The Cinematic Voice Transcript

Neil Fox [00:00:30] Welcome to the Cinematologists podcast. I'm Neil Fox, and I'm pleased to say joining me as always is Dario Llinares. Hello Dario.

Dario Llinares [00:00:38] Hello Neil. It's great to talk to you. I'm really looking forward to this episode and talking to you about it.

Neil Fox [00:00:44] Absolutely. This is a long time coming, eagerly awaited episode. And I'm pleased to say it's finally here. And I think that our listeners are in for an absolute treat. And yeah, you've done an amazing job pulling us together. So do you want to let us know what is in store?

Dario Llinares [00:00:59] Yep. So, this is our episode on The Cinematic Voice, which basically has been about six months in the making. I had the idea about a year ago that I wanted to do another kind of audio-essay style of podcast, and I was kind of thinking, you know, what would lend itself to basically aural sensibility of podcasting, but perhaps kind of triggered this sense of the “audio-cinematic”, which is something I'm writing about right now. So, something that has a cinematic, experiential flavour to it, but is without the images, which is obviously a tricky thing to kind of manage. And yeah, I got in contact with various film critics, scholars that you will hear on this episode and I won't give away who they are. It will come up on the episode and I thank them very much at the end. And yeah, we're just gonna get into it, aren't we, Neil? And then you're gonna make some comments hopefully, and we'll have a discussion about it in more detail at the end.

Neil Fox [00:01:57] Yes, I think it's best to just get into the meat of the episode because I think it's really an extraordinary piece of work. So, congrats on that. And hopefully people will feel the same. So, at long last, this is the cinematic voice.

Dario Llinares [00:02:19] Ever since the movies began to talk, the cinematic voice has shaped our perception of the filmic world. Al Jolson in the Jazz Singer not only instigated a watershed moment, but his first utterance would turn out to be prophetic.

The Jazz Singer (1928) [00:02:33] Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothing yet.

Dario Llinares [00:02:40] We certainly hadn't. In the era of silent pictures, often considered the purest form of visual storytelling, the voice is a kind of absent presence. Its materiality not sounded but alluded to through the exaggerations of actors mute mouthing and the functional necessity of intertitles. If sound transformed or perhaps more accurately, re-created cinema, the possibility of enunciation of sounded thought, aligned the medium with the experience of human consciousness.

Blackmail (1929) [00:03:26] A good clean honest whack over the head with a brick is one thing. There's something British about that. But knives? No, knives is not right. I must say that's what I think and that's what I feel.

Dario Llinares [00:03:28] Not only that, the sounded voice expanded the audio-visual toolbox. Most obviously the synchronization of voiced dialogue to the embodied figure produced a sudden efficiency. That of informational exposition and individual characterisation. And in turn, hearing the image speak highlighted the essential 'lack' of the silence or mute film. Paradoxically, the synchronisation of image and sound is one of modern cinema's essential illusions. The voice does not come from the mouth of the character, but from the audio equipment in the auditorium, from your television speakers or your laptop. It is part of the dispositif: The configuration of space and technological apparatus that creates the cinematic experience. Such an acknowledgment underpins Rick Altman's often quoted assertion that sound cinema is a form of ventriloquism.

Dead of Night (1945) [00:04:23] I knew you'd come back. - Not for long my boy, not for long. You're going to stop in jail for years and years and years and years. That wouldn't suit me. - But you'll tell them the truth, you'll tell them it wasn't my fault. What sort of dummy do think I am. You shot him, didn't you? - Yes. But that was in self-defense. He was trying to rob me. - Tell that to the judge. Poor Sylvester, such a charming fellow.

Dario Llinares [00:04:57] Talking pictures soon became ingrained as the norm and audiences became attuned to a seamless synchronization. The synchronization of voice to the physical body of the speaker, usually to enunciate dialogue, has created a Voco- centrism. In his 1990 book, The Voice in Cinema, Michel Chion, perhaps the foremost theorist on the role of sound in cinema, suggests that the voice is not the same as all other sounds. Quote, "The presence of the human voice structures, the sonic spaces that contain it".

To have and Have Not (1944) [00:05:32] You know, you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle don't ya Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.

Dario Llinares [00:05:56] It is in our nature to search for the human voice above everything else. Along with conveying vocal information, another key element of the voice is to materialise a character. An actor's performance of the dialogue is perhaps the most obvious way we might define a cinematic voice.

The Trial (1962) [00:06:16] Some commentators have pointed out that a man came to the door of his own free will. - And we're supposed to swallow all that. It's all true? We needn't accept everything as true. Only what's necessary.

Dario Llinares [00:06:30] Yet Barthes notion of the "grain of the voice" is as much a part of the DNA of a star's aura as anything we might be drawn to visually. A performance of dialogue is not to be burned into cinematic iconography through the mere contents of words. It is the signature aural resonance that gives the linguistic basis its life. We must therefore appreciate the interplay between the acoustics of the voice, the very timing and structure of delivery and the words spoken. But Chion makes a distinction between the voice and speech, the articulation of the scripted information. And for that matter, from the soundtrack as a whole. Quote: "In every audio mix, the human voice instantly sets up a hierarchy of perception".

Dirty Harry (1972) [00:07:17] I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being this a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off. You've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?

Dario Llinares [00:07:37] In this scene from Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood's gravelly rasp is also calm and precise. The carnage surrounding the failed robbery signified by the ear- piercing alarm is counterpoint to Eastwood's supercool tone. Yet even in this scene, with a cacophony of sounds, the voco-centrism is clear. When the voice is disembodied, however, we experience an even more profound sense of its power.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [00:08:06] Hello, HAL do you read me? Hello, HAL do you read me? Do you read me HAL? - Affirmative Dave, I read you. - Open the pod bay doors HAL. - I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. - What's the problem? - I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. - What are you talking about? - This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardise it. - I don't know what you're talking about HAL. - I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen. - Where the hell do you get that idea HAL? - Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.

Dario Llinares [00:09:13] Acousmetré, as the unseen or as yet to be embodied voice, is everywhere in cinema, bestowing on the filmmaker a range of sonic movements inside and outside the image, a space of tension and uncertainty which the audio-viewer has to negotiate.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [00:09:29] I'll go in through the emergency airlock. - Without your space helmet Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.

Dario Llinares [00:09:39] For Chion, Acousmetré asserts ubiquity, panopticonism, omniscience and omnipotence.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [00:09:46] This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

Dario Llinares [00:09:51] In this episode of the Cinematologists Podcast, we will explore the complexities of the cinematic voice. We take Chion's lead in addressing the cinematic voice as a phenomenon in its own right, analysing its use and effect as a sonic presence attached to images in complex ways. We will address the relationship between the materiality of the voice and the politics of who gets to speak, how, and who listens. As Tom Walker and Sarah Wright remind us, if the voice may seem ineffable it is because it lends itself to a bewildering array of functions and metaphors. With contributions from leading film scholars. I invite you to an exploration of the voice as performance, as stardom, as articulation, as identity, as memory, as poetry, as horror, as power, and ultimately, as an essential component of the cinematic experience. Our first contribution is from screenwriter Clive Frayne. Using the vocal performance of Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night, from 1967, Frayne explores how the actor's voice enacts a sonic dance between script and performance.

In the Heat of the Night (1967) [00:11:03] Got a name boy? - Virgil Tibbs. - Virgil? Well, I don't think we're going to have any trouble are we Virgil? - No trouble at all.

Clive Frayne [00:11:21] A scene from In the Heat of the Night, the 1967 film, and it's a scene largely between the two main characters. Virgil Tibbs played by Sidney Poitier, and Sheriff Gillespie, played by Rod Steiger.

In the Heat of the Night (1967) [00:11:39] What you hit him with? - Hit whom. Whom? Whom? What are you, you a northern boy? What's a northern boy like you known all the way down here? I was waiting for the train. Not now, there ain't no trains this o'mornin. - Tuesday's only, 4:05 to Memphis. - You say? All right. You say right.

Clive Frayne [00:12:06] And these are both incredible actors. But the scene that really characterizes the scene more than anything else are the vocal performances because this is not a scene where there is very much going on in terms of the actual physicality of the scene.

In the Heat of the Night (1967) [00:12:23] I try to run a nice, clean, safe town here. Town where a man can sneeze and not get his brains beat out. You follow me. - Yes. - Why don't you tell me how you killed Mr. Colbert. I promise you, you gonna feel a whole lot better.

Clive Frayne [00:12:41] All of the dramatic meaning and all of the context within this scene, all the power of this scene, comes from the vocal performances.

In the Heat of the Night (1967) [00:12:49] I was visiting my mother. I came in on the 12:35 from Brownsville. I was waiting to go out on the 4:05.

Clive Frayne [00:13:01] And the thing that runs all the way through this is just the repressed rage coming from both characters. They are both having to civilise and temper what they're really thinking, but their genuine frustrations and angers come out of every single line.

In the Heat of the Night (1967) [00:13:27] ...and meanwhile just killed yourself a white man, just about the most important white man we got around here and picked yourself up a couple hundred dollars. - I earned that money ten hours a day, seven days a week. - Coloured can't earn that kind of money boy, hell, it's more than I make in a month. Now, where did you earn it? - Philadelphia. - Mississippi? - Pennsylvania. - And just what do you do in that little old Pennsylvania to earn that kind of money? - I'm a police officer.

