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SOUNDS AS DRAMATIS PERSONAE 201
effect. The effect of actually heard music would depend on the public's musical sensibility and taste, a quantity susceptible of innumerable variations. But to make it credible that music did actually charm the rough jailers, it would have to have a like effect on the whole of the audience. It is not by chance that the sound film has not yet touched the Paganini theme.
Petersburg Night, made by the Russian Grigori Roshal, also has a musician hero. Here the varying effect on the audience is not due to the quality of the playing, but to the nature of the music played. The Russian violinist plays folk songs and the society ladies and gentlemen in the best seats do not like it and boo, while the poorer patrons in the gallery are enthusiastic. Just as the scene mentioned in connection with the Paganini film was possible only in a silent film, so the scene from the Russian film is possible only in a sound film, for we must hear the songs and experience their spirit in order to know why they delight one part of the audience and infuriate the other. This scene characterizes not only the music but the audience listening to it and in addition to its dramaturgical function, it also has a profound ideological significance.
SOUNDS AS DRAMATIS PERSONAE
But not only music can have a dramaturgical function in a sound film. For instance: a sailor is saying good-bye to his family. His wife, rocking a cradle, begs him to stay at home. But the sea, the great rival for his affections, is visible through the window. The sailor hesitates. Then two sounds are heard, like two rival seducers. A soft lullaby sung by the woman and the summoning murmur of the sea. In the picture one now sees only the sailor, and of him only his face, but it shows the conflict in his mind, the hard struggle within himself, evoked by these two sounds, these two calls. It is a dramatic, fate-deciding scene in which not a word is spoken. The woman's lullaby and the voice of the sea fight a duel here for possession of a soul.