Patterns of Perception - The Power of Absence
Last evening I went to see Fritz Lang's M at a local repertory cinema; and while I immensely enjoyed watching this dark and masterfully narrated tale of a town hunting down a child-killer (young Peter Lorre), it also made me wonder how much my own abitlity to perceive and to interpret visual images is shaped by the kind of movies with which I grew up. That dominated my childhood and adolescence.
Born in 1975, I am a child of the eighties and early nineties. Indy Jones and Back to the Future , Silence of the Lambs and the first David Fincher films...You get the picture.
To a certain degree all of these movies are artistically reliant on fast narrative pace, colourful visual images and, last but certainly not least, the immense impact of sound effects. It is the way of storytelling I am used to, perhaps my "film viewer mother tongue" which makes me feel at home and comfortable with what I'm seeing.
Filmed in 1931, M , however, stems from the era of early "talkies". Visually, it is still full of all the techniques that silent/expressionistic German movie making is so famous for (shadows, distorted camera angles, stark production design). Apart from a few enhanced, emphasizing noises and the killer's frightening whistle (a tune from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt, "In der Halle des Bergkönigs" if I remember correctly) there is no such thing as a normal soundtrack. And strangely enough it is exactly this lack of mood enhancing melodies and sounds that makes the movie's scenes even more insistent and oppressive.
As a whole, the effect of silence is very similar to that in Buffy's fifth season masterpiece "The Body" (the ep where Buffy returns home only to find her mother's corpse). Mhmmm...makes you wonder how much Joss Whedon knows about early sound films.
Born in 1975, I am a child of the eighties and early nineties. Indy Jones and Back to the Future , Silence of the Lambs and the first David Fincher films...You get the picture.
To a certain degree all of these movies are artistically reliant on fast narrative pace, colourful visual images and, last but certainly not least, the immense impact of sound effects. It is the way of storytelling I am used to, perhaps my "film viewer mother tongue" which makes me feel at home and comfortable with what I'm seeing.
Filmed in 1931, M , however, stems from the era of early "talkies". Visually, it is still full of all the techniques that silent/expressionistic German movie making is so famous for (shadows, distorted camera angles, stark production design). Apart from a few enhanced, emphasizing noises and the killer's frightening whistle (a tune from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt, "In der Halle des Bergkönigs" if I remember correctly) there is no such thing as a normal soundtrack. And strangely enough it is exactly this lack of mood enhancing melodies and sounds that makes the movie's scenes even more insistent and oppressive.
As a whole, the effect of silence is very similar to that in Buffy's fifth season masterpiece "The Body" (the ep where Buffy returns home only to find her mother's corpse). Mhmmm...makes you wonder how much Joss Whedon knows about early sound films.