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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Opposite or Complementary Conceptions? What Do Rudolf Arnheim and Michel Chion Have in Common?
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2003-03-01
2022-11-28
2003-03-01
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Cinéma & Cie
Frances Guerin
2003/03/01
Kent University at Canterbury
2036-461X
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Opposite or Complementary Conceptions? What Do Rudolf Arnheim and Michel Chion Have in Common?
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19153/16958
2
OPPOSITE OR COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTIONS? WHAT DO RUDOLF
ARNHEIM AND MICHEL CHION HAVE IN COMMON?
Frances Guerin, Kent University at Canterbury




      Artistic media combine […] as separate and complete structural forms. The theme to be
     expressed by a song, for instance, is given in the words of the text and again, in another
   manner, in the sounds of the music. Both elements conform to each other in such a way as
      to create the unity of the whole, but their separateness remains evident, nevertheless.1

  Like the music and lyrics of a song, Rudolf Arnheim maintains that even when
deployed together, image and sound should retain their respective integrity and sepa-
rateness as sensory phenomena. This claim is born of his notion that sound and image
are two distinct media, as “separate and complete structural forms.” Furthermore, it is
only when the two media are distinct from one another that the work constitutes art.
In line with Lessing’s distinction between the visual arts and literature, sound and the
moving image engage their audiences in different sensory experiences, the aural and
visual respectively. In direct contrast to Arnheim’s theories of sound film, fifty years
later Michel Chion maintains that the cinema is defined by its marriage of sound and
image, that the two belong together in an interdependent relationship of creativity. For
Chion the ultimate goal of sound-image relations in the cinema is a utopian state anal-
ogous to the symbiotic relationship between mother and child in the womb.2 Chion
argues that the sound film is unique due to its eternal striving for this unity, a unity it
will however never fully realize because of the inevitable physical separation of sound
and image. For Arnheim, this separation is the sound film’s greatest weakness and for
Chion it is its creative force. Chion recognizes that while the sound and image tracks
are materially distant (sound is recorded with a different mechanism, exhibited
through speakers that are physically removed from the screen, and so on), they are, and,
in the sound cinema’s most outstanding examples, should be, experienced in perfect
sensorial unison. Similarly, the two theorists are opposed in their assessment of the
intrinsic worth of sound film. On the one hand, Arnheim is so damning that it is impos-
sible for sound film to be considered art. Chion, on the other hand, celebrates the pos-
sibilities of sound film: it is a highly sophisticated and complex audiovisual medium.
While on the surface these two conceptions may appear radically opposed to one
another, on closer inspection they are surprisingly compatible. They are both driven by
the same premises: they are based on similar conceptions of cinema as a unique per-
ceptual experience. And in both cases, this experience is marked as unique by the fact
that the cinema does not merely duplicate reality. For both Arnheim and Chion cinema
also presents a distinct art form. To achieve this distinction cinema must use the intrin-
sic properties of its medium. Lastly, both reject the notion that the coming of sound in
1927 ushered in a critical shift in film aesthetics.3

CINEMA & Cie, no. 2, Spring 2003                                                             ­129
FRANCES GUERIN

