Film; A sound Art

In his new book, French critic and composer Michel Chion offers a comprehensive theory of film sound from the 'deaf ' or silent period to the more recent Dolby Stereo era. The collection offers a reprise of some of his previous work on the voice to which he adds additional insights into the aesthetics and poetics of film sound as related to temporality, spatial design, meaning production and the art of listening (for what is heard by both the ear and the eye). The book is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the history of sound in transition, and the second an aesthetic overview of significant image and sound relations that formulate the essence of his theories about film sound over the past three decades. Chion's process of evaluating sound in cinema is evocative and thought-provoking as always, but at times it is equally frustrating. After several re-readings, I had a number of questions, corrections, and counterexamples, particularly in light of the breadth of new research in the field of sound studies. Throughout the book, Chion is very good at both raising important questions about sound in relation to the image (and entirely separate from the image) and identifying important moments of sound use in films; however, he is often remiss when it comes to expanding on the implications of his findings or drawing rigorous connections to film history or production practices. What he achieves in the end is a critical poetic that provokes the reader; what he does not provide is a systematic counter-history to sound in film or an accounting of sound production practices.