Sound: From The Screen to The Audience

NB: Why the sound is so essential in cinema? Because it works together with the image on the screen! 

In his major work, Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (1954), the German art and film theorist and perceptual psychologist Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) pays special attention to the complex psychophysiology of the perception of spatial images in combination with their accompanying sound environment. It is not by chance that psychophysiology quite works explicitly with the concepts of synaesthesia (mixing of several sensory perceptions) and sensitisation (intensification of one sensory perception at the expense of another, e.g. blind people have enhanced auditory perception). And 430 years ago (!), the greatest playwright, Shakespeare, wrote in his play Midsummer Night's Dream the ingenious line ‘I see a voice’! 

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This is in relation to the visual perception of the spatial parameters of the frame, also with the participation of sound (music, sound effects). 
However, since 1930 (the introduction of sound on the screen), dialogue has been even more important for the overall perception of the film (when translated and subtitled). Then, the meaningful message is already specifically worded by the content of the lines and their acting presentation. And it is precisely in this way that the authors present their ideological messages to the audience most effectively. That is, the sound, through the dialogue, becomes the main component of the communication between the screen and the viewer! 

In silent cinema (until 1930), the missing sound was partially replaced by accompanying ‘live music’ (solo piano or some other instrument). The effect was weak, partial, the viewers were still without a developed cinema culture, it was difficult to perceive the plot, and those who were illiterate couldn’t even read the subtitles. That is why, as Buñuel writes in his memoirs, a special employee called an ‘explicador’ pointed at the screen with a baton and explained what was happening. 

Today, we cannot imagine a film without dialogue or subtitles (when translated). Very rarely are films made - impressions, without dialogue or without the author's text, but nevertheless with music. And this is almost 100% true for feature films and documentaries. It's the same with most cartoons, which, even if they don't have dialogue, they always have music! 

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In 2011, the French director Michel Hazanavicius surprised the cinema world with the black and white silent film The Artist - a magnificent curtsy to the old cinema to recall its phenomenal power and ageless energy! It is not by chance that the film had a total of 162 awards, including 3 Oscars and 2 more nominations! Of course, The Artist is a beautiful and talented exception, and there can be no question of some renaissance of silent cinema. But it recalls its charm and the subordinate position of sound in the synthetic screen result! 

The first Bulgarian sound film, Buntat na Robite [The Slave Rebellion] (dir. Vassil Gendov), was produced in 1931 - a naive life story about the greatest Bulgarian national hero - revolutionary of the 19th century Vassil Levski. The film is best remembered for one famous gaffe: Levski sneaks into a village at night when hens jump out of nowhere. These domestic birds are known to always sleep at night! But because it was cheaper, the team shot the night footage as the so-called ‘American night’ (daylight photos with a dark filter), the hens did not comply with this circumstance and caused laughter in the audience! 

In the following years, some jingoistic films related to Bulgaria's participation in the Second World War on the side of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis (Italy, Germany, Japan) stand out, which are not distinguished by anything significant. In artistic terms, sound cinema, as an unwritten rule, sounded films predominantly with symphonic music. The dialogues, presented by theatre actors, without experience in front of the camera and the microphone, were too far from an excellent professional level.   

Curious and valuable from a historical point of view is the documentary A Day in Sofia (1946, dir. Zahari Zhandov), which shows Bulgaria's capital after the war's end, the destruction from the bombing raids and the beginning of the recovery. The text behind the scenes is optimistically cheerful, reflecting post-war optimism. The film is very similar to the German documentary Metropolis (Berlin, symphony of the big city, 1927, dir. Walter Ruttmann), which is silent. The Bulgarian film won the first international awards for Bulgaria from festivals in Roma and Karlovy Vary. 

After the war, and more precisely after the communist coup of September 1944, Bulgaria was among the Eastern European countries handed over by the Great Powers to Soviet influence during the years of Stalinism. 

A period of propaganda films began, which, with false pathos, confirmed models characteristic of the period of Stalinism. Such is the film Dimitrovgradtsi [inhabitants of the town of Dimitrovgrad] (1956, dir. Nikola Korabov, Ducho Mundrov). A story about the construction of the new Dimitrovgrad (named after the Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov). In such films, the music is usually of a heavy classical nature (symphonies, cantatas, oratorios). The dialogues are like sentences from propagandistic journalistic clichés, delivered on the screen by theatre actors with the false theatrical pathos characteristic of the time. And the cinema does not tolerate such anti-credibility. 
But even then, some talented and honest authors created honest films as opposition to official propaganda, e.g. Partizani [Guerrillas] (1957, dir. Binka Zhelyazkova). Screenwriter was her husband - former real partisan and talented writer - Hristo Ganev. At that time, such films were banned and not shown in movie theatres. Therefore, several similar films had their premiere 30 years later, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the democratic changes in Eastern Europe at the end of 1989. The only positive fact about this political and ideological censorship was that no films were destroyed and they lived to see their time! This process is now being studied by historians and critics in Bulgarian cinema. 

A curious symmetry is observed in the already mentioned political transition from the end of 1989. Mirror-like propaganda films appeared, debunking the fallacy of the overthrown communist regime with spectacular plots about mafia structures. They have replaced political power with economic power through dirty money exported and laundered through hollow business operations. Similar titles created a so-called organised criminal group film category with a specific sound score style. The music has a simple, primitive melody. The dialogues are cheap lines, full of characteristic ‘underworld’ slang and vocabulary of the criminal contingent. The TV series Undercover (since 2011 in 5 consecutive seasons) followed the same direction. However, because it was created by talented screenwriters and young director Viktor Bozhinov, the series was a thriving genre (crime) film. It was, therefore, distributed with great success in many countries on all continents. 

If we look to the near future, we will see the silhouette of AI (artificial intelligence). It still needs to write dialogues, although it has such software Pattern Models. But Artificial Intelligence Music Creators or AI Music Generators (from lyrics with vocals) are already a reality and ‘authors’ in several films. 

Obviously, the future is pursuing us, and we should think about it! 

About the writer: Prof. Dr. Bojidar Manov was Born in Sofia, Bulgaria (1947). He is a film critic, teacher and journalist. He has penned many books like Theory of the Cinema Image (1996), Digital Audio Vision (2000), Evolution of the Screen Image (2004, 2012), etc.
 

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• cinema
• sound