  In recent years Chion’s work on film sound has been the subject of respect and analy-
sis within Anglo-American film studies. It has been praised for its “fresh and rigorous
thinking about the complex relations between sound and image,”4 its offer of “new
ways to think about structures and effects of audio-visual experience”5 and its attention
to a hitherto neglected area of film criticism. Rudolf Arnheim’s 1938 theory of talking
pictures however is often dismissed on the basis of its naivety and conservatism.6 More
usually, Anglo-American works on the history of film-sound theory ignore Arnheim’s
work altogether. In this article I argue that despite the superficial polarities, in their
common search for a perceptual experience of a cinematic reality, Anheim and Chion
produce complementary theories. It is only due to the disparity of the respective his-
torical moments within which they write that the two theories assume such discordant
attitudes toward the sound film. Chion conceives optimistically of an artistic, “adven-
turous” sound cinema. And it is only due to developments in viewing conditions and
available technologies for film production that he is able to excavate, theorize and cele-
brate the complexity of sound-image film relations. In turn, Arnheim’s pessimism
about the future of sound film is undergirded by the limitations of sound technology in
its earliest days, the historical moment in which he was writing. If we strip away
Arnheim’s and Chion’s dependence on their respective historical moments, the two the-
ories are, I would argue, congruous. I want to draw attention to this congruity as a way
of challenging our rush both to denigrate the productivity of classical or modernist film
theory, and, to assume the value of more contemporary, though no less compromised,
theories. When classical film theory is viewed within its historical context, freed of its
oftentimes problematic theoretical assumptions, it has much to offer our understand-
ing of film and our experience of the cinema.
  While Arnheim is not against the combination of two media per se, he is pessimistic
about the successful marriage of sound and image in the cinema. Chion also states that
image and sound are always physically isolated, and yet, he also believes that it is pos-
sible for the two to be perceived as complementary and unified even if they are not uni-
fied in production and exhibition. Herein lies the fundamental difference between the
two thinkers. Arnheim maintains that in cinematic realism the spectator hears and sees
what is given to him or her. Therefore, if the sound and image are physically separated
in production and exhibition, they are necessarily separate to the human senses.
However, according to Arnheim, even in “composite” media such as the theatre, a com-
bination of visual action and dialogue, one medium dominates and the other “com-
pletes” or “supports” the role of the dominant. Thus, prima facie, it would appear
impossible to achieve perceptual integration in any composite medium.
  Unlike the theatre, the visual action of (silent) film is always complete. In film,
human characters may, but do not necessarily, assume center stage. Rather, for
Arnheim, humans are only a part of the world of the film: the medium is more con-
cerned with “the world animated by man than with man set off against his world.”7 It
is the interaction of the human characters with the events which take place on the
screen that is, according to Arnheim, an essential quality of the cinema. Due to this
objective quality of film, for Arnheim, the addition of dialogue has disastrous results.
Either, the dialogue replaces action as a means of articulation, an instance in which the
visual becomes subservient to speech and the film shows no more than a static close-up
of a character talking. In such a film all other events are backgrounded. Thus instead of
pursuing its natural purpose as a medium of animated action, film supposedly lapses

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into pursuing the purpose of theatre: it articulates characters’ subjective states through
dialogue.8 According to Arnheim, such film is no longer an art, it is filmed theatre.
Alternatively, in the “talking film” the “dialogue is fragmentary; it consists of pieces
that are separated by unbridgeable interruptions.”9 Arnheim does not offer precise
details of the films to which he is referring, however, his comments apply to many of
the early sound films in which conversations with sound were included to display the
capacities for synchronized sound.10 Because of the difficulties of producing synchro-
nized sound, there was often very little talking and these moments did appear some-
what incongruous with the rest of the film’s silence. The conversations were said to dis-
rupt the viewing experience: they came as a “ludicrous surprise” in an otherwise silent
film. Rather than using the dialogue to support the image, to complete the visual, these
snatches of dialogue were utilized as a means of “condensing” the visual.11 For
Arnheim, this condensation of the visual disrespects the distinction of film as art. It is
more like filmed theatre. As he attests in an earlier essay, for the “acoustical film” to con-
tinue the groundbreaking work of silent film as a unique and separate art form, sound
would have to be able to be montaged in the vein of the visual montage of films such as
Varieté (E.A. Dupont, 1925) and Der letzte Mann (F.W. Murnau, 1924).12 Arnheim
makes it clear that although sound and image may coexist in certain art forms, there is
no place for sound in the cinema if film is to retain its integrity as art and a sensory phe-
nomenon.
   Arnheim’s scathing critique of the sound film is born of a number of factors. At the
time he was writing, the technological developments for the recording and editing of
sound were still in their infancy. As a result, the disruptions to the viewing experience
referred to by Arnheim are also due to the crudity of production techniques. Likewise,
filmmakers were still developing aesthetic techniques for the integration of sound and
image in the cinema. They were novices of the medium. Thus, the films upon which
Arnheim bases his critique did not exhibit the most sophisticated integration of sound.
Similarly, as Sabine Hake postulates, Arnheim’s vitriolic attack of the sound film was in
part motivated by his reservations of the increasing emphasis placed upon the eco-
nomic viability of films.13 The introduction of sound accelerated the economic success
of cinema as a form of standardized mass entertainment.14 The cinema’s rising eco-
nomic motivation was understood by many as detrimental to its artistic development
and consolidation. Although Arnheim himself was reluctant to attribute the decline of
artistic excellence to increased industrialization and economic exigencies, he does nod
towards the imbrication of the two.15 Perhaps the most important motivation for
Arnheim’s rejection of sound cinema is the fact that, quite simply, it did not accord with
his theory of film as a purely visual medium.
   Despite the limitations of Arnheim’s conception of the separation of sound and
image, his thoughts on this matter are consistent with his larger theory of film as an art
unique unto itself. Like many other film theories of this period, Arnheim’s Film as Art
is driven by the imperative to legitimize the cinema as an art.16 This project was a reac-
tion to the rejection of the artistic capacities of photography – and by extension, cine-
ma – among art and literary theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies. Neither photography nor cinema was considered art: they were deemed mere
mechanical reproductions of reality. As slavish mechanically reproduced imitations of
nature, film and photography were unable to express the creative individuality of the
artist, a central condition for the determination of any medium as art. In a response to