Clive Frayne [00:13:47] Behind the actual vocal performances behind these voices and these characters. There is another important voice and it's a voice that I tend to hear. And I think that this clip for me exemplifies the use of that voice in a sophisticated and powerful, dramatic manner. And that is the voice of the screenwriter. Now, I am a screenwriter who writes about screenwriting and who teaches screenwriting. But before that, I worked in radio. So, my introduction to writing for actors was really writing for and paying attention to the voice. What I hear when I listen to this clip is the work of a screenwriter who really understands the relationship between how a character is revealed to an audience through not just what they say. So, it's not about what they think or what they believe or what that particular situation is, but more importantly, through the way that they use language.

In the Heat of the Night (1967) [00:15:04] Wood. - Yes? - Did you question this before you brought him in? - No sir. - Would you mind taking a look at that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. While I check on this wide-eyed city boy from Philadelphia. You can take him outside and hold him. - Yes sir. - May I suggest that you call my chief rather than send a wire or anything? I mean, it would be quicker, and I'll pay for the call. - Do you hear? Do you hear him say he'll to pay for the call? How much do they pay you to do their police work? - One hundred and sixty-two dollars and thirty-nine cents per week. - One hundred and sixty-two dollars and thirty-nine cents a week. Well, boy. Take him outside Wood but treat him easy. Because a man that makes one hundred and sixty-two dollars and thirty-nine cents a week. Man, we do not want to ruffle him. - No, sir.

Clive Frayne [00:16:09] And this becomes an actual point of contention that encapsulates the entire film. This use of language. Virgil Tibbs, who is portrayed and written as an educated, sophisticated northern American black man who has a particular social status. And this is an unexpected and unusual experience for Rod Steiger. That's not something that he is used to in terms of living in a racist environment where he has particular expectations about what a black person can earn or how they speak or how they're educated. And that is immediately confronted by the use of the language of Virgil tips. And to me, there are three or four moments in this clip where you can hear how the use of vocabulary and syntax and just the way in which the words were put onto the page by the screenwriter are conveying so much of the story. Now, when you combine that level of written sophistication, the voice of the screenwriter through the characters, the voice of the characters through the syntax and vocabulary and the way in which they use language, not just the things that they say. And then you add on top of that the vocal performances, where actors who have understood these characters, have understood the context of the conversation they're having. What you get is, for me, one of the most dramatically powerful scenes in cinema.

In the Heat of the Night (1967) [00:17:51] You can't be serious. I mean, even if I could be of some help, they wouldn't want it. No, sir, I'm not prejudiced. Yes, sir. I am a police officer and they're police officers. - Hello, this is Gillespie. Yes. Yes. Well. You don't say. He's your number one homicide expert. Well, my my my. I don't think we need any help though. No, I think we can wrap this thing up ourselves. Yes sir. But I do want to thank you for offering me such a powerful piece of manpower as Virgil Tibbs.

Clive Frayne [00:18:31] And all of it. Every single moment of it is entirely related to the way in which the voice of the screenwriter is expressed through the way in which the characters are written. The voice of the characters. And then brought up to another level by the sophistication of the vocal performances of two of the greatest actors who have ever lived.

In the Heat of the Night (1967) [00:18:57] Maybe you would mind taking a look at this one? No, thanks. - Why not, expert? - Because I've got a train to catch. - Wait a minute, that train leaves at 12:00 o'clock, noon. Look, they pay you a sixty-two thousand thirty-nine cents a week to look at bodies. Why can't you look at this one? - Why can't you look at it for yourself? - Because I'm not an expert, officer.

Dario Llinares [00:19:19] In the post-silent era, the voices main function is arguably that of exposition. Whether it's a purely narrative function, a contextualisation of theme or relay of emotion, it asserts meaning which, at its best, augments the visual image or perhaps, at worst, makes up for the paucity of visual storytelling. In this context, it is the clarity of voice, diction, structure and delivery that would seem quintessential components. Yet in this next section, academic Neil Fox extolls the virtues of Joaquin Phoenix as just the latest in a lineage of cinema's mumblers.

Neil Fox [00:19:56] In Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice from 2014, the writer- director is reunited with actor Joaquin Phoenix following their work on The Master in 2012. Inherent Vice is an adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel and is ostensibly a story that follows familiar patterns of the Noir and Pulp genres, where information and clarity of plot logistics are traditionally considered a vital part of the story mechanics. However, as the film's protagonist, Private Eye Doc Sportello, Phoenix decides to ignore the imperative of clarity for the most part, instead delivering a vocal performance that it would be kind to call mumbling.

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:20:35] Is that you Shasta? - Thinks he's hallucinating. - No, just the new package I guess.

Neil Fox [00:20:47] On the podcast dedicated to Inherent Vice, beautifully named Increment Vice, tracking as it does one scene per episode, a frequent topic is the irony of Phoenix's character, both here and in Lynne Ramsey's sublime You Were Never Really Here from 2018. That central irony is that these are stories where information would seem to be paramount, yet the voice at the centre of those stories that is responsible for such information consists mainly of utterances that are so routinely lost to the wind thanks to their delivery.

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:21:21] Some urr, money situation?

Neil Fox [00:21:25] But what is the result of being denied vital direct information in this way? What experience can be had when the simple need to know what's happened is denied us, at least verbally? It's not a flaw or an accident that we often don't know what Doc Sportello was saying vocally.

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:21:39] To make off with hubby's fortune. I think I've heard that happening once or twice. And you want me to do, uh, what exactly?

Neil Fox [00:21:50] Though, to be honest, it's always audible. It just requires a deeper listening. A different frequency tuning.

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:21:57] They think I'm the one who can reach him when he's vulnerable? As much as he ever gets. - Bare-ass and asleep? - Knew you'd understand?

Neil Fox [00:22:07] Paul Thomas Anderson knows what he's doing because he knows cinema and screen acting so intrinsically. He knows that the engaged viewer, when denied information vocally, will seek the knowledge elsewhere in the frame. Elsewhere in the moment. We are being directed to observe moment, movement, gesture, to consider the pieces and make our own whole.

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:22:27] Are you still trying to figure out if it's right or wrong Shasta?

Neil Fox [00:22:28] Phoenix as an actor is part of a lineage connected to the infamous Method School of Acting. One that includes the likes of James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day-Lewis, and most famously, Marlon Brando, who made mumbling an art form.

The Godfather (1972) [00:22:44] You look terrible, I want you to eat. I want you to rest well and a month from now this Hollywood big shot's gonna give you what you want. - It's too late. They start shooting in a week. - I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.

Neil Fox [00:22:57] Whatever the flaws and foibles of that method, one of the most vital and interesting interventions it made on screen acting was the refusal to make the dialogue word sacrosanct and instead to work from an emotional place where meaning and information was conveyed in movement, gesture and in the moments between and around characters. Method actors make it harder for audiences but in the best cases, it's worth the work. In Inherent Vice, we're being invited to lean-in to hear and simultaneously not rely on our ears, but our eyes. Oh, the irony. But so much modern perceived wisdom about screenwriting is that it is merely dialogue writing, whereas dialogue should be a tool, a layer in the cinematic writer's arsenal. There is also a worrying contemporary trend for everything to be spelled out, not just plot, but motivation and morality and is seen as dialogue's job to do this in the main. What happens in Inherent Vice? Is that by denying is this poisonous need? The film is asking us to see and think cinematically to pay attention. The film is very clear in terms of plot and has a plethora of beautiful, emotional resonances that are accessible to the keen viewer. But it isn't handed to you on a plate. Here the voice forces you to watch. not hear.

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:24:10] She's gone? She disappeared or what? - She went out groovy on us. - You know. Bigfoot man. Can we just try to be fucking professional and just just pretend to be professional? - Shasta Fey. Airport. She's gone. - Fuck you.

Neil Fox [00:24:29] Doc Sportello spends his time looking, watching, searching. He's trying to find people and he's also trying to find some answers, some closure and maybe some hope in himself. He is whip-smart and uses his voice shrewdly. He can enunciate and sometimes does very clearly, but he often uses mumbling as a defense to pretend he's not as smart as he is and to remain non-committal. Sometimes he is silent. Sometimes he admits sounds of curiosity, of empathy, or, again, defense. When his defensive of silence is breached, he obliges the moment with sounds, if not coherent language. I'm reminded when thinking of all of this by the mumbling in Warren Beatty's underappreciated Dick Tracy from 1990 and the character of mumbles played by one of cinema's most famous mumblers, Dustin Hoffman. There's a wonderful scene where Mumbles thinks his mumbling has uncovered only for Beatty's Dick Tracy to play back the audio of their conversation slowed right down. And mumbles cocky hiding of the truth in mumbled sight is exposed.

Dick Tracy (1990) [00:25:27] What do you think mumbles? Big boy did it. Big boy did it. Big boy did it. Big boy did it. Big boy did it. Big boy did it.

Neil Fox [00:25:42] Doc Sportello would never be so dumb. In inherent vice the information is often elsewhere in other characters and in the numerous kinetic interactions between characters. We have to lean-in to hear Doc, but what he says and how he says it always speaks volumes. This leaning-in means we end up on a different frequency, one that we are surging on by the time Doc catches up with Owen Wilson's Coy Harlingen just out of earshot of the film's baddies, the Golden Fang in a fog-shrouded alleyway and the pair whisper in deeply hushed tones.

