V. ASYNCHRONISM AS A
PRINCIPLE OF SOUND FILM
The technical invention of sound has long been
accomplished, and brilliant experiments have been made in the field of
recording. This technical side of sound-film making may be regarded as already
relatively perfected, at least in America. But there is a great difference
between the technical development of sound and its development as a means of
expression. The expressive achievements of sound still lie far behind its
technical possibilities. I assert that many theoretical questions whose answers
are clear to us are still provided in practice only with the most primitive
solutions. Theoretically, we in the Soviet Union are in advance of Western
Europe and U.S.A.
Our first question is: What new content can be brought
into the cinema by the use of Sound? It would be entirely false to consider
sound merely as a mechanical device enabling us to enhance the naturalness of
the image. Examples of such most primitive sound effects: in the silent cinema
we were able to show a car, now in sound film we can add to its image a record
of its natural sound; or again, in silent film a speaking man was associated
with a title, now we hear his voice. The role which sound is to play in film is
much more significant than a slavish imitation of naturalism on these lines;
the first function of sound is to augment
the potential expressiveness of the film’s content.
If we compare the sound to the silent film, we find
that it is possible to explain the content more deeply to the spectator with
relatively the same expenditure of time. It is clear that this deeper insight
into the content of the film cannot be given to the spectator simply by adding
an accompaniment of naturalistic sound; we must do something more. This
something more is the development of the image and the sound strip each along a
separate rhythmic course. They must not be tied to one another by naturalistic
imitation but connected as the result of the interplay of action. Only by this
method can we find a new and richer form than that available in the silent
film. Unity of sound and image is realised by an interplay of meanings which
results, as we shall presently show, in a more exact rendering of nature than
its superficial copying. In silent film, by our editing of a variety of images,
we began to attain the unity and freedom that is realised in nature only in its
abstraction by the human mind. Now in sound film we can, within the same strip
of celluloid, not only edit different points in space, but can cut into association
with the image selected sounds that reveal and heighten the character of
each—wherever in silent film we had a conflict of but two opposing elements,
now we can have four.
A primitive example of the use of sound to reveal an
inner content can be cited in the expression of the stranding of a town-bred
man in the midst of the desert. In silent film we should have had to cut in a
shot of the town; now in sound film we can carry town-associated sounds into
the desert and edit them there in place of the natural desert sounds. Uses of
this kind are already familiar to film directors in Western Europe, but it is
not generally recognised that the principal elements in sound film are the
asynchronous and not the synchronous; moreover, that the synchronous use is, in
actual fact, only exceptionally correspondent to natural perception. This is
not, as may first appear, a theoretical figment, but a conclusion from
observation.
For example, in actual life you, the reader, may
suddenly hear a cry for help; you see only the window; you then look out and at
first see nothing but the moving traffic. But you do not hear the sound natural to these cars and buses; instead
you hear still only the cry that first startled you. At last you find with your
eyes the point from which the sound came; there is a crowd, and someone is
lifting the injured man, who is now quiet.
But, now watching the man, you become aware of the din of traffic passing, and
in the midst of its noise there gradually grows the piercing signal of the
ambulance. At this your attention is caught by the clothes of the injured man:
his suit is like that of your brother, who, you now recall, was due to visit
you at two o’clock. In the tremendous tension that follows, the anxiety and
uncertainty whether this possibly dying man may not indeed be your brother
himself, all sound ceases and there
exists for your perceptions total silence. Can it be two o’clock? You look at
the clock and at the same time you hear its ticking. This is the first synchronised moment of an image and its caused
sound since first you heard the cry.
Always there exist two rhythms, the rhythmic course
of the objective world and the tempo and rhythm with which man observes this
world. The world is a whole rhythm, while man receives only partial impressions
of this world through his eyes and ears and to a lesser extent through his very
skin. The tempo of his impressions varies with the rousing and calming of his
emotions, while the rhythm of the objective world he perceives continues in
unchanged tempo.
The course of man’s perceptions is like editing, the
arrangement of which can make corresponding variations in speed, with sound
just as with image. It is possible therefore for sound film to be made
correspondent to the objective world and man’s perception of it together. The
image may retain the tempo of the world, while the sound strip follows the
changing rhythm of the course of man’s perceptions, or vice versa. This is a
simple and obvious form for counterpoint of sound and image.
