Evening star., 1936-12-06

SdlVdClON may lie III The llle-glNlH
music in the background. So subtle :
is the effect that an audience is un-
aware three fiddles and violoncello
are tearing its heart out. not the ac-
tual death of Little Memo which
takes place on the screen.
Again, the sound which sustains the
vitality of a sequence may be nothing
more than the voice of an actor.
brought into full play as the man
himself is photographed in closeup.
Or it may be crowd shot, for masses
of people have motion and life and
warmth and noise about them. They
fill the vacuum which Hollywood alb
hors even more heartily than does
Nature. Or there may be the trick
sound effects"-chirping of frogs, the
rush of a stream. the singing grind
Of an automobile pulling away in gear,
the clicketty- -clack of train on the
rails. But there must be sound.
WHEN a theatrical trick has come
into such constant usage that
audiences accept it without question.
it is called a dramatic convention" !"
ton. this practice permits dramatist
to do certain things without fear of
breaking the illusion created by his
work. Thus. the convention of the
stage setting having been accepted,
it is permissible to have character
walk to a phoney window in phoney
wall, look out, and, presumably, see
something or somebody. If the
audience had not been willing to
grant the author the license Of stage
settings, 1t would also have refused
to admit that a man staring out a
palpably false window could see any
thing beyond it.
Well, I am not prepared to dis
course in any learned fashion on the
subject, but it is obvious that con-
tinuous sound has become a "cine-
matte convention" in the same way
that certain common usages are con-
ventions of the legitimate stage. Fur
thermore, the practice has grown to
full stature without any one in the
cinema public being especially aware
of it.
For example, few years ago, when
the first revivals of the gay COS melo-
dramas were becoming popular, one Of
the biggest laughs in the evening
came when the heroine began to de-
claim a noble and slightly saccharine
speech, while fiddler off stage
promptly struck up Hearts and
Flowers" as a sort of running obbli-
cato to the scene. This convention
had been widely used in the eos,
died out, and in revival seemed ex-
tremely funny to theater audiences
which had not been educated to it.
Nevertheless. today, if string quar-
tet suddenly chimes in on a sad. sad
scene Of parting between two lovers,
nobody develops a sudden case Of the
giggles. In fact, if the music or some
other stunt were not employed to
make the spectators conscious of the
auditory as well as the visual values
of scene, the cash customers would
have a definite feeling that some
thing was wrong. Maybe they would
not know Immediately just what was
missing, but they would be conscious
of the lack.
How did this thing come to pass'
= Like most other advertisements In
motion pictures, it was . consequence
Of trial and error experiment with
audience reactions. The directors and
even producers (who sometimes un-
derstand matters unrelated to the
banking end Of their business) found
that the public was made uneasy by
the unreeling Of yards Of footage in
which there was no sound other than
the footsteps of q kitchen maid and
the ground noises" which are inevi-
table in the creation Of any sound
picture. They tried therefore to de-
velop a definite sound continuity, a
sort of noise script which demanded
every moment to be filled with dia-
logue, or music, or the approach Of
men on horseback, or the whooshing
of wind around the corners OF the
house at No. IL Mulberry street, East
Lynne.
Sound therefore became the cinema's
third dimension.
WITHIN less distance than your cor
w respondent could heave gunboat,
there are 50 eminent scientists pre-