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FRANCES GUERIN

this dismissal of cinema as art, in Film as Art Arnheim illustrates that the cinema is nei-
ther a mechanical duplication of nature or reality nor a replica of any other art, name-
ly, the theatre. He does this by arguing that the cinema as a perceptual experience dif-
fers from a mechanical duplication of our normal perceptual experience of reality. Like
fellow classical film theorists such as Béla Balász or Siegfried Kracauer, Arnheim argues
that the cinema manipulates, transforms and magnifies the profilmic reality, and in so
doing, is more than a simple replication.17 Our perception of film is distinct from our
perception of the everyday world. Arnheim provides many examples of articulations
that are unique to film in order to support his theory. Among these he lists: the two-
dimensionality of the cinematic image, the absence of constancy in size, the use of
lighting, the absence of colour, the absence of the space-time continuum achieved
through editing, absence of non-visual sense experience and various other tech-
niques.18 However, the use of these techniques alone does not legitimate film as art. Not
all films are art, rather, film has the potential to be art. Arnheim claims that a film is art
if these techniques form the basis of “expressiveness.”

  In order that the film artist may create a work of art it is important that he consciously stress
  the peculiarities of his medium. This, however, should be done in such a manner that the
  character of the objects represented should not thereby be destroyed but rather strength-
  ened, concentrated, and interpreted […] the various peculiarities of film material can be, and
  have been, used to achieve artistic effects.19

  This “artistic effect” is what Arnheim later refers to as expressiveness. As Noël Carroll
points out, Arnheim’s concept of expressiveness is vague and inconsistent. Carroll sum-
marizes that in Film as Art, the meaning of “expressiveness” ranges from the “forceful-
ness” of a particular character achieved through an extreme low angle shot, through
the evocation of powerful emotions in the spectator due to specific framing devices, to,
broadly speaking, a “‘coexten[sion]’ with the idea of communication.”20 Irrespective of
the imprecision of Arnheim’s notion of the “expressiveness” yielded by film as art, it is
important to recognize that the specific perceptual conditions of the cinema be utilized
with the purpose of achieving this expressiveness.
  Attributes of the cinema that ensure its divergence from a mechanical reproduction
of normal vision are imperative to Arnheim’s theory of cinema as art. As noted above,
the absence of sound is a limitation of film that enables it to manipulate reality through
the use of properties which are intrinsic to the medium. According to Arnheim, sound
is not intrinsic to the medium as it also belongs to everyday reality. Therefore, it comes
as no surprise that he would be so adverse to the presence of sound: in short, the sonic
dimension of film takes it closer to the specter of duplication so anathema to Arnheim’s
theory of the cinema. The very silence of film affords it its “impetus as well as the power
to achieve excellent artistic effects.”21 The cinema, like no other art form, has the
capacity to visualize that which is otherwise communicated aurally. Arnheim draws
upon a number of examples of this visual communication of sound such as Charlie
Chaplin’s pronounced movements and facial expressions, and the spirited rhythmic
dancing of people at a political meeting in Les Nouveaux Messieurs (J. Feyder, 1929)
which effectively visualizes the music they dance to. He also cites the visualization of a
scene from The Docks of New York (J. von Sternberg, 1928) in which a gun shot is fired.
In this sequence birds are seen to rise abruptly, scattering in the sky following the gun

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                                                       OPPOSITE OR COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTIONS?