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:26:13] You working for these people here at the club? - I don't know. Maybe. It's where I pick up my pay cheque. - Where are you staying? - House in Topanga Canyon Band I used to play for, The Boards. None of them know it's me. - How can they not know it's you? Even when I was alive, they didn't know it was me. The sax player. The session guy. Plus, over the years, there's been a big turnover in personnel. Like, The Boards I played with. Most of them have gone off and formed other bands. Only one or two of the old crew left, and luckily, they're suffering from heavy dopers memory.

Neil Fox [00:26:47] The film plays on Wilson's trademark whisper here. And you're either on the frequency at that point or you aren't. The pair's interactions get quieter, quieter as the story progresses until the joyful moment that they meet by chance. And Wilson's Harlingen simply mouths the phrase "What the fuck" to a this time, genuinely bewildered Doc. At one point during one of their conversations Harlingen says to Doc that people:

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:27:10] People just want to hear another voice, like one outside their own head.

Neil Fox [00:27:15] Which brings us to the character of Sortilège. In Pynchon’s novel there's no doubt that her character is real. In Anderson's adaptation, all bets are off. Playing the role of a narrator who may or may not be real Sortilège, as delicately portrayed by musician Joanna Newsom, is Doc's voice, his brain, his mind and his soul. And when she speaks, she speaks with clarity. So, any chance that we can't hear what Doc is saying falls away because we can. It's just again, we have to listen and see differently.

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:27:45] Doc ran through all the things he hadn't asked Shasta, like how much she'd come to depend on Wolfman's guaranteed level of ease and power, and least askable of all, how passionately did she really feel about old Mickey?

Neil Fox [00:28:01] At the end of the film? When Doc's ex, Shasta Fey, talks to him about Sortilège, she says:

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:28:06] She knows things Doc, maybe about us that we don't know.

Neil Fox [00:28:13] ...and we can trace what Sortilège knows to those moments when Doc is foggy or working through something he can't articulate because it's complicated. Or when he's emotionally clouded. And Sortilège is there to set the record straight for us.

Inherent Vice (2014) [00:28:27] Doc could never figure out what Shasta might have seen in him, besides being just about the only doper she knew who didn't use heroin, freeing up a lot of time for both of them. And it wasn't any clearer about what had driven them apart either. They each gradually located a different karmic thermal, watching the other glide away into different fates. Does it ever end? Of course it does. It did.

Neil Fox [00:28:56] It's a risky adaptation choice, but one that is pulled off beautifully and one that alongside all the other techniques and devices used by Anderson and Phoenix in concert, allows Doc on screen to speak in fragments, to stutter, to utter these discombobulated sentences, to say in a final chilling head to head showdown: "if you jive with me, I say to you ch ch", and for us to know exactly what he means.

Dario Llinares [00:29:32] Inherent Vice features one of the key devices of cinema's grammar available to filmmakers. The voiceover. Voiceovers are often maligned as a kind of cop-out, a shorthand for explaining the psyche of a character, simply providing information or helping to drive plot exposition. Think of Harrison Ford's overbearing explanation of the world of Blade Runner in its original theatrical release. Voiceover at its worse can be the epitome of the anti cinematic reversal of telling, not showing. However, Sarah Koslov, in her book Invisible Storytellers, rejects such criticisms, arguing that voiceover creates a fascinating dance between pose and actuality. Word and image. Narration and drama. Voice and "voice". One of the most recognizable voiceover actors and films of recent years is Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption. Freeman's laid back, thick, treacle-like sound has accompanied penguins in the Arctic, a struggling female boxer and her grizzled coach and the Chaurcerian psychopath. In Shawshank, his voiceover in the Mozart scene almost becomes a commentary on the symphony between voice and image in cinema.

The Shawshank Redemption (1995) [00:30:49] Andy? Andy? - I have no idea. To this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapping to our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away. And for the briefest of moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.

Dario Llinares [00:31:39] The interplay between silence and music, spoken voice and singing voice, is nowhere more essential than in the cinema of Jim Jarmusch. Academic Laura Tunbridge explores this in Only Lovers Left Alive. A film which utilizes the immaculate precision of the star voices, yet also how they exude dark desire, troubled memories and the pain of loss.

Laura Tunbridge [00:32:08] In only lovers left alive, connections between voice loss and music are made on many different levels. The two main characters, Adam and Eve, are vampires who at the start are living apart. He in Detroit. She and Tangier. They're played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. Visually cool and near taciturn. There are many scenes in which they do not speak. When they do, their voices have a characteristic crispness.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) [00:32:35] What about Mary? What was Mary Wollstonecraft like? Come on tell me, what was she like? - She was delicious. She was.

Laura Tunbridge [00:32:50] These beautiful creatures, and more than that, their voices are as precious as the objects they covet.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) [00:32:57] Checkmate. My darling. - Eve, you're ruthless, you're brutal.

Laura Tunbridge [00:33:04] Communication is difficult for Adam, a reclusive musician who it emerges has released a vast amount of music over the centuries. Much of it passed off as someone else's, and none of which seems to have words. The problem of authorship is a running theme in the film. Another vampire living in Tangier who provides Eve with "the good stuff" uncontaminated blood is Christopher Marlowe, played by John Hurt. Whose voice is also instantly recognisable. He reveals that his death was faked so that he could continue writing for the idiot Shakespeare.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) [00:33:43] How is the fabulous Christopher Marlowe tonight? - I've told you a thousand times never call me that name in public. - You nut case. I can keep a secret. You should know that. But I ask you, the most outrageously delicious literary scandal in history? - Dear Eve, that was four centuries ago. - You've been wearing that waistcoat for four centuries. - I was given this in 1586 and it's one of my favourite garments.

Laura Tunbridge [00:34:17] Singing voices are very rare in this film though. They're only really heard on recordings of rock and roll. The musician's long gone, remembered fondly by Adam and Eve. That is until near the end when the two vampires find themselves wondering Tangier grieving the loss of Christopher Marlowe and hungry for blood. Eve leaves Adam propped against a wall, gives him his shades and tells him…

Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) [00:34:50] Stay here, OK. And I'm gonna go around the corner just for a minute. No funny business.

Laura Tunbridge [00:35:02] "No funny business". As soon as she's gone, though, his attention is caught by music coming from a bar around the corner. He walks towards it and standing in the doorway like the audience inside is transfixed in any other vampire movie. It would be the warm body of the singer that attracts him. But here it is her voice.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) [00:35:20] Hal (Yasmine Hamdan)

Laura Tunbridge [00:35:47] The exoticism and eroticism of Yasmine's performance within this thoroughly Anglophone film is blatant. But I'm more interested in the irony of Adam's response. He hopes that she won't become very famous, as Eve predicts, because he thinks "she's way too good for that". Much as in the same way his own music is too good for him to bother with the record industry. Of course, the real-life Yasmine is already famous in an underground kind of way. The same kind of celebrity that Hiddleston was back in 2013, and Swinton still more or less manages to be. There are other kinds of loss that can be heard in the responses to Yasmine's performance then. The loss of their own self in light of their fame within the fiction of the film and in the real-world and the loss of the heart bloodedness that marks Yasmine's voice and body. The two vampires may be the only lovers left alive. But it’s their love that keeps them alive? Expressed through silent embraces and a love for musical voices as elusive and transient as they are emotive.

Dario Llinares [00:37:10] Tunbridge points to the voice as quintessential in the process of 'othering'. This most obviously occurs at the level of language. The hegemony of Western specifically American cinema perhaps more than anything, defines English as the default cinematic idiom. Bong Joon Ho's acceptance speech for Parasite at the Golden Globes, pointed towards the reticence of mainstream audiences towards subtitles.

Bong Joon Ho [00:37:43] Speaks Korean.

Translator [00:37:44] Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.

Dario [00:37:52] But perhaps it is not the subtitles that need to be overcome by English speaking audiences. It is the 'otherness' of the non-English speaking voice. As Whitaker and Wright remind us, in both their translation and their performance, the dubbed voice and the subtitled foreign language voice (foreign being a problematic term) "vividly alerts us to the instability of meaning and the materiality of sound". The interrelationship of the material voice as a sounding of identity and the politics of who gets to speak is central to voicing both as a social practice and a political act. Voice as a signifier of race complicates the layering of individuality, social grouping, and cultural expression. In White Men Can't Jump Rosie Perez, Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson debate the vital question: can white people hear Jimi?

White Men Can't Jump (1992) [00:38:50] Hey, what is this? - Jimi Hendrix. - I know who it is but why you playing Jimi? - Well, because I like to listen. - Oh you like to listen? That's what the fucking problem is, y'all listen. - Well - what am I supposed to eat it? Haha, no, no, no. You're supposed to hear it. - Hey, I just said I like to listen to it. - No, no, no. There's a difference between hearing and listening. Y'see white people y'all can't hear, Jimi. Ya ya listen. - What the fuck are you talking about? His drummer was white. - ohhhhhh. - Get the fuck outta here, Jimi Hendrix drummer was not white. – Yes, he did. Yo. Check it out. See. - This is a picture. - The whole damn band is white except for Jimi. - Man, This is bullshit. Jimi Hendrix did not have a white rhythm section. You can not hear Jimi.

