"I've often said that our thoughts are very different in a lot of ways from what we actually say. And our thoughts about what we hear are very different from what is being said, so there are lots of stories going on in our mind as we try and read people. Usually, sound will fall into a predictable relationship with the image: this is what is happening and this is what is being said. But we're really just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of sound reaching up to become equal with the image; not abandoning the image, but equal with the image in a different way." - The World is Ever Changing, Nicolas Roeg
Tree of Life [2011] dir. Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick explores the limits of verbal language by removing performed dialogue at particular dramatic moments. This is an effect unique to filmmaking in which words can be precisely erased or repositioned in order to reconstruct meaning. Malick’s post-production treatment of specific words and phrases often seems designed to emphasise a look or a gesture registered visually. Over the shoulder we glimpse moving jaws where there is no sound.
But this is not new. The technique of dubbing and editing voices in post-production is as old as the first sound films. In Jean Rouch’s seminal 1958 documentary Moi, un Noir, what is seen and heard occur in different times and places. On screen we witness the daily lives of Tarzan, Eddy and Edward as they seek work in the Ivory Coast capital. Rouch captured these images over a period of six months. What we hear in the soundtrack are the asynchronous, re-recorded voices of the characters themselves providing a running commentary on their own lives as depicted by the film. These combine with an array of location sound recordings captured separately from the images. Both voices and sound edits were constructed in Paris many months after the film shooting. Rouch’s method illustrates how the particular marriage of recorded sound and moving images in film is an artifical arrangement.
Reservoir dogs [1992] dir. Quentin Tarantino
Rouch’s method is an example of what Soviet filmmaker Vsevolod Pudovkin’s described in 1929 as Asynchronism - sound deployed beyond the “slavish imitation of naturalism” but rather used “to augment the potential expressiveness of the film's content.” Writing two years after the first talkies, Pudovkin' describes how the spectator can experience a greater emotional or intellectual engagement with a sequence of images through the asynchronous use of sound. He writes:
“…a scene in which three or more persons speak can be treated in a number of different ways. For example, the spectator's interest may be held by the speech of the first, and with the spectator's attention we hold the closeup of the first person lingering with him when his speech is finished and hearing the voice of the commenced answer of the next speaker before passing on to the latter's image. We see the image of the second speaker only after becoming acquainted with his voice. Here sound has preceded image.”
In this context, consider the diner conversation in the opening sequence in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs [1992]. Note how the camera rotates round the table, lingering on the faces of the listeners instead of remaining fixed on the speaker.
Film Selection:
Notes on Blindness [2016] dir. Peter Middleton, James Spinney
Tree of Life [2011] dir. Terrence Malick
The Girl Chewing Gum [1976] dir. John Smith
Morning [1966-69] dir. Phil Niblock
Moi, un Noir [1958] dir. Jean Rouch