shot. Arnheim argues that the spectator “sees” the quality of the noise: “the sudden-
ness, the abruptness of the rising birds, give visually the exact quality that the shot pos-
sesses acoustically.”22 The spectator sees the dramatic impact of the gunshot through
the reaction of the birds. Therefore, the silence of the film does not reduce it to a mere
pantomime, but rather, for Arnheim the sonic dimension of on-screen events is
enhanced due to the absence of sound. Absence of sound is one of the perceptual con-
ditions that marks the cinematic image as something other than mere recording of real-
ity and can, as in the case of the scene from The Docks of New York imbue the image
with a forceful expressive effect.
   Among his other reservations about the sound film Arnheim claims that sound gives
the image a three-dimensional quality, it reduces the frame to a mere opening, without
any particular characteristics. As such, the cinema is no more than a replication of real-
ity. Sound also burdens each scene with an unnecessary naturalism, thereby preventing
the play with other realities and making impossible quick transitions between shots; in
this case, film becomes a “technically perfected theatre.”
   Writing fifty years after Rudolf Arnheim, in his concept of “audio-vision,” Michel
Chion insists upon the integration of sound and image in the narrative film. Unlike
Arnheim, Chion is not posing a prescriptive theory of the conditions of film as art.
Rather, in Audio-Vision Chion sets out to describe the perceptual qualities of film
sound and, from here, to demonstrate the particular “reality” of the audio-visual com-
bination in sound cinema. Thus he does not bring a pre-interpretative theory of film to
bear upon his conceptualization and consequent judgment of cinematic audio-vision.
He uses the perception of filmic sound-image relations as a basis for a subsequent theo-
rization of the cinema.23 Nevertheless, Chion ends up with a theory of cinema that, like
Arnheim’s embraces its extraordinariness, and privileges the artistic effects of its pecu-
liar reality. In addition, like Arnheim, Chion focusses on the perceptual experience as
the defining characteristic of cinema. As I shall argue, it is only due to developments in
film technology, production and exhibition that for Chion the cinema of “hyperreal-
ism” is a sound cinema.
   Like American film scholars such as Rick Altman and James Lastra, Chion is not only
disenchanted with the general lack of critical attention paid to film sound, but he is also
concerned to highlight the integrity of sound to cinematic production, exhibition and
reception.24 For Chion, sound is fundamental to a specifically cinematic perception. In
contradistinction to early theorizations of sound which spoke of the counterpoint of
filmic sound and image, Chion argues that the two parameters are always interdepend-
ent, never autonomous.25 Each owes its existence and coherence to the other. The
grounds of this claim are relatively straightforward. In the case of sound’s dependence
on the image for its existence and coherence as film sound, Chion repeatedly asserts
that whilst “a film without sound remains a film; a film with no image, or at least with-
out visual frame for projection, is not a film.”26 If sound does not have a locus, or refer-
ence in the spatial parameters of the projected image, then it is not film sound, rather,
it is radio. Chion attributes the dependence of the image upon the sonic dimensions of
the medium to the “added value” effected by sound. He defines it thus:

  By added value I mean the expressive and informative value with which a sound enriches a
  given image so as to create the definite impression, in the immediate or remembered expe-
  rience one has of it, that this information or expression “naturally” comes from what is seen,

                                                                                              ­133
FRANCES GUERIN

  and is already contained in the image itself. Added value is what gives the (eminently incor-
  rect) impression that sound is unnecessary, that sound merely duplicates a meaning which
  in reality it brings about, either all on its own or by discrepancies between it and the
  image.27

   To give one example offered by Chion, the sonic dimension of a human punch or
physical blow adds an expression of temporal instantaneity to the visual dimension.
According to Chion, without the auditory perception of the blow, the image of the
punch would not be registered by the spectator: it “would not become engraved into the
memory, [it] would tend to get lost.”28 The sound of the blow serves to emphasize or
announce an action and its “reverberations” within the narrative, an action that the eye
would not otherwise register as significant. Similarly, the sonic enunciation of the visu-
al action ensures that the significance of the blow registers in the spectator’s “con-
sciousness” immediately. If the image is not accompanied by the sound of the punch,
the spectator will only recognize its significant reverberations in retrospect once it is
contextualized by the ensuing images. Due to this temporal instantaneity afforded the
film by its sonic dimension, sound “adds value” or expressiveness to the visual.
   There are already striking similarities between Chion’s necessary integration of the
aural and the visual and Arnheim’s otherwise polar belief in the separation of the same
two parameters. Chion readily admits that sound modifies the image when it, for exam-
ple, relieves the image of its responsibility to structure space. It is no longer the image’s
task to demarcate the space of the narrative, but rather, the “vast extension” of ambient
sounds map the much larger spaces within which a film takes place.29 Thus, like
Arnheim, Chion recognizes the re-spatialization of the image brought through the use
of sound: sound affords the image a three-dimensional quality. This added dimensional-
ity is unwelcomed by Arnheim as it takes film closer to reality, away from an exploration
of the intrinsic qualities of the medium. Chion, however, considers sound’s alteration of
the dimensionality of the image an enhancement of cinematic perception. He points out
that the modification “has left untouched the image’s centrality as that which focuses
the attention”30 and that sound simply indicates what warrants the spectator’s atten-
tion. More notably, both Arnheim and Chion locate “expressiveness” as the key to the
perceptual conditions of film as art and cinematic reality respectively.31 And yet, in
keeping with his applause for the visualization of the sound of the gun shot in The
Docks of New York, the acoustic articulation of a punch would for Arnheim rob the film
of its status as art. To announce the punch with sound would be to replace the image
with sound, and thereby, disrespect the particularity of the medium, a medium that has
the capacity to communicate all sensory phenomena via the image. Similarly, such a
strategy would take the film closer to a mere mechanical duplication of reality. In short,
the film would be empty of all expressiveness. Likewise given Chion’s celebration of the
sonic dimension of the punch, the flurry of birds following the gun shot in The Docks of
New York, would be an image with no “expressive or informative value.” It would lack
the temporal instantaneity achieved through synchronous sound as the spectator only
registers the impact of the gun shot after the fact when the birds scatter and rise into the
sky. The very same silence which guarantees film as art for Arnheim impedes the cre-
ation of a cinematic hyperreality for Chion. And yet, Arnheim’s “expressiveness” and
Chion’s “added value” both adhere to the notion that the unique cinematic reality is a
heightened reality, a reality above and beyond, distinct from that experienced in the