Dario Llinares [00:39:40] In Julie Dash's amazing Daughters of the Dust the function of argot is key to the kinship of identity and its historical context. Living on an island off the coast of Georgia. Characters speak the dialect of Gullah, a Creolised amalgam of West African languages, and the colonising superstratum of English. Characters speak in the now but their voices call to a more spiritual realm. Oral histories, defining identity and experience are both poetic and violent resonating with the past in cries of resistance to generations of enslavement.

Daughters of the Dust (1991) [00:40:20] Eli. Eli. There's a thought. A recollection. Somethin’ somebody remembers. We carry these memories inside of we. Do you believe that those hundreds of hundreds of Africans right here on this other side will forget everything they once knew? We don't know where the recollection come from. Sometimes we dream em. But we carry these memories inside a we. - What we supposed to remember Nana? How we one time was able to protect those we love. How in Africa where we was kings and queens and built great big cities. - Eli, I'm trying to learn how to touch your own spirit. I'm fighting for my life and I'm fighting for yours. Look in my face. I'm trying to giya somthin to take along wit ya. Along with all your great big dreams?

Dario Llinares [00:41:22] In our next section, academic Catharine Wheatley introduces us to the mesmerizing and powerful voice of Félicité. In Alain Gomis' tale of a Senegalese mother, Felicity singing performances are simultaneously exhortations of joy and cries of anguish.

Félicité [00:41:40] My Heart is in the Highlands

Catherine Wheatley [00:41:46] Following a single mother through the slums of Kinshasa, Alain Gomis Félicité marries elements at the Dardenne Brothers Social Realism and Paolo Sorrentino's hedonistic surrealism to a hot and dusty African setting. An amateur choral interpretation of Arvo Pärt's neo-classical piece My Heart is in the Highlands, plays alongside the mashed up "Congotonics" of native outfit the Karzai All-Stars. The German poet Novalis' Hymns to the Night features on the soundtrack over dream images of Okapi. The eponymous protagonist was originally called Kapiya. Her parents renamed for the French word for joy after she recovered unexpectedly from childhood illness. But an aura of the uncanny clings to this woman who has risen from the dead. In the eyes of the community Félicité isn't quite right. She is too independent, too proud. She left her husband to raise her son alone and asserts his solitude fiercely, asking nothing from anyone. The film opens with a close up of Congolese singer turned actress Véro Tshanda Beya's face, its planes carved as if from stone, its eyes hooded and watchful. One character compares it to an armored car. At times, Félicité seems doped up, bovine. But in others, the calm surface ruptures and a torrent of rage pours forth when she sings. It's as if she is possessed.

Catherine Wheatley [00:43:39] In his 1994 book, “A Pitch of Philosophy”, the philosopher Stanley Cavell draws an equivalence between the genre of films that he calls the "melodrama of the unknown woman" and opera, the Western institution in which to Cavell's mind the "female voice is given its fullest acknowledgment" (p.15). In both melodrama and opera, he claims, "the woman's demand for a voice, for a language, for attention to and the power to enforce attention to her own subjectivity, is expressible as a response to an Emersonian demand for thinking." (p.220) In particular melodrama in opera both push at the limits of linguistic expression, revealing something about the powers and limitations of the human capacity to raise the voice. In opera singing is a kind of abandonment, "a spiritual achievement expressed as a willingness to depart from all settled habitation or conformity of meaning." (p.144) It embodies the Thoreau's idea that being beside oneself in a sane sense - in other words, ecstasy - is that which proves once humanity. Singing - women's singing - is to be understood as an ecstatic response: "an erupting of a new perspective of the self to itself." (p.145).

Catherine Wheatley [00:45:09] But if singing exposes women as thinking, it also exposes her to the powers of those who do not want her to think. Cavell cites Catharine Cléments' claim in her book, "Opera or the Undoing of Women" that opera and by extension melodrama is about the death of women and women's self-expression and the fact that women die, are driven mad, or ostracized because they express themselves. After all, as Adriana Cavarero reminds us, patriarchy tells us that "women should be seen and not heard" (p.117). For Cavarero, the woman who sings is always a siren, an outsider to the domestic order of daughter and wife. The female singing voice, she writes, cannot be domesticated: it disturbs the system of reason by leading elsewhere. This seems to me a perfect description of Félicité's voice.

Catherine Wheatley [00:46:17] It is both a lament for her injured son, for her social standing, and a celebration of her independence. Most of all, it is an assertion of herself. Felicity exists. Her refusal to be bowed or beaten by the corrupt patriarchal community that she inhabits expresses itself in these tremendous outpourings which are linguistically incomprehensible to most Western ears, but which in their emotional tenor cannot fail to make themselves understood. In the later stages of the film strange sonic overlaps, slow motion and double-exposed sequences also seep into the film. Félicité dreams of the wilderness and we see how wandering the empty scrublands and jungles barefoot at night or suspended underwater. This submerged image can't help but call to my mind similar shots of Beyoncé Knowles in "Lemonade". Another musical film that foregrounds the suffering and strength of black women. These are women who sing of their struggle, and in doing so use their voices to demand acknowledgement on their terms.

Dario Llinares [00:47:35] Of course, the singing voice is another quintessential facet of the cinematic. As we have heard from the very start with The Jazz Singer it forged an entirely new genre, the musical. One might argue that it is the voice that provides the essential connecting tissue between the spoken and the sung; the sonic corridor between the logic of realism and the transference to an exteriorised explosion of emotion: the musical number.

Mary Poppins (1964) [00:48:02] I Spoon Full of Sugar - Julie Andrews

Dario Llinares [00:48:27] The use of the song and the singing voice has so many other possibilities, however. Here, academic Ian Garwood breaks down the mechanics of Aimee Mann's Wise Up in a signature sequence from Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia.

Magnolia (1999) [00:48:50] Wise Up - Aimee Mann

Ian Garwood [00:48:56] About two-thirds of the way through its 3-hour running time, Paul Thomas Anderson's multi-strand narrative Magnolia, features a very unusual sequence. Aimee Mann's song Wise Up creeps onto the non-diegetic soundtrack, initiating a montage in which all the major characters sing along as a film momentarily adopts the conventions of the musical.

Ian Garwood [00:49:28] This gives the scene a standout quality, and what particularly interests me is the interplay between the voice of the professional singer Aimee Mann and those of the characters performed by the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore and Tom Cruise. The song begins and the characters find themselves singing along as if they have no other choice. This sets Aimee Mann up as a guide for the characters and a particularly intervening one at that. They sing along only because she prompts them to do so. There is a sense that the characters are being lifted out of their immediate situations and allowed to gain an understanding of their lives, which can be sustained only at the moment of their singing. They are all in fairly desperate straits and they can claim through the song to know that each needs to wise up. But the wisdom is only borrowed momentarily from the singer who is feeding them the words. After this sequence, each character plunges into the various crises that form the climax of the film, as if the lesson Mann has taught them has been forgotten.

Magnolia (1999) [00:50:30] Wise up - Aimee Mann

Ian Garwood [00:50:37] A particularly distinctive aspect is the way the characters' voices attempt a more and more accurate impersonation of Mann's as the sequence develops. Mann's voice exhibits a polish that is a sign of her professionalism as an experienced singer. Initially, by contrast, the characters' voices sound much less composed. The bodily grain in each voice or the mistakes with vocal phrasing register each character's lack of musical professionalism, but also a general absence of poise. Understandable considering their traumatised states. The distinction between the professional non-diagetic voice and the artless onscreen voices is most apparent in the singing of the first six characters. Claudia has to catch up with the words and melody after snorting a line of coke through its first phrases. Jim, the cop fails to complete his allocated line. Game show host and Claudia's father, Jimmy offers a brusk on synchronized reading of the lyrics. Down on his luck Donnie mumbles through his section. And when the singing moves from Phil the nurse to Earl the dying man, the discrepancy between onscreen vocal performance and offscreen voices reaches its high point. Earl forces out his line with a croaky whisper, just as Amy Mann's vocal is augmented by soothing backing harmonies.

Ian Garwood [00:52:08] However, in the final phase of the sequence, the professional voice of Aimee Mann and the relatively artless voices of the characters come much closer together. Earl's wife, Linda, performed by Julianne Moore, produces the purest rendition of the song, following the melody precisely with a vocal pitch similar to Mann's. Earl's son Frank, played by Tom Cruise, attacks a song with a clarity of purpose and a sense of timing not apparent in the earlier, more hesitant vocal performances.

Magnolia (1999) [00:52:39] Wise Up - Aimee Mann

Ian Garwood [00:53:14] The code of the song deflates the positive message of the title by suggesting we should just give up, rather than wise up. Mann's voice cracked slightly at this point as if to reinforce the lyrics pessimistic turn. In the sequence, this is covered by Stanley, the child quiz show prodigy. His young, high pitched voice approximates Mann's more closely than do the voices of the other male characters and he even matches Mann's faltering over "just give up" with a slightly off-key rendition of his own. The wise up sequence is undoubtedly highly stylized, but within this, the interaction between offscreen and onscreen voices undergoes a deliberate progression, an initial stage where the individual qualities of each character still fight for attention. Through voices that remain only partially possessed by the offscreen voice. By the end of the sequence, however, the characters' voices have become less individuated with the bum note from Stanley, an attempted replica of the one already performed by Mann.