Consider now the question of straightforward Dialogue
in sound film. In all the films I have seen, persons speaking have been
represented in one of two ways. Either the director was thinking entirely in
terms of theatre, shooting his whole speaking group through in one shot with a
moving camera. Using thus the screen only as a primitive means of recording a
natural phenomenon, exactly as it was used in early silent films before the
discovery of the technical possibilities of the cinema had made it an art-form.
Or else, on the other hand, the director had tried to use the experience of
silent film, the art of montage in fact, composing the dialogue from separate
shots that he was free to edit. But in this latter case the effect he gained
was just as limited as that of the single shots taken with a moving camera,
because he simply gave a series of close-ups of a man speaking, allowed him to
finish the given phrase on his image, and then followed that shot with one of
the man answering. In doing so the director made of montage and editing no more
than a cold verbatim report, and switched the spectator’s attention from one
speaker to another without any adequate emotional or intellectual
justification.
Now, by means of editing, 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 close-up 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.
Or, alternatively, we can arrange the dialogue so that
when a question occurs at the end of the given speech, and the spectator is
interested in the answer, he can immediately be shown the person addressed,
only presently hearing the answer. Here the sound follows the image.
Or, yet again, the spectator having grasped the
import of a speech may be interested in its effect. Accordingly, while the
speech is still in progress, he can be shown a given listener, or indeed given
a review of all those present and mark their reactions towards it.
These examples show clearly how the director, by
means of editing, can move his audience emotionally or intellectually, so that
it experiences a special rhythm in respect to the sequence presented on the
screen.
But such a relationship between the director in his
cutting-room and his future audience can be established only if he has a
psychological insight into the nature of his audience and its consequent
relationship to the content of the given material.
For instance, if the first speaker in a dialogue
grips the attention of the audience, the second speaker will have to utter a
number of words before they will so affect the consciousness of the audience
that it will adjust its full attention to him. And, contrariwise, if the
intervention of the second speaker is more vital to the scene at the moment
than the impression made by the first speaker, then the audience’s full
attention will at once be riveted on him. I am sure, even, that it is possible
to build up a dramatic incident with the recorded sound of a speech and the image
of the unspeaking listener where the latter’s reaction is the most urgent
emotion in the scene. Would a director of any imagination handle a scene in a
court ofjustice where a sentence of death is being passed by filming the judge
pronouncing sentence in preference to recording visually the immediate
reactions of the condemned?
In the final scenes of my first sound film Deserter my hero tells an audience of
the forces that brought him to the Soviet Union. During the whole of the film
his worse nature has been trying to stifle his desire to escape these forces;
therefore this moment, when he at last succeeds in escaping them and himself
desires to recount his cowardice to his fellow-workers is the high-spot ofhis
emotional life. Being unable to speak Russian, his speech has to be translated.
At the beginning of this scene we see and hear shots
longish in duration, first of the speaking hero, then of his translator. In the
process of development of the episode the images of the translator become
shorter and the majority of his words accompany the images of the hero,
according as the interest of the audience automatically fixes on the latter’s
psychological position. We can consider the composition of sound in this
example as similar to the objective rhythm and dependent on the actual time
relationships existing between the speakers. Longer or shorter pauses between
the voices are conditioned solely by the readiness or hesitation of the next
speaker in what he wishes to say. But the image introduces to the screen a new
element, the subjective emotion of the spectator and its length of duration; in
the image longer or shorter does not depend upon the identity of the speaking
man, but upon the desire of the spectator to look for a longer or shorter
period. Here the sound has an objective character, while the image is
conditioned by subjective appreciation; equally we may have the contrary—a
subjective sound and an objective image. As illustration of this latter
combination I cite a demonstration in the second part of Deserter; here my sound is purely musical. Music, I maintain, must
in sound film never be the accompaniment.
It must retain its own line.