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everyday. Both writers are looking for the same extraordinary reality of the cinema. It is
only due to their historical circumscription, that they find it in radically different places.
But firstly, let us turn to Chion’s larger theoretical concerns.
  Unlike Arnheim, Chion does not bring a pre-interpretative theory of film to his con-
ceptualization of sound cinema and therefore his is not motivated by a theoretical
impetus. Nevertheless, Chion’s description of the audio-visual experience of the cine-
ma is governed by a specific theory of perception. His interpretation of cinematic per-
ception assumes a spectator who perceives the structural phenomena of cinema as an
organized whole, rather than as an aggregate of distinct parts. Although Chion only
mentions Gestalt psychology in passing,32 it can be strongly inferred that his model of
perception is drawn from this school. Certainly, in keeping with Gestalt psychology,
Chion maintains that the significance of the structured whole of cinematic perception
does not depend on the specific constituent elements of the audio and the visual. He is
not interested in analysis of sound and image as independent components of the cine-
ma, but rather focuses upon the importance of each as relational structures for percep-
tion. Despite the fact that this assumption regarding the nature of perceptual experi-
ence does permeate the text, it is not a theoretical foundation for his argument. That is,
he does not impose this model of perception onto the filmic moments he describes.
Rather, the Gestalt theory of perception appears to be one of a number of biases which
inform the instances of audio-vision he describes, namely instances of cinematic syn-
chronization and synchresis. Chion only chooses moments in which sound and image
work together to produce a concerted effect. There is no room in Chion’s argument for
the radical sound-image relations of avant-garde films such as those of Jean-Luc Godard
of the 1970s. His only references to filmmakers such as Godard, whose practices overt-
ly challenge the unified and coherent integration of filmic sound and image, are super-
ficial and unconvincing.33 Although Chion’s attachment to a certain model of percep-
tion may influence the cinematic instances he chooses to describe, the descriptions
which form the basis of his consequent understanding of cinematic reality are empiri-
cally determined. Like the example of the punch mentioned above, Chion offers a com-
mon sense characterization of the experience of perception.
  Like Arnheim, Chion maintains that cinematic perception is of a different order to
that of normal perception, thus the cinematic reality is distinct from a mere technolog-
ical reproduction of reality. However, Chion is not concerned to delimit film as art, only
to demonstrate the specific reality of the audio-visual combination as one in which
each sensory phenomenon influences and transforms the other. For Chion the cinema’s
sound-image relationship renders a “hyperreality,”34 by which he seems to mean a real-
ity that is more real or “natural” than any reference point beyond the reproduction.
Like much of Chion’s terminology, his notion of hyperreality is nowhere clarified in
Audio-Vision. However, he does claim that the cinematic sound-image perception “sup-
plant[s] unmediated acoustical reality in strength, presence, and impact,” and that it
offers “a more direct and immediate contact with the event.”35 Consequently, the
immediacy and directness of this experience heightens the reality of the perceptual
event. It is this augmenting of perception that ensures the distinction between cine-
matic and everyday reality. Similarly, there is an intimacy to the experience of cine-
matic fiction that has no equivalent in lived reality. The cinema facilitates the sensuous
experience of cartoon characters walking, of ghosts such as Dr. Mabuse talking, even of
punches being thrown. To take the example of the punch once again: in real life a