Ian Garwood [00:54:21] Non-diegetic commentating voices in films are most often described as voice-overs, but this is an image-centric term. A voice is heard over what he's seen on the screen. The wise up sequence from Magnolia reminds us to also take into account the relationship between the non-diegetic voice and other sounds, including other voices. Considered this way Mann's singing acts as a voice-under providing a guide track for the onscreen characters that is reproduced by their voices only to varying degrees. More often than not, disembodied voices are heard alongside other sound-tracked elements, and it is as part of the overall sonic texture that the individual characteristics of a voice are felt.

Dario Llinares [00:55:06] Paul Thomas Anderson is playing with voice synchronization and the interplay between the diagetic and the non-diagetic use of sound as part of his directorial repertoire. Abbas Kiarostami has to be considered a master of the use of the disembodied offscreen voice. In the next section, academic Farhad Kazemi uses Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us to explore the possibilities of acousmetré, the unseen acoustical being. Acousmetré is different to voice-over narration because the acoustical being retains a presence in the timeframe and film universe, although it is one we cannot see.

Farshid Kazemi [00:55:51] The auditory world of Kiarostami's cinema is structured by the incessant mystery of the voice. The voice that seems to appear from somewhere outside the screen image, disembodied. A voice that seems to go beyond the organ of hearing and which in the cinema was baptized by Michel Chion as acousmetré or the acousmatic voice. The acousmatic voice is simply a voice with source or cause we cannot see. The cinematic soundscape of Kiarostami's films are suffused by such voices, which imbues them with the unique formal and aesthetic structure and adds a new dimension to the way the voice appears in the cinema. What interests me in Kiarostami's cinema is that we can witness in his films the tension between the gaze and voice, which is the principal axis around which the art of cinema revolves. Kiarostami himself seems to have been well aware of this as he states in the book "Lessons with Kiarostami". Quote: "the aesthetics of cinema are rooted in the separation of what we hear and what we see". In other words, the voice and gaze. In many of Kiarostami's films, it is in the opening sequence or near the opening of the film that we get the presence of acousmatic voices, which later may or may not be de-acousmatisd by settling on a specific.

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) [00:57:46] Dialogue in Farsi

Farshid Kazemi [00:57:46] Kiarostami raises to a new fever pitch his experiment with what is unseen in the screen image through the acousmatics of the voice, where both male and female characters remain invisible in the visual field. Their voices are only heard while their bodies remain offscreen and invisible throughout the film. In the opening sequence of the film, we get an establishing shot where we see a car in an extreme long shot, driving through a majestic rural landscape through a winding road among hills and meadows and we hear the offscreen voices of the film crew and Behzad while going to the village of Siah Dareh to shoot a documentary of the death of a hundred-year-old woman. On their way, they pick up a boy at whose home they will stay as guests and who is the only one whose voice is synced up to his body.

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) [00:58:43] Dialogue in Farsi

Farshid Kazemi [00:59:06] The scene continues in this manner for about seven minutes, where Kiarostami carefully withholds the image of Bezhad and his crew and the viewer can only hear their voices. Until we get to see Behzad speaking with the boy and his voice is finally de-acousmatised. The film crew are among 11 characters that remain invisible throughout the film. They are simply a voice. These voices are what Chion calls "complete acousmetré", or acousmatic being. The complete acousmatic being is one whose voice is never de-acousmatised throughout the film. Their voices never become anchored in a body attached to an aperture to the mouth and lips.

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) [00:59:55] Dialogue in Farsi.

Farshid Kazemi [01:00:22] The logic of the acousmatic voice operative in the film is not merely for aesthetic purposes since it relates to the themes that underly the film namely death, life, mortality and even immortality. The voice haunts the cinematic screen like a spectral presence, as though representing the separation of the soul from the body. This separation was the logic operative and the origins of the acousmatic voice itself where the Greek philosopher Pythagoras would only speak to his disciples from behind a curtain. As Mladen Dolar states in "A Voice and Nothing More" quote: "the point of this device was to separate the spirit from the body." The voice separated from the body represents the voice of the dead. In this sense, the acousmatic voices in the film gestures towards something inherently spectral about the voice.

Dario Llinares [01:01:52] Kiarostami's use of the offscreen voice is a repositioning of the audience using the possibilities of the disembodied voice. Another quintessential acousmatic device captures the alienation of mediated communication. The disembodied other often calling to a deep-seated anxiety that not seeing is not knowing. In Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men the hidden conspiracy lies behind the network of voices on the telephone.

All the President's Men (1976) [01:02:28] Yes. - This is Woodward. I want to talk about Watergate. - I'm not going to talk about that subject. - Well, we talked about Wallace. - But this is different. - That was about the shooting of a man running for president. - This is different. - How? - Not about this story? Don't call me again.

Dario Llinares [01:02:55] In the digital era, we are increasingly talking to machines, not just through them. In Spike Jonze's Her an A.I. operating system with a conscious personality voiced by Scarlett Johansson becomes the object of a lonely young man's obsession.

Her (2014) [01:03:16] Hello. I'm here. - Oh. Hi. - Hi. How you doing? - I'm well. How's everything with you? - Pretty good, actually. It's really nice to meet you. - It's nice to meet you, too. - Oh, well, what do I call you. Do you have a name? - Yes, Samantha. - They, where did you get that name from? - I gave to myself, actually. - How come? - Because I like the sound of it. Samantha. - Like, when did you give it yourself? - Well, right, when you asked me if I had a name, I thought, yeah, he's right, I do need a name, but I wanted to pick a good one. So, I read a book called How to Name Your Baby and it had 180000 names that's the one I like the best. - Wait, you read a whole book in the second that I asked what your name was. - In two one-hundredths of a second, actually. - Wow.

Dario Llinares [01:04:20] Interestingly, Scarlett Johansson replaced another actress, Samantha Morton, for this role, a move which begs the question if a star voice is so well known. Can he ever really be disembodied? In animation, recognisable voices of disembodied and subsequently re-attached to an avatar. Sometimes the voice fits the visual animations so perfectly it's as though the character was created just for that sound.

Toy Story (1995) [01:04:49] Hello, arrr, wow, he hey, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Did I frighten you? Didn't mean to. Sorry. Howdy. My name is Woody and this is Andy's room. That's all I wanted to say. And also, there has been a bit of a mix-up. This is my spot. See the bed here? - Local law enforcement. It's about time you got here. I'm Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger, Universe Protection Unit. My ship has crash-landed here by mistake.

Puss in Boots (2011) [01:05:14] And what can I say? It was a bad kitty, hmhmhmhm, Baby.

Frozen (2013) [01:05:21] Let it go. Let it go. Can't hold it back anymore. Let it go. Let it go. Turn away and slam the door.

Dario Llinares [01:05:41] Often in the animation process, the image is created after the voiceovers are recorded. Therefore, animation could be deemed to reverse the assumed hierarchy of image over sound. These voices that drive the image are what Vivian Sobchak has called the possibility of "seeing ourselves hear." In this next section, academic Jennifer O'Meara looks at Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa as an example of the psychological complexities possible when the voice shapes the animated image.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:06:14] The voice I've chosen is that of Lisa in Anomalisa as performed by Jennifer Jason Leigh. This stop-motion animation was written and co- directed by Charlie Kaufman and it used 3-D printing to allow for very human-like puppets. The film combine's this with the high concept approach to the puppet's voices. Only two characters in the film have individual voices. The protagonist, Michael, played by David Thewlis and Leigh as Lisa. All other voices are supplied by Tom Noonan, a premise used to gradually signal that Michael perceives everyone as the same person.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:06:50] Let me get the waitress's attention. Excuse me. Excuse me. Busier than I would have thought. - Hi. Do you know you want? - Um what are you having, Michael? - Belvedere Martini with a twist. - Same old Michael. I'll have one of those. - Make it two. - Back in a minute.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:07:16] Within this setup, the voice of Lisa becomes central. It's the individuality of her so-called miraculous voice that attracts Michael to her, and which the film uses to signal his inability to otherwise hear a range of voices.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:07:30] Your voice is like. Magic. - Oh, really? Wow. Well, you know, I have been doing phone work for a really long time now, so I pride myself on sounding pleasant and professional and having a pleasing phone voice and manner.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:07:54] Like in Spike Jonze's film Her, we hear the female voice from the perspective of the central male character, and Michael engages in a kind of fetishization of Lisa's voice. This leads to a key scene in which Lisa's persuaded to sing when they go back to Michael's hotel room after a night of drinks.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:08:13] Do you sing? - What? No. No. God, you're weird. I mean, I think everybody sings. I just don't sing well. I sometimes sing along with the radio. I love Cyndi Lauper.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:08:29] The performance is both humorous and profound. And it's used to signal her ontological status as somehow more human and more soulful than all the other characters in the film.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:08:40] Would you sing one of her songs? - No. - Come on, it would make me so happy to hear you sing. - You're being weird. - Please.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:08:51] I want to talk about this clip in terms of what it signals about the fetishization of Lisa's voice more broadly. Lisa's trajectory and worth emerges not from who she is, but from how she sounds.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:09:02] OK, crazy man. Just a little. OK. Here goes. Don't laugh at me. You come home in the morning light, my mother says, when you go live your life, right? Oh, mother dear, we're not the fortunate ones and girls, just wanna have fun. Oh, girls just wanna have fun.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:09:41] Michael's attraction to her based singularly on the qualities of her voice, in this case that she sounds different to everyone else rather than from what she says or from her personality.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:09:50] I wanna be the one to walk in the sun. And girls, they wanna have fun.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:09:59] For Michael, the singing performance serves as a kind of foreplay. For the shy Lisa, the song serves to stall them from other physical acts, ones she's not yet ready.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:10:11] When the workin' day is done. Oh, girls, they wanna have fun. Oh, girls just wanna have fun. That's beautif... - girls they want, wanna have fun girls.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:10:34] At various points in the film, Michael urges her to keep talking, about anything. Not because he's interested in the content, but because her voice provides him with a sense of relief and satisfaction. In the clip, Michael persuades her to sing, despite her clear discomfort, doing so.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:10:50] Happy? - It was so beautiful. - Now it was... Oh, my God, are those tears? - It was beautiful. - It's such a great song. "I want to be the one who walks in the sun" that describes so perfectly who I want to be.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:11:08] Lisa will go on to sing for Michael a second time. Lying with her eyes closed, she recites lines from an Italian translation of Girls Just want to Have Fun. Michael gazes intensely at Lisa's mouth and we also hear him exhale heavily as he listens to her singing.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:11:23] It's called: “Le ragazze volino malio”. Do you want to hear it? - Please. - Returno tarde la martina, mia madre ti che, quando impare rai mai. Oh madre mia no sea fortuneti. Le regazze volino malio. Le regazze volio malio.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:11:57] As in other scenes, there's an uncomfortable sense of her voice being fetishized and never more so than when Michael momentarily gasps in wonder and potentially arousal tellingly after they've slept together, Michael becomes disinterested in Lisa, and in the process, she begins to sound like everyone else. At this point, Leigh's voice begins to merge and be replaced with that of Tom Noonan.