In the second part of Deserter the image shows at first the broad streets of a Western
capital; suave police direct the progress of luxurious cars; everything is
decorous, the ebb and flow of an established life. The characteristic of this
opening is quietness, until the calm surface is broken by the approach of a
workers’ demonstration bearing aloft their flag. The streets clear rapidly
before the approaching demonstration, its ranks swell with every moment. The
spirit of the demonstrators is firm, and their hopes rise as they advance. Our
attention is turned to the preparations of the police; their horses and motor-vehicles
gather as their intervention grows imminent; now their champing horses charge
the demonstrators to break their ranks with flying hoofs, the demonstrators
resist with all their might and the struggle rages fiercest round the workers’
flag. It is a battle in which all the physical strength is marshalled on the
side of the police, sometimes it prevails and the spirit of the demonstrators
seems about to be quelled, then the tide turns and the demonstrators rise again
on the crest of the wave; at last their flag is flung down into the dust of the
streets and trampled to a rag beneath the horses’ hoofs. The police are
arresting the workers; their whole cause seems lost, suppressed never to
re-arise —the welter of the fighting dies down—against the background of the
defeated despair of the workers we return to the cool decorum of the opening of
the scene. There is no fight left in the workers. Suddenly, unexpectedly,
before the eyes of the police inspector, the workers’ flag appears hoisted anew
and the crowd is re-formed at the end of the street.
The course of the image twists and curves, as the
emotion within the action rises and falls. Now, if we used music as an accompaniment to this image we should
open with a quiet melody, appropriate to the soberly guided traffic; at the
appearance of the demonstration the music would alter to a march; another
change would come at the police preparations, menacing the workers—here the
music would assume a threatening character; and when the clash came between
workers and police—a tragic moment for the demonstrators—the music would follow
this visual mood, descending ever further into themes of despair. Only at the
resurrection of the flag could the music turn hopeful. A development of this
type would give only the superficial aspect of the scene, the undertones of
meaning would be ignored; accordingly I suggested to the composer (Shaporin)
the creation of a music the dominating emotional theme of which should throughout be courage and the certainty
of ultimate victory. From beginning to end the music must develop in a gradual
growth of power. This direct, unbroken theme I connected with the complex
curves of the image. The image succession gives us in its progress first the
emotion of hope, its replacement by danger, then the rousing of the workers’
spirit of resistance, at first successful, at last defeated, then finally the
gathering and reassembly of their inherent power and the hoisting of their
flag. The image’s progress curves like a sick man’s temperature chart; while
the music in direct contrast is firm and steady. When the scene opens
peacefully the music is militant; when the demonstration appears the music
carries the spectators right into its ranks. With its batoning by the police,
the audience feels the rousing ofthe workers, wrapped in their emotions the
audience is itself emotionally receptive to the kicks and blows of the police.
As the workers lose ground to the police, the insistent victory of the music
grows; yet again, when the workers are defeated and disbanded, the music
becomes yet more powerful still in its spirit of victorious exaltation; and
when the workers hoist the flag at the end the music at last reaches its
climax, and only now, at its conclusion, does its spirit coincide with that of
the image.
What role does the music play here? Just as the image
is an objective perception of events, so the music expresses the subjective
appreciation of this objectivity. The sound reminds the audience that with
every defeat the fighting spirit only receives new impetus to the struggle for
final victory in the future.
It will be appreciated that this instance, where the
sound plays the subjective part in the film, and the image the objective, is
only one of many diverse ways in which the medium of sound film allows us to
build a counterpoint, and I maintain that only by such counterpoint can
primitive naturalism be surpassed and the rich deeps of meaning potential in
sound film creatively handled be discovered and plumbed.
(Written for this edition and Englished by Marie
Seton and I. M.)
VI. RHYTHMIC PROBLEMS IN
MY FIRST SOUND FILM
It is sad to find that, since the introduction of
sound and the predominance of talking films, directors both in the West and in
the Soviet Union have suddenly lost the sense of dynamic rhythm that they had
built up during the last years of the silent cinema. It is almost impossible
to-day to find a film with the sharp dramatic rhythm of, for instance, the
Odessa Steps sequence in Potemkin, or
of certain episodes in the early picture Intolerance,
which belongs to the first period when the hitherto mechanical film record
became a creative medium. Most of the latest sound films are characterised by
exceedingly slow development of subject and dialogue full of interminable
pauses. Many directors are developing a talkie style that involves the use of
explanatory words for matters that should be conceived visually; this kind of
style introduces elements from the Theatre into a medium where they are out of
place. Theatre has its own technique, depending on the power of the spoken word
since it is incapable of presenting visual changes in rapid sequence, while
Cinema is based on the possibility of presenting a variety of visual
impressions in a time and space differing from that obtaining in the natural
material recorded.