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FRANCES GUERIN

punch does not always make a noise, indeed it is possible to see someone being
punched and hear nothing. However, in the acoustically mediated reality the sound of
the punch is obligatory if the spectator is to believe that it has been inflicted.36 Thus the
spectator does not determine the truth or reality of the cinematic punch in accordance
with her pre-existing acoustic experience of punches in the real world, and yet, it is only
true or real to cinematic perception if it bears the quality of synchronous sound. Hence
in the hyperreality of cinematic perception, sound and image are perceived to be in per-
fect synchronization. In addition, in direct contrast to Arnheim’s understanding of the
unique film reality, sound is indispensable to the constitution of Chion’s reality.
Because the sonic dimension of the cinema is what gives the image its hyperreality, the
integration of audio-vision is critical to the manipulation of the intrinsic properties of
the medium.
   Chion bases this theory of cinema’s hyperreality upon two conditions of normal per-
ception. Firstly, as in the case of the punch, in “concrete experience itself” sound and
image are not necessarily integrated or unified as they are in the cinema. Secondly, in
concrete experience the distinct elements of sound, such as volume, nature, colour and
resonance will vary in accordance with each other. Therefore, for example, an increase of
volume in an enclosed space will cause echoes and vibrations. However, due to the
sophisticated technological capacities of the cinema each element of sound is manipu-
lated in isolation from the others. Therefore, an increase in volume will not cause dis-
tortions to the entire sound event as volume is purified in isolation from the other ingre-
dients.37 Thus, in contradistinction to the commonly accepted claim that the reproduc-
tion of sound does not suffer a loss in dimensionality, according to Chion, like the reduc-
tion of a three-dimensional to a two-dimensional image, the transposition of sound ren-
ders it two-dimensional.38 Similarly, the reduction of the dimensionality of the sonic
component of cinematic reality, heightens the “realism” of the perceptual experience.
Again, like Arnheim, Chion maintains that it is the limitation of film’s properties that is
instrumental to cinematic perception. For Arnheim it is, for example, the absence of
sound and for Chion it is, among other things, a loss in the dimensionality of sound.
   For both Arnheim and Chion, the distinction of cinematic reality is dependent on an
effective use of the intrinsic properties of the medium. Nevertheless, for Arnheim these
properties are dependent on a separation of image and sound as sensory phenomena
and for Chion they are the result of the integration of the two parameters in the narra-
tive film experience. Similarly, both are concerned to put forward a perceptual experi-
ence that is unique unto itself, an experience that is not a mere duplication of reality.
Despite the identical premises upon which the two scholars ground their theories of
film, their assessment of the intrinsic worth of sound film is diametrically opposed.
Arnheim is damning of the sound film: for him, it impossible for sound film to be art.
Despite his celebration of sound film, Chion’s perception of it also has limitations. Due
to the emphasis he places on synchronized and “synchretic” sound-image perception,
instances in which there is a slippage between sound and image would not effect a cin-
ematic hyperreality in Chion’s terms. Perhaps more problematic than the inapplicabil-
ity of this theory to certain avant-garde sound-image practices, if sound films are to rep-
resent the cinematic reality of Chion’s theory, they must be projected in a theatre or an
acoustically modified space with the technical equipment to isolate and further manip-
ulate the various properties of the sonic dimension. Certainly, an old 16mm screening
in which the voices blur and the sounds are interrupted by imperfections in the record-

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                                                      OPPOSITE OR COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTIONS?

ing or reproduction are what “we might call caricatural.”39 Thus the logic of Chion’s
argument leads to the implication that a sound film seen in anything less than a multi-
plex does not render a cinematic perception. Despite his continued interest in film and
visual aesthetics Arnheim has never discussed the “artistic effects” that have been made
possible by increasing sophistication in film technology in the latter half of the twenti-
eth century. It is true that Chion has paid close attention to both the films and screen-
ing environments of the past.40 However, even when he discusses the innovative
sound-image relations of films such as Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (F. Lang, 1932-33)
or Psycho (A. Hitchcock, 1960), Chion still interprets the films’ momentum toward
cohesion and unity. The voice is an “umbilical chord” that literally and metaphorically
connects Mabuse to Dr. Baum in Lang’s film and Norman Bates to his mother in Psycho.
Chion’s analysis of the initially disparate sound-image relations in these films is still
driven by his biases towards contemporary modes of filmmaking. Thus, both
Arnheim’s and Chion’s ideas are firmly circumscribed by the films, technologies and
intellectual culture in their environs.
  This juxtaposition of Arnheim’s and Chion’s conceptions of sound cinema encour-
ages an appreciation of their convergences and complementarity. While critics might
dismiss or ignore the significance of Arnheim’s film theory, his ideas are the forebears
of Chion’s lauded work on image-sound and sight-audition integration in narrative cin-
ema. Arnheim may not explain the production processes of the most up-to-date sound
cinema. For that we must turn to a more contemporary critic such as Chion. However,
Arnheim identifies our desire to experience something extraordinary, something that
extends beyond our everyday reality when we go to the cinema. And more significant-
ly, before Chion, Arnheim connects the fulfillment of this desire to the technological
rendering of the cinematic representation. For both thinkers, the medium’s technolog-
ical capacities are the potential site of sound and image integration, and this integration
is at the basis of a cinematic expression that ushers forth a unique viewing experience.
The commercial demands on the cinema may insist that it embrace the latest possible
sound technologies, thereby relegating Arnheim’s theory to a historical curiousity.
However, the demands of commercialism are still in the service of creating a unique
cinematic reality and a unique perceptual experience of that reality – just as Arnheim
demanded nearly sixty years ago.