Anomalisa (2016) [01:12:22] Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry. Darling. - It's OK. I'm anxious about my speech, I suppose. - Of course, well we'll have fun after, we don't have to go to the zoo. We can just hang out here. I have the whole weekend till I have to get back to work. - That's great. - I'm so happy, Michael. I waited for someone like you my whole life. - I've waited too.

Jennifer O'Meara [01:12:54] There are several reasons why Anomalisa is a good example of the importance of the voice in cinema. For one thing, Lisa's voice is central to understanding Michael's identity crisis in the film. It's only by hearing Leigh's voice as Lisa that audiences can fully grasp how Michael experiences the world around him. In this sense, these voice signals how cinematic use of the voice is one that's relational. It's a voice that gains its meaning, not from its inherent qualities, but from how it fits with the film's broader narrative and formal style. Though Leigh does provide an expressive and nuanced vocal performance, even if she hadn't, her voice would still serve its main purpose of being the only woman's voice in the film, something that allows it to stand out from the voice that the other female characters that are all performed by a man, Tom Noonan. Anomalisa also takes advantage of its animated format. With animation, we're used to not seeing the bodies of the actors who provide the voices. If we could see Noonan performing all of the other characters in the film, then its premise would become too obvious. As it stands, it seems to take most audience members at least a few minutes, and often much longer, to work out that everyone except for Michael and Lisa sound the same.

Dario Llinares [01:14:26] This notion of voice animating image is not only the case in animation, however. There are voices created for characters which provoke not just emotion but affect, a sonic materiality that is so strong it seems that the visual image is built on top of the voice in order to create the character.

Star Wars (1977) [01:14:45] Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force. - Don't try to frighten with your source sorcerer's ways Lord Vader.

Dario Llinares [01:14:57] The mechanically amplified base of James Earl Jones, combined with the harsh mechanical breathing, creates one of the defining cinematic voices.

Star Wars (1977) [01:15:15] I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Dario Llinares [01:15:18] What might the voice sound like that is both embodied and disembodied at the same time? Such a voice may occupy that liminal space between life and death, and thus evoke an otherness akin to fear. Here is film critic Mark Kermode on a voice that is as unique as it is terrifying.

The Exorcist (1973) [01:15:43] And how do you go about getting an exorcism? - Beg your pardon?

Mark Kermode [01:15:58] Hi, this is Mark Kermode. I just want to say a few things about Mercedes McCambridge dubbing the voice of the demon in The Exorcist. As you may know, during the course of The Exorcist, a young girl played by Linda Blair, Reagan, in the film becomes possessed by a demon and her face and characteristics change. But one of the most profound changes is her voice. And when they were making the film originally, William Friedkin got a whole bunch of people in, to kind of experiment with trying to electronically alter Linda Blair's voice to make it into the voice of the Demon. And the experiments didn't work. They just sounded like electronically altered voices, slowed down voices. And Friedkin said that what happened was he was trying to imagine a voice of the Demon. He said he needed a voice that was not male, but not female. That was both male and female, because the Demon is definitely male and Reagan is definitely female. And I'm quoting him directly, he said, "who sounds like that? Who is ever sounded like that?" And then he said, and then this name popped into my head, Mercedes McCambridge, who he considered to be the greatest voice actor of her time. She, of course, worked with Orson Welles in radio and had this extraordinary reputation. And so, he got in touch with McCambridge and said, look, can you do it? Now, there are some differences between McCambridge's version of the story and Friedkin's version of the story. But essentially what happened was McCambridge said, yes, I can do it, but it's going to require physical restraint and to some extent, I'm going to have to abuse myself to do it. So she smoked a lot. She swallowed and regurgitated pulpy apples. She swallowed raw eggs. I think she used alcohol. She at one point got the production to tie her to a chair so that she could rage as if she was the demon bound in torment. And she produced this extraordinary vocal performance.

The Exorcist (1973) [01:17:55] Hello, Reagan. I'm a friend of your mother's. I'd like to help you. - You loosen these straps now - I'm afraid you might hurt yourself, Reagan. - I'm not Reagan. - I see. Well, then let's introduce ourselves. I'm Damien Karras. - And I'm the Devil, now kindly undo these straps. If you're the devil why not make the straps disappear. - That's much too vulgar a display of power Karras. - Where is Reagan? - In here with us?

Mark Kermode [01:18:39] Friedkin says that you would listen back to it and you would hear double, triple, even quadruple sounds coming out of her larynx. And I think that what her performance does is it really lends a proper voice and, sounds like a strange thing, and soul to the personification of the Demon in The Exorcist.

The Exorcist (1973) [01:19:02] What an excellent day for an exorcism. - You'd like that. - Intensely. - But wouldn't that drive you out of Reagan? - It would bring us together. - You and Reagan. - You and us. - Did you do that? - arrhaarrr.

Mark Kermode [01:19:27] McCambridge said when I asked her to describe how she got into the character, she said, that she was trying to imagine Lucifer in torment, Lucifer caged, Lucifer bound, Lucifer raging, and she drew on some of the experiences of her own life and the physical place that she was in while she was doing this recording. And she threw herself into the performance. I mean absolutely threw herself into it. And so, when you hear that voice coming out of Linda Blair's mouth, I mean, bear in mind, the performance is constrained by the fact that they had to lip-sync it to Linda Blair. I know that at one point when McCambridge first saw the scenes, but with Linda Blair's original voice, she said she's saying the lines too fast. But of course, she wasn't. But if you have a child's voice, then you will speak faster than a slow, demonic, guttural voice like that.

The Exorcist audio recording of Linda Blair [01:20:20] What's that? You keep it away. Keep it away. Oh it burns. Oh it burns.

The Exorcist (1973) [01:20:32] What's that? - Holy water. You'll keep it away. Keep it away. It burns. It burns.

Mark Kermode [01:20:44] McCambridge had to manufacture her performance to fit the lip movements they had for Linda Blair's performance, but also to give it this whole other personality. And often when you dub somebody in a movie, the idea is that you're meant to make it sound like it's the voice of the character. Well in the case of The Exorcist, she's intentionally making it sound like it's not the voice of the character. It's not the voice of Reagan. It's the voice of Pazuzu speaking through Reagan. So it's a double performance, all the more remarkable because the scenes had already been cut and assembled and became which was working around that. When I interviewed her, she kind of demonstrated for me how she would produce the demonic voice. And it was one of the most chilling things I've ever seen. She was just sitting there, this small, engaging, smiling woman with this really kind of intense voice suddenly breaking into this kind of demonic rage, throwing her head around her, her throat seeming to swell up.

The Exorcist Documentary - Mercedes McCambridge [01:21:47] It wasn't hard for me to imagine the rage scenes, even if it's this close in me right here. I'm only a human being. It's that close everybody. Everybody came from the second forward arrrrrgggggghhhh. That isn't hard.

Mark Kermode [01:22:11] Her voice was a muscle that she exercised and used and what it does is it does give you the sense that the Demon is a character. And in the novel, the Demon is very much a character and there was always a problem in the film that that might not happen. But in the film, the demon has a character, is sly, foxy, cunning, malevolent, embittered, frightened when it comes to Merrin. And McCambridge gets all of those things and she breathes that demonic life into that character.

