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240 PROBLEM OF THE SOUND COMEDY
SPARING USE OF SOUND
I have previously complained that the sound film did not develop into a revelation of a new world of acoustic experience as we had expected and as it at the outset actually set itself to do. On the contrary it in part grew silent again where it had already sounded once. At first we heard the splash and rippling of every running water, we heard the thud of every footstep, the creaking of every door, the tinkling of every glass. The sound film seemed noisier than noisy life itself. The sound film of to-day uses sound much more sparingly and rightly so, for where sound is only a natural complement, it is as coarsely superfluous as would be the painting of a statue with the purpose of making it seem more lifelike. Sound is justified only when it has artistic significance; that is, when it has some dramaturgical part to play or if it is required to establish an atmosphere.
RULE OF THE WORD
What is the cause and explanation of the fact that the world of noises, the presentation of the acoustic milieu, has been relegated to the background even as a theme, although the technique of sound recording seemed to be the very thing for reproducing these effects and experiences? In the course of its development the sound film reverted to a stage more primitive than that reached by the silent film and again came closer to the style of the theatre.
The cause and explanation is the word. For the sound film is also a talking film. The silent film, in which the word could play no constructive part, developed the expression of emotional, non-rational experiences in a visual form-language. The sound film, with its acoustic form-language, could not develop the non-rational side of emotional experience in the same way. For in it the rational word had to be allotted its proper place, otherwise it would have been a sound-accompanied silent film, or a film of mutes. The conceptual interpreting force and content of the word, its ability to recall the past and forecast the future not only rendered superfluous