1 R. Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957), p. 207.
  See also R. Arnheim, “A New Laocoön: Artistic Composites and the Talking Film,” ibid, pp.
  199-230; R. Arnheim, “Der tönende Film” (1928), Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, hrsg. H.H.
  Diederichs (München: Carl Hanser, 1977), pp. 58-61.
2 Although this aspiration for unity permeates Chion’s conception of the sound film in Audio-
  Vision, it is most vividly argued in The Voice in Cinema in which he analyses a number of
  very sophisticated films that the strive to integrate sound and image, but ultimately fail to
  reach this goal because of the instability of the voice. I focus here on Audio-Vision as this
  book represents a bringing together of the ideas in Chion’s previous books on sound and
  music in cinema. See M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, ed. and trans. C. Gorbman
  (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); M. Chion, The Voice in Cinema, trans. C.
  Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

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3 To endorse this break would underline the notion that silent film and sound film represent
   two different media and that silent film has no sonic dimensions.
4 J. Rosenbaum, “Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen,” Cinéaste, vol. 21, nos. 1-2 (1995), p. 94.
5 C. Gorbman, “Chion’s Audio-Vision,” Wide Angle, vol. 15, no. 1 (January 1993), p. 67. When
   discussing the field to which Chion’s book contributes, Gorbman does not even mention
   Arnheim’s founding essay. See also S. Prince’s review of the book in Film Quarterly, vol. 48,
   no. 4 (Summer 1995), pp. 40-42.
6 N. Carroll, “Lang and Pabst: Paradigms for Early Sound Practice,” in J. Belton and E. Weis
   (eds.), Film Sound: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 265;
   M. Rubin, “The Voice of Silence,” ibid., p. 285. See also Carroll’s scathing critique of Arnheim’s
   theory of film in his Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton: Princeton
   University Press, 1988), pp. 17-91. There are of course exceptions to this rejection of
   Arnheim’s theories. See for example, L. Fischer, “Applause: The Visual and Acoustic
   Landscape,” ibid., pp. 232-46. Fischer acknowledges Arnheim’s observations on the spatiality
   of sound and the separation of the sound and image tracks as a basis for her interpretation of
   Mamoulian’s Applause. For exceptions to this assertion see also the thoughtful analysis of the
   strengths of Arnheim’s theory in S. Hake, Cinema’s Third Machine: Writing on Film in
   Germany 1907-1933 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). Also, V. Petric offers an ear-
   lier appreciation of Arnheim’s theory as the first attempt to conceive of an integrated (as
   opposed to counterposed) system of sound and image. See V. Petric, “Sight and Sound:
   Counterpoint or Entity?”, Filmmakers Newsletter, vol. 6, no. 7 (May 1973), pp. 27-31. German
   film studies has given more consideration to Arnheim’s theories. A recent issue of
   Montage/av is devoted to Arnheim’s theories and includes sensitive interpretations of his
   sound theory. See Montage/av: Zeitschrift für Theorie und Geschichte audiovisueller
   Kommunikation (9 February 2000). See also H. H. Diederich’s introduction to the recently
   reissued German edition of R. Arnheim, Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, hrsg. H. H.
   Diederichs (Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1993).
7 R. Arnheim, Film as Art, cit., p. 227.
8 For Arnheim theatre is character-centered and the visuals merely serve to expedite or
   “improve upon” the spoken word in the development of human character.
9 R. Arnheim, Film as Art, cit., p. 209.
10 Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929) is a film in which we see and hear the talking heads in
   long uncut conversations that remain incomprehensible because the recording technology is
   not sophisticated enough to boast clarity or creativity. The film’s two moments of innovative
   sound-image usage are conceptually (directorially) as opposed to technically creative. I am
   referring here to the “sound close-up” of the narratively crucial “knife” and the woman’s
   scream on finding the dead body that creates a sound bridge.
11 Arnheim does not explain how these fragments of dialogue “condense” the visual. However,
   it can be assumed that, as is the case with the “all-talking” picture, the dialogue is an attempt
   to communicate character as opposed to doing the same through action. Curiously, Arnheim
   does not mention the fact that these intermittent sounds were often introduced by filmmak-
   ers as a “celebration” of the capacity of film to “speak.” Thus, it was also as a celebration of
   the technological developments.
12 R. Arnheim, “Tonfilm-Verwirrung” (1929), in Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, cit., pp. 61-64.
13 S. Hake, Cinema’s Third Machine: Writing on Film in Germany 1907-1933, cit., p. 280.
14 He also mentions this in the abovementioned essay, “Tonfilm-Verwirrung”, cit.
15 R. Arnheim, Film as Art, cit., p. 230.