The Exorcist (1973) [01:23:13] Hahahahahahahahha. - Jesus Christ. It is he who commands you. You sunk from the gates of heaven to the depths of hell. - Fuck him. - Be gone... - Fuck him Karras. Fuck him. - ...from the street of God.

Mark Kermode [01:23:17] And her performance is a great part of what makes that film so powerful.

Dario Llinares [01:23:32] In this final contribution, we return to the disembodied voice and the potential power that it carries. Academic William Brown, with a little help from Bob Sinnerbrink, discusses God-like amplification that underpins all cinematic voices and how this can be utilised in situations as different as the prank phone call, the university lecture, the masked villain and the ultimate evil himself.

William Brown [01:23:56] Hi there. This is William Brown who teaches film at the University of Roehampton.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:24:02] And this is Bob Sinnerbrink, who teaches philosophy at Macquarie University in Australia.

William Brown [01:24:08] And today we're talking about the voice in cinema.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:24:11] That's right. Today you have two speakers for the price of one.

William Brown [01:24:16] Yes. So I thought I'd start with a little impression, actually. "My name is Detective John Kimble. I'm going to ask you two questions and I want you to answer them immediately. Who is your daddy and what does he do?

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:24:30] That's great.

William Brown [01:24:31] Cheers. So I guess I started with that impression because when we think about the cinematic voice immediately, I'm reminded of the experience when as a student we used to call people up on the internal telephone system at my university and then play clips of Arnold Schwarzenegger talking off a soundboard.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:24:56] That's wild.

William Brown [01:24:57] So the reason why we wanted to start off by talking about prank phone calls is to do with the voice when it's disembodied and how the disembodied voice in some senses has a key role to play our lives.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:25:15] Yeah, that's right. So, we'll be talking a bit about, in particular, the voice of Adolf Hitler in cinema, I guess, including in the great Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator and the more recent Bryan Singer film Valkyrie.

William Brown [01:25:33] That's right. Which even though Valkyrie wasn't well-received at the time and even though Bryan Singer is now a bit in trouble as a public figure, nonetheless, both films have this use of the Hitler voice in a disembodied fashion.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:25:50] Yeah, that's right. And what's interesting also is how culturally the disembodied voice is often attributed to God. People will hear the voice calling their name and they'll say to themselves: "this must be a spiritual kind of divine moment going on". So there's this way in which the disembodied voice is always associated with with with divinity and with God. Right.

William Brown [01:26:18] It's really interesting because for me, I always think about the use of amplification in talks that I give universities or even in lectures and often refuse amplification because it's a kind of way of empowering oneself in a false fashion.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:26:39] Yeah. No, totally.

William Brown [01:26:40] And you sort of get this sense of Jesus preaching on the mount. Like in this Monty Python film where the people are gathered and saying, oh, what is it he's saying?

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:26:50] Blessed are the meek.

William Brown [01:26:51] Blessed are the cheesemakers. And this is because they can't hear because Christ has no amplification.

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) [01:27:01] Speak up. - Quiet mum. - Well, I can't hear a thing. Let's go to the stoning. - You can go to the stoning any time. – Oh, come on Brian. - Will you be quiet. - Do you mind I can't hear a word he's saying. - Don't you do you mind me. I was talking to my husband. - Well go and talk to him somewhere else. I can't here bloody thing. - Don't you swear at my wife. - I was only asking to shut up. So, you know what he's saying big nose.

William Brown [01:27:28] And so there's this way in which when the voice is too bodied, too embodied, then it's too imperfect. It's too human and it doesn't have the power or the authority of the amplified voice. So, if we think of a character like Bane in the Batman films, the way in which his voice is definitely about sort of empowerment through seeming like it comes from nowhere, or that the voice is everywhere and it transcends the body. And this is what gives to Bane this kind of almost diabolical satanic sense of power.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) [01:28:07] Do you feel in charge? - I've paid you a small fortune - This gives you power over me? - What is this? - Your money and infrastructure have been important. Till now.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:28:19] Yeah, no, this is great. And it reminds me a bit of Michel Chion, who describes the black magic of disembodied voices as if as if they were indeed a kind of satanic force.

William Brown [01:28:33] Theodore Adorno writes about Hitler's voice as being charismatic because of the technology that allows it to basically be everywhere. It's broadcast everywhere. And his voice is just booming around Germany under National Socialism.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:28:50] Yeah, that's interesting. I mean that's from Horkheimer and Adorno's classic essay on the culture industry where I think they even used the phrase "metaphysical charisma" to describe how the amplified Hitler takes on power. I mean, look, the use of the term metaphysical there is clearly giving to Hitler a kind of satanic power.

William Brown [01:29:17] And you know, Adorno, famously dislikes The Great Dictator. He says that, you know, it's this terrible movie because of the swaying corn at the end is in fact, a kind of realisation of the myth of national socialism rather than a sort of a contradiction to it.

The Great Dictator (1940) [01:29:36] Now in the name of democracy. Let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you a future and old age security. By the promise of these things bruts have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil that promise. They never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers in the name of democracy. Let us all unite.

William Brown [01:30:24] And you know, it's interesting the way that, you know, even a Chaplin wants to have the voice of "the barber". Now suddenly be turned to the forces of benevolence and goodness. In fact, you know, it's the amplification, it's the it's the becoming disembodied of his voice that is about systems of power. He's still controlling people. It's still fascistic, even if it's not the violence of the Holocaust.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:30:50] Yeah, no, that's interesting. I mean, I like that. And I guess that brings us nicely towards our example from Valkyrie as well.

William Brown [01:30:58] Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Why don't you introduce it?

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:31:01] Well, I don't know if you've seen the film, but in it, Tom Cruise plays Claus von Stauffenberg, who in the Second World War was a Nazi Party member, but who also understood the vicious evil that was being unleashed under national socialism and so took part in an attempt to assassinate Hitler. And the attempt goes wrong, as perhaps we all know from history. And Hitler, who's played in the film by David Bamber, survives. And what happens is, just as Otto Ernst Raymer, who's played by Thomas Kretschmann, is about to arrest Goebbels as a result of the success of Operation Valkyrie. And then he's on the phone to Raymer and we just hear this disembodied voice in English. So, it's clearly not even trying to sound like the real Hitler. If you understand what I mean. And Hitler's there on the phone. And I can't do his impression, but he just says:

Valkyrie (2008) [01:32:05] Do you recognise my voice? - Yes, Mein Fuhrer. - Then listen to me very carefully. I want these traitors taken alive.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:32:27] And for Raymer, his response is clear that, yes, this disembodied voice is the Fuhrer and therefore, it's evidence of hitless survival and proof that Stauffenberg is, in fact, the impostor, and this is what will set in place the recovery of a Nazi order. I mean, perhaps there is something a little bit strange being worked out from this Bryan Singerian world View there that actually, you know, order and the Nazi fascist order needs to be restored. You know, kind of fascism that he comes back to time and again in his films with Ian McKellen, of course, playing Holocaust survivor Magneto in his X-Men films and Ian McKellen again playing as a Nazi, living in the contemporary U.S.

William Brown [01:33:23] That's really interesting.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:33:24] Well, go on, please.

William Brown [01:33:26] Well, you know, for me, I find this really interesting because clearly the disembodied voice has a kind of power for Raymer in Valkyrie. The very fact that it's kind of so overtly a fake voice. It's a line that's spoken in English by an actor. But of course, within the film were supposed to go along with this as being Hitler suggests that in some sense, as we all know, that it's not God as we all know that these voices are amplified. But we need to believe in them. We need our own kind of like subjugation. Our own interpellation might literally into fascism as we called out by these fake voices.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:34:08] Yeah. In addition to The Great Dictator, the classic disembodied voice in cinema is that of the great and powerful Oz in The Wizard of Oz.

William Brown [01:34:20] Are you saying that you're the Wizard of Oz Bobby?

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:34:22] No, no. Shane Warne. He's the Wizard of Oz. But you know, the Wizard of Oz, of course, you know, is this disembodied voice who's all great and powerful. But in fact, when you pull the curtain back, it's just an old white guy trying to hold onto power in a world where he's feeling lost and surrounded by people of different sizes and different races.

William Brown [01:34:44] So it's a kind of allegory of colonialism.

The Wizard of Oz (1939) [01:34:47] The great Oz had spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. The great Oz has spoken. - Who are you? - Hahahaha. I am the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. - You are. I don't believe you. - I'm afraid it's true. There's no other, wizard except me. - You Humbug.

William Brown [01:35:16] And what's most exciting then is that, you know, what pulls the cut back is not Dorothy, but Toto her dog. The dog being the kynos or the cynic, Kynos being the Greek term for dogs, so it's we cynical academics who can pull the curtain back on these fake voices that cinema kind of gives to us always because all cinematic voices are amplified.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:35:43] Right. Yeah.

William Brown [01:35:43] And you know, this is what, you know, we cynical film academics are the people who can see through cinema and just see that it's a tool for the control of society put forward by small white men.

