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204 SOUND
Nevertheless it is a pity that the sound film has almost completely dropped the cultivation of sound effects.
PROBLEM OF THE SOUND PLAY
This is a good opportunity to discuss the form problem of the sound play in general. Wireless plays are impossible without verbal explanations and descriptions of the scene. We cannot understand even words in their exact sense if we cannot see the facial expression and gestures of those who speak. For the spoken word contains only a fragment of human expression. People talk not only with their mouths. The glance, a twitching of a muscle in the face, movements of the hands speak at the same time and only all of them together add up to the exact shade of meaning intended. The word is merely one of the tones in a rich chord, so we do not understand even the word in its precise meaning if we cannot see who said it and when, in what circumstances and connection. As for the sounds of nature we know them so little that we often fail even to recognize them unless we see what is emitting them. A farmhouse may at a pinch be represented by voices of animals. But even then the listener will not be able to say whether the mooing of cows, neighing of horses, crowing of cocks, cackling of hens, barking of dogs is a sound picture of some bucolic farm or of a livestock market. Even recognizable sounds merely indicate the generality of the things they stand for. But the life of all image-art is in the concrete, exact presentation of the individuality of things.
But the rustling of a forest or the noise of the sea cannot always be distinguished — in fact the rustling of paper or the dragging of a sack along a stone floor are deceptively similar to both. Our ear is not yet sufficiently sensitive. It is the sound film that will train it, just as the silent film trained our eye. A hunter would recognize sounds in the forest which the citydweller would not. But on the whole most of us would not even find our way about in our own homes if we had to rely on our ears alone.
For this reason radio plays always explain in one way or another what we are supposed to see, so that the sounds in it