The audiovisual chord: embodied listening in film, 2022

Foreword Acknowledgements Funding Contents 1: Introduction Part I: From Bresson Towards a Phenomenological Approach to Film and Film Sound: Phenomenology Delivers a Useful Theoretical Framework 2: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” A Man Escaped or The Wind Blows Wherever It Pleases The Opening Scene of A Man Escaped A Focus on the Audience’s Experience Bresson’s Inner Style The Use of Sound in A Man Escaped, in the Writings of Truffaut, Bordwell and Thompson, and Chion François Truffaut: A Break with the Canon of Classical Cinema, Moving with Instead of Identifying with the Character David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson: Sound Anticipates and Guides Our Expectations Michel Chion: Topography of Sounds Reading the Critics and Scholars, a Question Arises Bresson as a Phenomenologist? Le cinématographe as a Writing in Movement with Moving Images and Sounds References 3: Audiovisual Perception: The Audiovisual Contract, Heautonomy of Sound and Image and Filmic Listening Some Different Approaches to the Intertwining of Sound and Image A Fragment of A Man Escaped as Starting Point Different Perspectives from Which to Analyse Sound in Film Michel Chion: Audio-Vision Gilles Deleuze: The Heautonomous Sound The Filmic Listening of Véronique Campan References 4: Phenomenology, an Introduction Phenomenology as Theoretical Framework for Film Sound? Phenomenology Edmund Husserl Husserl’s Static Phenomenology How Does This Work for Sound? Franz Brentano: Sound as a Mental Phenomenon Husserl’s Genetic Phenomenology How We Can Relate Inner Time-Consciousness to Sound in Film and to Film as a Time-Object? The Difference Between an Event and an Experience in Bresson’s A Man Escaped Perception of Another Body: Husserl’s Concept of Paarung (Pairing or Coupling) Maurice Merleau-Ponty One’s Body as a Being-in-the-World and a Being-Towards-the-World The Body Schema as an Experience of the Body in the World and the Body as a Knot of Significations A Pre-reflective Intentionality of the Body Bodily Resonance and the Situatedness of the Body in Space The Lived Space and Concrete and Abstract Movements Evoking Spaces The World as the Primordial Unity of All Our Experiences, Revealed by Passive Synthesis Bresson’s Cinématographe and the Cinématographer as “Metteur en ordre” References Part II: A Phenomenological Approach to the Experience and Perception of Film Sound and Film Yields New Insights: Thinking in Movement, Auditory Spaces and the Audiovisual Chord References 5: A Phenomenological Approach to Audiovisual Experience in Practice A Phenomenological Approach to Film Sound with the Body of the Listener/Spectator at the Centre of His/Her Experience Case Studies Alan Clarke’s Elephant (1989) Sound and Listening in Elephant Walking Gunshots Car Noise as Sonic Event, Sound Environment or Sonic Field? Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) Audiovisual Experience Without Hierarchy Between Sound and Image? Sensory Information Evoking a Life-World Listening to /Sound/ in an Audiovisual Context Michel Chion Walter Murch Phenomenological Approaches to Film, /Sound/ and Music A Phenomenological Approach to Film A Phenomenological Approach to /Sound/ Don Ihde: Listening and Voice—A Phenomenology of Sound Roland Barthes: Panic Listening Embodied Listening and Bodily Felt Sound: Listening from Within A Phenomenological Approach to Music Merleau-Ponty and Cinema References 6: Thinking in Movement, and Different Ways to Create Space in Film Sound The Body as the Centre of a Film Experience: Transmodality of the Felt (Film) Sound and the Film as a Whole How to Develop a Phenomenological Approach to Film Sound with the Body at the Centre of the Audiovisual Experience and thus, Perception A Phenomenological Approach Must Start from Experience Listening as an “Entrance Gate” in Film Theory Sound in Film as a Dynamic Transmodal Movement Sound as a Dynamic Movement: Forms of Vitality (Daniel Stern) and Effort Theory (Rudolf von Laban) Forms of Vitality at the Basis of a Thinking in Movement The Dynamic Body Schema as a Being-in-the-World and Being-Towards-the-World John Hull, the Whole-Body-Seer: Do We Need Sight to Create Space? How Is Listening Related to the Body Schema? The Creation of Space from the Perspective of a Body Schema The Contribution of the Auditory Space to the Filmic Space The Auditory Space Within Le Cinématographe of Bresson Filmic Space Constituted from Within and from Without Exploring Auditory Spaces in Some Case Studies La ville Louvre (1990) by Nicolas Philibert: “Spaces Speak” The First Sequence from Elephant (1989) by Alan Clarke: The Experience of a Space Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (2004) by