More on Sound in Film Art: An Introduction

Here are three sample comments on sound from Bordwell & Thompson's Film Art: An Introduction. These were taken from the 6th edition (2001) but also appear in the 7th (2003); the current edition is the 8th (2006).

(timbre) ". . . in the opening sequence of Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight, people starting the day on a street pass a musical rhythm from object to object--a broom, a carpet beater--and the humor of the number springs in part from the very different timbres of the objects." (in the section "Timbre")

(frequency; timbre) " In The Wizard of OZ the disparity between the public image of the Wizard and the old charlatan who rigs it up is marked by the booming bass of the effigy and the old man's higher, softer, more quavering voice." (in the section "Timbre")

(manipulation of diegetic/nondiegetic relation) "In American Graffiti, a film that plays heavily on the distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic music, offscreen sounds of car radios often suggest that all of the cars on a street are tuned to the same radio station." (in the section "Resources of Diegetic Sound")

Link to Film Art on Bordwell's website: David Bordwell. And to the publisher: Film Art, 8th edition (this link goes to a table of contents).

Sound and Music in Film Art: An Introduction

Although they tend to downplay their contribution to film sound research and pedagogy, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's chapter on sound in their best-selling Film Art: An Introduction is excellent. As with all the chapters in the book, Chapter 9 is clearly organized, with a wealth of brief comments on individual films, plus a few longer analyses. Their approach to the topic is very compatible with HtM, and the chapter or its analytic essays could easily serve as additional reading in a course for which HtM is the principal textbook.

In the Supporting Materials section, I have added a Word file that gives a detailed table of contents for Chapter 9 in the 7th edition (the current edition is the 8th (2006)), along with a list of all the films mentioned in the chapter, keyed to topics.

Link to Film Art on Bordwell's website: David Bordwell. And to the publisher: Film Art, 8th edition (this link goes to a table of contents). Filmsound.org quotes a few definitions of terms from the FIlm Art sound chapter: definitions. The sound chapter from the first edition of Film Art (1979) was reprinted (without images) under the section "Practice and Methodology" in the anthology Film Sound: Theory and Practice, ed. Elisabeth Weis and John Belton (1985). This venerable anthology is still in print (Columbia University Press).