate whisperings of nature; all that has speech beyond human speech, and speaks to us with the vast conversational powers of life and incessantly influences and directs our thoughts and emotions, from the muttering of the sea to the din of a great city, from the roar of machinery to the gentle patter of autumn rain on a window-pane. The meaning of a floor-board creaking in a deserted room, a bullet whistling past our ear, the death-watch beetle ticking in old furniture and the forest spring tinkling