29. Film: Quietly

To speak is to reveal one’s presence. A character held captive like Fontaine in Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (1955) evades detection by remaining as quiet as possible. For the film’s Criterion Commentary David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson write:

"At certain points in A Man Escaped, Bresson even lets his sound technique dominate the image. Throughout the film we are compelled to listen. Indeed, Bresson is one of a handful of directors who created complete interplay between sound and image."

The centrepiece of Rififi [1955] dir. Jules Dassin is a 30-minute long heist sequence notable for its lack of dialogue or music.

Reflecting off surfaces, vibrating through walls, sound desires to free itself in space. It reveals presence. 

To attempt to mute any audible activity is to inevitably enter into a tension between a person and the immediate environment they inhabit. In such film scenarios the spectator is invited to actively listen to the character’s own causal listening - they’re listening of themselves and the space around them. This heightens the spectator’s sensitivity to what is audible in the film world.

Film Selection:

In a Quiet Place [2018] dir. John Krasinski
Room [2015] dir. Leonard Ian Abrahamson
Zen for Film [1965] dir. Nam June Paik
A Man Escaped ([955] dir. Robert Bresson
Rififi ([955] dir. Jules Dassin 

26. Film: Compelled to Listen

Film can compel us to listen. The idea to listen begins with the idea of the film.

Berberian Sound Studio [2012] dir. Peter Strickland

Filmmaker Peter Strickland understands the unique interplay between image and sound in film:

"I learnt from the age of 16 that you could convey an inner world after hearing Alan Splet’s sound design on Eraserhead. I also soon realised that it’s rare to find film people who are also music people or vice versa. It’s so strange — you could meet someone into Feher Gyorgy or Béla Tarr, but they listen to very middle-of-the-road music. So I was aware of this unexplored niche in terms of informing film with a whole new world of sonic ideas. Hearing is a far more active human sense than sight. As a filmmaker, your potential to ignite an audience’s imagination is far greater through using sound. With images, most of the work is done for us, but with sound, you´re filling in the gaps and that is very exciting and provocative for an audience. Sound also offers the spatial dimension that the image can’t always do. Bresson gave us a whole outside world in A Man Escaped, and we yearn for it even more since we’re trapped inside a cell." - Portrait of a Soundscapist: An Interview with Peter Strickland

3. Listening: The Real and the Realist

According to Robert Bresson the cacophony of reality captured in the filmmaking process must be tamed. Therefore the unwanted sounds detected by the microphone must be somehow controlled. This requires a team of sound editors and mixers tasked with organising the placement and level of individual sounds in order to bring definition and shape to the soundtrack.

During the 1960s Jean-Luc Godard explored some of the aesthetics of the Cinéma Vérité approach to documentary-filmmaking. In his 1962 film Vivre Sa Vie, Godard intentionally avoids any post-production voice replacement or studio sound effects. Instead, he records all voices and location sounds directly on to a single unedited track of tape.

Vivre Sa Vie [1962] dir. Jean-Luc Godard

Writing about the film at the time, author and film theorist Jean Collet said:

“Jean-Luc Godard’s idea was simple: apply to the sound the same demands as to the pictures. Capture life—in what it offers to be seen and heard—directly [...] The interest offered by this method is obvious: the director opts for the real rather than the realistic. Being “realistic” always implies having a point of view on what is real, an interpretation of the facts. Here, an attempt has been made, thanks to the special machines used, to establish a material point of view rather than a human judgment. The microphone is capturing what it picks up, just as the camera is, and the artist avoids intervening at this level of the creation.”