Michelangelo Antonioni A(n) (Auditory) Space Experienced During the Feast of St Johns in the Piazza Navona in Rome Described: The Auditory Space as a Surrounding Sphere Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983): Spaces Created in the Mind, Expressed as Invisible Spaces in Sound Cold Mountain (Anthony Mingella, 2003) and It’s Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan, 2016) Experiential Inner Spaces 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Immersion as a Loss of Spatial Referentiality, When Inner and External Spaces Merge Exploring the Auditory Space as a (Inter)Human Sphere In Film Experience, the Audience Creates the (Virtual) Filmic Space References 7: The Audiovisual Chord, an Invitation to the Audience to Interact From Fragmented Appearances to a Whole The Audiovisual Chord in Film as a Co-Respondence of Movements The Audiovisual Chord as a Tool in Film Composition Case Studies Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock and Là-bas (2006) by Chantal Akerman Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007): Polychrony and Polytopy— The Audiovisual Chord as Part of the Film as a Whole The Audiovisual Chord, a Structuring Element in Film Composition: A Man Escaped by Bresson Portrait of a Lady on Fire by Céline Sciamma: The Starting Knot for the Creation of Her Film and the Importance of Forms of Vitality in the Experience of an Audiovisual Chord References Part III: The Audiovisual Chord with the Body as the Sense of Movement at the Centre of the Listener/Spectator’s Film Experience, in the Perspective of Film as an Audiovisual Composition: Revisiting Early Sound Film, Film Sound, Film Editing and the Process of Film-Making An Innovative Perspective in the History of Sound Film? 8: Embodied Listening, Felt Sound and the Audiovisual Chord in Film History The Beginnings of the Sound Film Exploring the Possibilities of the Sound Film Enthusiasm (1931) by Dziga Vertov: The Importance of Synchronicity, the Superimposition of Spaces and Sound as an Energetic Movement Asynchronism (1929) and The Deserter (1933) by Vsevolod Pudovkin: Combining Sound and Image in Film Versus Sound and Image in Real Life, and the Possibility of Using Sound to Reveal Inner Space Counterpoint and the Montage of Attraction in Alexander Nevsky (1938) by Sergei Eisenstein Jean Vigo: Zero for Conduct (Zéro de conduite, 1933) Béla Balázs, “Tonfilm” (1930): /Sound/ and Space M (1931) by Fritz Lang Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles: Spaces and the Importance of the Ear in Editing Space, Movement and Rhythm as the Most Important Elements in Early Sound Films References 9: The Audiovisual Chord in Relation to Film as an Audiovisual Composition Sound as a Natural Partner of Image in Film as an Audiovisual Composition Rhythm and Time at the Basis of Film as an Audiovisual Composition Possible Constellations of the Audiovisual Chord as Compositional Strategies Overview of Possible Audiovisual Chords Synchresis Synchronicity But Different Life-Worlds Referring to Different Characters or Events The Observer at the Same Spot, But Different Life-worlds Presented in Sound and Image The Audiovisual Chord Revealing the Body Schema and the Being-in-the-World and Towards-the-World of a Character The Audiovisual Chord from an Auditory Perspective Inner and External Spaces Combine in the Audiovisual Chord The Importance of Elaborated Audiovisual Chords in the Transmission of an Experience: Three Monkeys (2008) by Nuri Bilge Ceylan as Case Study References 10: The Importance of Embodied (Panic) Listening in Film as an Audiovisual Composition Music and /Sound/ as Two Different Filmic Elements that Choreograph the Listener/Spectator Differently Overview of Spaces Case Study: Gerry (2002) by Gus Van Sant Case Study: Institute Benjamenta (1996) by the Quay Brothers Music as a Felt Sound in Film The Organisation of the Forms of Vitality at the Basis of a Musical Composition The Musical Composition Within the Film Composition Listening to Film with a Resonant Body References 11: A Phenomenological Approach to Film Sound and Film at the Basis of Film-Making How to Implement the Proposed Key Concepts and Tools in Film-Making? Positing Experience at the Basis of Film-Making (Na het verdwijnen) (2018) by Maï Calon Erpe Mere (2019) by Noemi Osselaer Taking a Sound Perspective as a Compositional Strategy to Create a Film as a Whole The Day That Was White (2021) by Wannes Vanspauwen Because We Are Visual (2010) by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes Environs (2020) by Bas Verbruggen Film-Making from Within Anemone (2006), Juliette (2007), Venus vs. Me (2010) and Past Imperfect (2016) by Nathalie Teirlinck L’infini (2014) and Girl (2018) by Lukas Dhont Conclusion References Websites Index