The Relations between Sound and Avant Garde Film in the Silent Era

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Chapter 1: Introduction

The major drawback of summarizing sound and cinema within the 'silent' era is that a lot of information regarding the use of musical (and sometimes other aural) accompaniment has either been lost or is incomplete. Generally, though, available evidence seems to indicate that not a great deal of thought was put into the use of sound by many avant-garde filmmakers. This would have undoubtedly stemmed from the fact that many artists and critics who were exploring the artistic potentials of cinema in the 1920s were primarily concerned with the medium as a visual art. Thus, many films were created as visual artefacts, while the musical accompaniment to such films was oft en subject to the whim of the exhibitor (Eisenstein, 2007, pp. 83).

There were some avant-garde films, though, which had original music created especially for their screenings. These included Eric Satie's score for Rene Clair's Entr'acte (France, 1924), the Dada-inspired film that was screened in the interlude of Picabia's ballet Relâche, which starred Satie himself. The score of this film consisted of rather minimalist, repetitive fragments of melodies. Satie used only eight measures for the score in order to match the rhythm of the film, which consisted of cuts averaging around 8 s that, according to Roger Shattuck, made for transitions 'as abrupt and arbitrary as the cuts in the film'(Eisenstein, 2007, pp. 83).

Another notorious avant-garde film that employed the services of a modern composer to produce a score refl ecting the abrupt mood of the film was Léger and Murphy's Ballet Mecanique (France, 1924). For this film, Georges Antheil produced an elaborate and complex piece for a number of instruments, as well as 'non-instruments' such as propeller mechanisms. Unfortunately, the score was too ambitious to be realized at the time and therefore did not accompany screenings of the film when it was released on the small-cinema circuit. There were also a number of original scores made for what is often referred to as narrative avant-garde films. Perhaps the most famous of these is Edmund Meisel's score to Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (Russia, 1924); a collaboration in which the conventional practice of musical accompaniment was more consciously transformed into an act of audio-visual interaction. Other innovative uses of music include the soundtracks to the films of Abel Gance. Gance, who was interested in the visual rhythm of films, saw music as able to enhance the dynamic, rhythmic essence that he saw as inherent in the medium. Not only did he commission Arthur Honegger to produce original scores for his features La Roue (France, 1924) and Napoleon (France, 1927), he also experimented with the production of non-musical sounds. In Napoloeon, for example, actors were employed to recite the principal speeches in sync with the images, which were complemented by a choir. These scores also featured a number of montage sequences where music was carefully chosen to match the visual rhythms of the image ...