Theory of the film : (character and growth of a new art) (1952)

SILENCE AND SPACE 205 are merely acoustic illustrations of a narrated scene or a scene made intelligible by words. THE PICTURE FORMS THE SOUND In a sound film there is no need to explain the sounds. We see together with the word the glance, the smile, the gesture, the whole chord of expression, the exact nuance. Together with the sounds and voices of things we see their physiognomy. The noise of a machine has a different colouring for us if we see the whirling machinery at the same time. The sound of a wave is different if we see its movement. Just as the shade and value of a colour changes according to what other colours are next to it in a painting, so the timbre of a sound changes in accordance with the physiognomy or gesture of the visible source of the sound seen together with the sound itself in a sound film in which acoustic and optical impressions are equivalently linked together into a single picture. In a radio play the stage has to be described in words, because sound alone is not space-creating. SILENCE Silence, too, is an acoustic effect, but only where sounds can be heard. The presentation of silence is one of the most specific dramatic effects of the sound film. No other art can reproduce silence, neither painting nor sculpture, neither literature nor the silent film could do so. Even on the stage silence appears only rarely as a dramatic effect and then only for short moments. Radio plays cannot make us feel the depths of silence at all, because when no sounds come from our set, the whole performance has ceased, as we cannot see any silent continuation of the action. The sole material of the wireless play being sound, the result of the cessation of sound is not silence but just nothing. SILENCE AND SPACE Things that we see as being different from each other, appear even more different when they emit sounds. They all sound