We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
AUDIBLE GESTURE OF SPEECH 227
forget, even in the sound film, that speech, apart from everything else, is a visible play of features as well.
AUDIBLE GESTURE OF SPEECH
In the American films of recent years people talk a great deal, far too much in fact. This is one of the symptoms of the decadent relapse of the American film towards the photographed theatre. Often this happens merely for technical reasons, in order to reduce the cost of production. And yet precisely in these dialogue scenes there is something specifically filmic.
In discussing the silent film we have already analysed speech as expressive movement, which can show the most delicate shades of emotion even if we cannot understand what is being said. Now in the present-day sound film we understand the words and therefore very often understand that their meaning is unimportant. But all the more important is the tone in which they are said : the cadence, the emphasis, the timbre, the husky resonance, which are not intentional, not conscious. Vibrations of the voice may mean many things that are not included in the meaning of the word itself — it is a sort of accompaniment to the words, a verbal gesture.
Loquacity is often merely a vehicle for such extra-rational expression and the easy, fluid speaking manner of the modern film is very suitable for such vocal manifestations. In this manner the words glide out from between the lips with a fleeting, feeble smile, or a scarcely noticeable shadow of grief in the eyes. The micromimicry of the close-up turns such speech into an audible play of features.
Modern actors in modern stage plays also speak without rhetorical emphasis. But the stylized framework of the stage settings, the position of the footlights and the distance from the audience nevertheless does not permit such weightless speech. Then there is the sound connected with mere breathing, which we ourselves do not even perceive as intentional action, but merely as the acoustic aura of a human being, something like the scent of skin or hair. Herein lies a specific opportunity for the sound film. The ever-completely open