I do not believe that this change of method is
indicative of any audience change of taste. I think that the real situation is
that directors hesitate to make experiments with sound, and particularly
hesitate to apply montage to the sound strip.
Many hold the view that, with the introduction of
sound into film, the cutting methods established during the development of
silent films must all go by the board. The development of constructive editing
of frequent changes of shot made possible in silent film the achievement of
great richness of visual form. The human eye is capable of perceiving, easily
and immediately, the content of a succession of visual shots, whereas, as they
point out, the ear cannot with the same immediacy detect the significance of
alterations in sound. Accordingly, they maintain, the rhythm of changing sound
must be much slower than need be that of changing image. They are right, in so
far as concerns the combination with a succession of short images of a series
of equally short sound effects matched with them in a purely naturalistic
relation. Certainly it would be impossible to compose the short shots of
Eisenstein’s Odessa Steps sequence in Potemkin—the
soldiers shooting, the woman screaming, the children weeping—with sound cut in
a parallel manner. Consequently, it is held, we must make each image longer,
thus diminishing the richness of the visual form; the rapid montage of the
silent film must give place to more leisurely scenes recorded from a more set
distance and with a relatively fixed camera position, the construction being
linked by the spoken word and not by the sequence of dynamically edited images.
This policy, I maintain, is the line of least resistance, and instead of
helping film to progress, holds it back, forcing it once again into its
primitive position of mere photographic record of material actually suited to
the Theatre. There is no necessity, in my view, to begin a sound when its
corresponding image first appears and to cut it when its image has passed. Every
strip of sound, speech, or music may develop unmodified while the images come
and go in a sequence of short shots, or, alternatively, during images of longer
duration the sound strip may change independently in a rhythm of its own. I
believe that it is only along these lines that the Cinema can keep free from
theatrical imitation, and advance beyond the bounds of Theatre, for ever
limited by the supremacy of the spoken word, the fixture to one significant
position throughout of decor and properties, the dependence of both action and
audience’s attention entirely upon the actor, and reduction of the world’s wide
globe to a single room less its fourth wall.
One of the most important problems in my Deserter was posed by the mass
scenes—meetings, demonstrations, etc. First, it is necessary to understand that
the mass never has been and never will be mere quantity; it is a differentiated
quality. It is a collection of individuals and quite different from their sum;
each mass consists of groups, each group of persons. These may be united by one
emotion and one thought, and in that case their mass is the greatest force in
the world. The conflicting processes at work within the groups to produce this
result afford immediately obvious dramatic material, and accent upon the
characteristics of individuals is an integral part of the creation of a living
mass. What real method can there be of creating this qualitatively altered mass
of individuals save by the editing of close-ups? I have seen a German film in
which Danton is shown speaking to the citizens of Paris; he was placed at a
window, and all we were allowed to know of his audience was their mass voice,
like the traditional “voices off.” Such a scene in a film is nothing else than
a photograph of bad Theatre.
In the first reel of Deserter I have a meeting
addressed by three persons one after the other, each producing a complexity
ofreactions in their audience. Each one is against the other two; sometimes a
member of the crowd interrupts a speaker, sometimes two or three of the crowd
have a moment’s discussion among themselves. The whole of the scene must move
with the crowd’s swaying mood, the clash of opposing wills must be shown, to
achieve these ends I cut the sound exactly as freely as I cut the image. I used
three distinct elements. First, the speeches; second, sound close-ups of the
interruptions—words, snatches of phrases, from members of the crowd; and third,
the general noise of the crowd varying in volume and recorded independently of
any image.
I sought to compose these elements by the system of
montage. I took sound strips and cut, for example, for a word of a speaker
broken in half by an interruption, for the interrupter in turn overswept by the
tide of noise coming from the crowd, for the speaker audible again, and so on.
Every sound was individually cut and the images associated are sometimes much
shorter than the associated sound piece, sometimes as long as two sound
pieces—those of speaker and interrupter, for example—while I show a number of
individual reactions in the audience. Sometimes I have cut the general crowd
noise into the phrases with scissors, and I have found that with an arrangement
of the various sounds by cutting in this way it is possible to create a clear
and definite, almost musical, rhythm: a rhythm that develops and increases
short piece by short piece, till it reaches a climax of emotional effect that
swells like the waves on a sea.
