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A BATTLE OF SOUNDS 203
to get out of there and is kicking and battering at the door. The shadow of death falls on the breathless, feverish merriment. Finally the negro breaks down the door and the revelry, as if cut in two, suddenly freezes into mute stiff immobility.
Even more moving is Vergano's sound scene in the film // Sole Sorge Ancora. A priest, a member of the Resistance who has been condemned to death is being taken to the scene of execution by the Germans. A crowd collects along the road. The crowd grows even larger, the ring surrounding the priest ever denser. The priest begins to pray, first softly, then more loudly, as he walks along. The camera follows with a tracking shot. The priest remains visible all the time, but of the crowd never more than two or three faces are seen, as the priest and the camera pass them. The priest is reciting the litany. Two or three of the crowd whisper the response : 'Ora pro nobis'. But as the priest walks on and on, the response grows ever louder. We see not more than two or three people, but we hear ever more and more, in an ominous crescendo. The shot remains a close-up all the time and can show no crowd, but more and more voices say 'Ora pro nobis'. We hear the swelling of the sound like the roaring of a torrent. It is the audible revolt of the people; its menacing power and emotion turns into a formidable acoustic symbol, precisely because we cannot see the crowd. If we saw the crowd, then the storm of voices would be explained, for the voices of so many people could scarcely be less loud. But then the sound would lose its particular significance. For never could the film show a crowd of such a size as the crowd the presence of which we are made to feel in that isolated, symbolic sound not contained by any real space. This is the voice of the nation and nevertheless we hear it in the close-up of the martyr-priest, as an answer to the mute play of his features.
I do not say that such a decisive dramaturgical role of sound is indispensable for every sound film. As the silent film has ceased to exist, the sound film must operate with many different kinds of stories. The sound film to-day is not a specific form of film, but the whole of what there is of the film and hence the specific style of one sort of film cannot be obligatory for it. It must present everything that comes along