Sound is an element of film that I think is often taken for granted by the modern viewer. It is such an inherent and familiar aspect of film that it simply seems to wash over us, whether in great sonic waves of Dolby surround sound systems, tinny headphones, or anything in between. Despite it’s obvious and critical presence, I truly had no conscious appreciation for the technical impact of sound on the film viewing experience prior to reading Chapter 7 of Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art, on “Sound in the Cinema.” This chapter discusses how sound can direct our expectations and reactions as viewers through directorial choices involving not only prominent sounds such as the use of music, presence of speech, and sound effects, but also more subtle nuances such as volume, pitch, timbre, and so on. Bordwell and Thompson also distinguish between “diegetic sound” which has a source within the story, and “nondiegetic sound” which has a source outside of the story (278-9). Armed with this new conscious awareness, I sat down to watch Oscar Micheaux’s “Lying Lips,” a “race film” from 1939.
Even over the feeble sound system of my laptop, I noticed some interesting choices by Micheaux when it came to sound. It’s hard to tell whether these instances would have been jarring in any case, or whether it was only a result of the Film Art chapter on sound fresh in my mind, but regardless, they certainly stood out in my viewing of the film. Music has a large place in the story, as you would expect when the main character, Elsie, is a nightclub singer who we first meet during a performance. This diegetic use of music is expected and meshes naturally with the plot and character development of the film. However, the remainder of the film offered tow particular sound choices that seemed jarring, incongruous, or otherwise questionable. The first occurs when Elsie has returned home for the night and prepares to take a bath. Micheaux includes much of Elsie's undressing process in the film, and as this process occurs, very dramatic music is playing. In what was otherwise a quiet scene of domestic tranquility and relaxation, the contrasting element of loud, dramatic music seemed an odd choice and left me baffled as to Micheaux’s intent. Was he augmenting the perhaps scandalous nature of showing a woman preparing for a bath in 1939? Or, on the other hand, was he trying to distract from it with music that vies for the viewer’s attention? If that were the case, then why show those scenes at all? One possibility is that the dramatic and suspenseful nature of the music anticipates the murder mystery that is about to commence with the anonymous phone call that drags Elsie reluctantly from her bathtub, but if so, the music might have seemed more fitting at the moment Elsie discovers the crime. Regardless, with my aural senses alert to this nondiegetic musical choice, which according to Film Art and common sense, had to have been a conscious choice by Micheaux with some import behind it, I was left with more questions than answers.
A second remarkable use of sound occurred during a scene near the end of the film where two detectives take a suspected criminal to a haunted house in order to coerce a confession out of him via threats to tie him up and leave him with the ghosts. As the detectives interrogate the suspect, strange music is once again playing, but this time it is interspersed with spectral sounds that I assumed were meant to imply the presence of ghosts in the haunted house. However, it was unclear if these sounds were diegetic and meant to be understood as heard by the characters, or whether they were merely nondiegetic and solely designed for the auditory appreciation of the audience. Obviously, the detectives’ threat and the suspect's fear would appear much more understandable if they could hear the ghostly sounds as well, but arguing against that possibility are the facts that the sounds were intertwined with music (that had no apparent diegetic source) and that the characters did not comment on any ghostly sounds despite repeated references to ghosts. Given these facts, it is reasonable to assume that the ghostly sounds were nondiegetic, thereby rendering the haunted house scene somewhat farcical. Still, the salient point is that the scene is otherwise unremarkable (or maybe even bad – poorly written, woodenly acted, etc), other than for the interesting use of sound. Even if the haunted house soundtrack was nondiegetic and unheard by the characters, the use of music and ghostly sound effects created an aura of a possible supernatural presence for the viewer, which was presumably Micheaux’s attempt to lend some sort of credibility to an otherwise far-fetched scenario.
Discussion Question:
As I was watching Lying Lips, I was also thinking about film genres. At first, I thought it was a Musical, then changed my thinking to Gangster film, and finally arrived at Detective story. However, there are also elements of romantic drama, and possibly even horror/thriller if we allow for a very generous reading of the haunted house scene. Clearly, genre categories are fluid, and films often draw from more than one genre, but how do we ultimately determine how to characterize a film? How would you classify Lying Lips? How does its status as a “race film” affect its genre characterization? Why do we generally feel compelled to “fit” films within certain genres?
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