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16 For the lively debate on cinema as an art form in Germany, see A. Kaes (ed.), Kino-Debatte:
   Texte zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Film 1909-1929 (Tübingen: Deutscher Taschenbuch,
   1978).
17 See B. Balázs, Theory of the Film (London: Dennis Dobson, 1972); S. Kracauer, Theory of Film:
   The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
18 See R. Arnheim, Film as Art, cit., pp. 34-134.
19 Ibid., p. 35. My italics.
20 N. Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory, cit., pp. 35-43.
21 R. Arnheim, Film as Art, cit., p. 107.
22 Ibid., p. 108.
23 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit.
24 See R. Altman, “The Material Heterogeneity of Recorded Sound,” and “Sound Space,” in R.
   Altman (ed.), Sound Theory, Sound Practice (New York-London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 15-31
   and pp. 46-64. See also Altman’s introductory essays to each of the sections of this book: J.
   Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press,
   2000).
25 In keeping with the vagueness of many of the criticisms Chion levels at film theorists and crit-
   ics, he never indicates which works he is referring to when he makes these claims. However,
   in the case of his dissatisfaction with the use of the notion of counterpoint and the musical
   analogy of film sound, it can be assumed that he is referring to the work of Sergei Eisenstein.
   Similarly, Chion’s characterization of harmonic counterpoint is confusing and ill thought out.
   As this and other references are somewhat tangential to Chion’s argument, I have chosen not
   to concern myself with a critique of his characterization and use of other texts.
26 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit., p. 143. Arnheim makes the exact same claim
   in his essay “Philosophie des Ach so” (1933), in Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, op. cit., p. 74.
   Of course, for Arnheim the claim is justification of his attack on the sound film. Chion does
   not see that it might compromise his argument.
27 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit., p. 5. Chion’s italics.
28 Ibid., p. 61.
29 A good example of this innovative use of sound would be any of Alfred Hitchcock’s single set
   films. In a film such as Rear Window, the sounds of the street faced by Thorwald’s apartment
   and a ship’s horn on nearby water extend the set beyond the four walls of the apartment
   courtyard. Sound is used to mark the spatial parameters of the diegesis and to let an other-
   wise claustrophobic set breathe.
30 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit., p. 144.
31 Chion is as vague and inconsistent in his determination of what constitutes “expressiveness”
   or “added value.”
32 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit., p. 58.
33 See, for example, Chion’s discussion of the ruptures in sound-image relations in “Godard’s
   Nouvelle Vague” as “serv[ing] to reinforce the tension of the action.” That is, he interprets
   these ruptures and tensions as being in the service of a narrative development. Ibid., pp. 46-47.
34 Ibid., p. 99.
35 Ibid., p. 103-104.
36 Ibid., p. 60.
37 Ibid., pp. 100-101.
38 Ibid., pp. 96-97. Balázs, Metz and more recently Levin all maintain that based upon the notion
   that sound is a volume of vibrating air waves, when reproduced it retains its three dimen-

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   sionality. See B. Balázs, op. cit., p. 216; Ch. Metz, “Aural Objects,” Yale French Studies, no. 60
   (1980), p. 29; T. Levin, “The Acoustic Dimension: Notes on Cinema Sound,” Screen, vol. 25, no.
   3 (May-June 1984), p. 57.
39 M. Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, cit., p. 99.
40 See especially his film analyses in M. Chion, The Voice in the Cinema, cit.




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