I maintain that directors lose all reason to be
afraid of cutting the sound strip if they accept the principle of arranging it
in a distinct composition. Provided that they are linked by a clear idea of the
course to be pursued, various sounds can, exactly like images, be set side by
side in montage. Remember the early days of the cinema, when directors were afraid
to cut up the visual movement on the screen, and how Griffith’s introduction of
the close-up was misunderstood and by many labelled an unnatural and
consequently an inadmissible method. Audiences in those days even cried: “Where
are their legs!”
Cutting was the development that first transformed
the cinema from a mechanical process to a. creative one. The slogan Cut remains equally imperative now that
sound film has arrived. I believe that sound film will approach nearer to true
musical rhythm than silent film ever did, and this rhythm must derive not
merely from the movement of artist and objects on the screen, but also—and this
is the consideration most important for us to-day—from exact cutting of the
sound and arrangement of the sound pieces into a clear counterpoint with the
image.
I worked out in fine rhythm, suitable to sound film,
a special kind of musical composition for the May Day demonstration in Deserter. A hundred thousand men throng
the streets, the air is filled with the echoing strains ofmassed bands, lifting
the masses to exuberance. Into the patchwork of sound breaks singing, and the
strains of accordions, the hooting of motor-cars, snatches of radio noises,
shouts and huzzas, the powerful buzzing ofaeroplanes. Certainly it would have
been stupid to have attempted to create such a sound scene in the studio with
orchestras and supers.
In order to give my future audience a true impression
of this gigantic perspective of mass sound, its echoes and its multitudinous
complexities, I recorded real material. I used two Moscow demonstrations, those
in May and November of one year, to assemble the variety of sounds necessary
for my future montage. I recorded pieces of various music and sound, varying in
their volume, transitions from bands to crowd noises, and from hurrahs to the
whirling propellers of aeroplanes, slogans from the radio and snatches of our
songs. Just like long-shots and close-ups in silent film. Then followed the
task of editing the thousand metres of sound to create the hundred metres of
rhythmical composition. I tried to use the pieces like the separate instruments
that combine to form an orchestra. I recorded two marching bands, and as
passage of transition from one to the other cut between them some dominating
sound like a mass hurrah or a whirling propeller. I endeavoured to bring the
pieces already possessing a musical rhythm of their own into a new montage
over-rhythm.
The images that go with this sound are edited with
similar exactness, smiling workers, merry marching youths, a handsome sailor
and the girls that flirt with him. But this sequence of images is but one of
the rhythmical lines that make up the whole composition; the music is never an
accompaniment but a separate element of counterpoint; both sound and image preserve
their own line.
Perhaps a purer example of establishing rhythm in
sound film occurs in another part of Deserter—the
docks section. Here again I used natural sounds, heavy hammers, pneumatic
drills working at different levels, the smaller noise of fixing a rivet, voices
of sirens and the crashing crescendo of a falling chain. All these sounds I
shot on the dock-side, and I composed them on the editing table, using various
lengths, they served to me as notes of music. As finale of the docks scene I made
a half-symbolic growth of the ship in images at an accelerated pace, while the
sound in a complicated syncopation mounts to an ever greater and grandiose
climax. Here I had a real musical task, and was obliged to “feel” the length of
each strip in the same spirit as a musician “feels” the accent necessary for
each note.
I have used only real sound because I hold the view
that sound, like visual material, must be rich in its association, a thing
impossible for reconstructed sound to be. I maintain that it is impossible
artificially to establish perspective in sound; it is impossible, for instance,
to secure a real effect of a distant siren call in a closed studio and
relatively near the microphone. A “distant” call achieved by a weak tone in the
studio can never create the same reality of effect as a loud blast recorded
half a mile away in the open air.
For the symphony of siren calls with which Deserter opens I had six steamers
playing in a space of a mile and a half in the Port of Leningrad. They sounded
their calls to a prescribed plan and we worked at night in order that we should
have quiet.
Now that I have finished Deserter I am sure that sound film is potentially the art of the
future. It is not an orchestral creation centring round music, nor yet a theatrical
dominated by the factor of the actor, nor even is it akin to opera, it is a
synthesis of each and every element—the oral, the visual, the philosophical; it
is our opportunity to translate the world in all its lines and shadows into a
new art form that has succeeded and will supersede all the older arts, for it
is the supreme medium in which we can express to-day and to-morrow.
(Written for this edition and Englished by Marie
Seton and I. M.)
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