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200 SOUND
again. Here was a proper plot for a sound film. The found, lost and recovered valse had a dramaturgical, action-moving part to play.
SOUND SPEAKS UP
In the story mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the lost and found melody was, however, allotted a role such as might have been played by any other object. It was a mere 'prop' in the weft of the dramatic plot, no different than a ring or a document which might have been lost and found and around which the plot might have been woven just as well. The valse in this case is merely presented as a fact; no significance attaches to its specific acoustic quality and effect. For this reason it is the most superficial form in which sound can be given a dramaturgical function in a story.
Deeper and more organic is the dramaturgical role of sound when its effect determines the course of the action; when sound is not only made to be heard in the course of the story but can intervene to influence its course. I take an instance from an old silent film, or rather I am inventing an instance in order that fight might be thrown on yet another problem in the same sphere.
In the early days of the silent film, a film was made about Paganini, with Conrad Veidt in the title role. The wizard fiddler is put in prison but he fiddles himself out again. His playing is bewitching — the enchanted turnkeys get out of his path and his violin paralyses all resistance to his escape. The crowd outside, charmed by his music, opens a path for the fiddler and his fiddle.
In this film the inaudible playing of a violin had a dramaturgical function, because it influenced the hero's fate, freed him from his prison. As a spectacle it was a fine and convincing scene, precisely because it was silent! The dumbshow of a great actor made us imagine violin-playing so enchanting that hardened jailers dropped their weapons. How great a virtuoso would have been required to play the violin in a sound film in order to achieve this? A merely visible, inaudible music, existing only in the imagination, could have a magic