"Bob Sinnerbrink" [01:35:57] That's great. And maybe that's what. Not just Singer but all of the other little white men who've been caught up in #metoo, have actually been revealed as being just guys who are amplifying their voices for the purposes of power.

Dario Llinares [01:36:16] When the talking picture came into being filmmakers, not only had the obvious possibilities created by synchronising voice and body now at their disposal. They also have the potential to separate the voice, to use it in its own right as a tool of cinematic grammar. If sound shapes the meaning of an image in film, much more than is usually accounted for, the voice infuses the visual with not only the sonorous poetry of connection, but it asks us something about the nature of the human self. Our consciousness is evoked primarily through voice. The cinematic voice then calls to that fundamental element of human expression and experience. I will leave you with a scene that exemplifies the voice working cinematically, but at the same time just evoking the pure sense of human connection. A scene in which we could break down the registers of language, storytelling, sonic textuality and intonation, even at the level of class and gender, or the discussion of vocal performance and how it can be undercut and made ironic. But maybe it's time to sit back and revel in the joy of the voice as it is conveyed through film. Here is Marilyn Monroe voicing the quintessential Marilyn and Tony Curtis doing his best, worst impression of Cary Grant, both playing effortlessly with the possibilities of the cinematic voice.

Some Like it Hot (1959) [01:37:39] How's the stock market? - Up up up. - I'll bet while we talking you made about $100000. - Could be. You play the market? - No, the Ukulele and I sing to. - For your own amusement? - A bunch of us girls are appearing at the hotel. Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators. - Oh, you're society girls. - Oh, yes quite. You know Bryn Mawr, Vasser. We're just doing this for Lark. - Syncopators? Does that mean you played that very fast music, jazz? - Yeah, real hot. - Oh, well, I guess some like it hot. I personally prefer classical music. - Oh I do too. As a matter of fact, I spent three years at the Shavoygen Conservatory of Music. - That's good. And your family doesn't object to your career. - They do indeed. Daddy threatened to cut me off without a cent, but I don't care, was such a bore, you know, coming out parties. - Inauguration balls. - Opening of the opera. Riding to hounds. - And always the same four hundred. - You know, it's amazing we never ran into each other before. I'm sure I would have remembered anybody as attractive as you are. - You're very kind. I bet you're also gentle and helpful. - I beg your pardon. - You see, I have this theory about men who wear glasses. - What theory. - I'll tell you when I get to know you better.

Dario Llinares [01:39:06] This episode of the Cinematologists Podcast was produced by Dario Llinares with very special thanks for the contributions from Clive Frayne, Neil Fox, Laura Tunbridge, Catherine Wheatley, Ian Garwood, Fashid Kazemi, Jennifer O'Meara, Mark Kermode and William Brown. Full show notes with academic references, filmography and transcript can be found on the Cinematologists Website: www.cinematologists.com. If you enjoyed this episode, please share on your social networks and review on your podcast app of choice. If you want to support the podcast further and have access to all of our bonus materials, please go to our Patreon page and sign up. This has been a Cinematologists production.

Outro

Dario Llinares [01:40:06] So there we have it. That was the cinematic voice, and I just wanted to reiterate before I turn it over to you, Neil. Our thanks to, and my particular thanks to Clive Laura, Catherine, Ian, Farshid, Jennifer, Mark and Will and yourself, of course, just for giving up their time for free. We have a podcast that is precisely zero budget. Really. I mean, obviously, we've got the Patreon subscribers and we do thank them for that support. But at the end of the day, we haven't got a studio and it's, you know, we haven't got a budget for bringing people together and recording in the sort of Radio 4 kind of way. So for these really fantastic academics and writers, and screenwriters, to give up their busy time for free and to contribute to this, it's yeah, it's absolutely fantastic. And I thank them very much.

Neil Fox [01:40:56] Great. Yeah, absolutely. What a what a treat. Interesting what you said there about the radio-4-ness in a studio. I think we'll probably come back to that because I think that the unique sonic properties of the episode are kind of something worth chewing over before we do any of that do have some questions about it all. It's yeah. Just to kind of say how much I enjoyed listening to it and how much I've enjoyed listening to it kind of come together. I think it's a remarkable piece of work. It epitomises what you've been working on in terms of podcasting and your interest in "film podcasting" and the potentialities of podcasting and cinema and how they come together. I think it's a really deep and critical piece of work that really showcases what is possible in this medium, which I know we've both been very interested and excited about, but even more so than probably Knowing Sounds, which was, you know, several things at once as a very early idea. This feels like a much more coherent and, kind of, focused piece of work in terms of imagining what a film essay in a podcast form can be. So, yeah, congratulations on that piece of work.

Dario Llinares [01:42:10] Thanks, man. And thanks for the. Yeah. The continued support to to get it out really. You know, because obviously juggling around with the episodes and where things are going. But it just came. I think it has just come together a nice place right now. And, you know, maybe with I don't want to go off on one about how, what's happening in the world right now, but it's something I think hopefully that maybe well, people can put on and listen to Obviously, there's a sort of in-depth aspect to it that's quite academic. But I think just enjoying listening to some of the voices and people talk about what those voices are doing is always a nice thing to do. So hopefully people will enjoy that aspect of it.

Dario Llinares [01:42:49] And yeah, I mean, I was just listening to a podcast the other day that was the host was kind of talking about the relationship between art and criticism and was kind of arguing that you need to get your brain into different spaces. You almost have to let go of your critical self in order to be an artist, because, if you take your criticism into your art, then you're not free to sort of engage in a practice that that can be open to having an experiment or a flow to it. You know, the criticism can bog down what you're trying to do. But it's interesting because I find it very difficult to consider myself an artist in any way, shape or form. And even in the context of practice led research, if I put it into that academic context, that relationship to academia and what I generally do, if I'm say writing a journal article is always difficult. But I think, yeah, this comes quite close to what I was aiming for in trying to produce something that had a kind of cinematic immersive-ness, but without the images, of course, but then was underpinned by this analytical framework. And one of the, you know, the difficulties, but also the interesting parts of it was stitching together what everybody brought. Because I didn't give really a prescribed remit to everybody. It was just what interests you about the idea of the cinematic voice? And people just took their cue and ran with that, I think.

Neil Fox [01:44:17] Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to who has a lot to unpack there in that short burst. But I think that the form it feels really, really important. You know what you mentioned about kind of like not a studio and everyone's kind of doing different things in terms of content. The fact they're also doing different things in terms of how they're recording it. And while, yeah, kind of a pleasurable sonic experience is something that's really, really important in the podcast. The fact that it feels different to a radio documentary about the cinematic voice feels really important. And I think that that invitation to collaborate and that invitation to contribute and that the remit is open is really important in terms of what a podcast can do, that radio can't, you know. And I think that it feels like a journey that you've really, really marshalled really well. I think the fact that you've done it the way you have which is to respond to kind of set a very brief "brief" and then respond to the contributions and kind of see what people's ideas are and then kind of link that to your own interest, and your own research throughout. I think it's really, really smart. And I think it works really, really well and makes it feel like something that you wouldn't hear in any other place, which is an artistic piece of work. You know, I think that it feels like an artistic piece of work in the way that a lot of really great criticism does. We talked about this at length but, so much criticism that I love feels like a kind of artistic exploration of a text or of a filmmaker or of a set of ideas where the critic is using the potential of language and the potential to conjure through language kind of feelings and emotions and a kind of resonance with audiences. Is not necessarily about fact or about right or wrong, but it's about responding through the form to a piece of work and then sharing that with people to respond again through listening or through reading. And that's really exciting. You know, and I was reading the Saul Bellow book that you bought me. And he talks about the idea about particular in terms of comic writing that where's the freedom to just let go and that more and more now that feels particularly resonant to comedy. But I kind of understand that impulse to say, well, you can't be critical in the act of creation. But also, I think that a lot of the artists I really love, a lot of the filmmakers I really love, are critical in their work. And I think if you're critical between creations, then that's going to bleed and, in some way, and how you think about it is going to be kind of fluid in that sense. So, yeah, and it's really nice to see you kind of spreading your wings artistically and creatively through the podcast form rather than just writing about it, you know, and it feels like a lot would be lost if the approach was fitting into a pre-existing form like radio or even an academic journals.

Dario Llinares [01:47:04] I'm thinking about whether this can go on to being maybe a video essay. But again, I'm kind of on too minds about whether I want to do that. I think it would be an interesting thing to try to bring images back but not mess around with the soundtrack or the way that it's been put together. So almost like the images would then have to be driven by the sound. Because I think if I re-cut it, it may lose that sense of the voice and the all reality being the central component.

Neil Fox [01:47:35] Yeah, because you're back to privileging the image when the whole point of it is about isolating and locating the voice and understanding cinema through that sonic apparatus, which I think is what's so refreshing about listening to so many different points of view and perspectives and realising how much people take on what the voice is doing in cinema. And this has been a chance to really investigate that in a way that's probably unconscious all the time.

Dario Llinares [01:48:02] Yeah. And how did you feel about yourself? The way I cut your dialogue, obviously, I said to you, I've cut one or two things and then so it can fit into the form that I saw if you see what I mean.

Neil Fox [01:48:15] Yeah. Why? It wasn't the bit that I necessarily thought that you would cut. I thought you'd take out my Dick Tracy reference. Normally when I bring up Dick Tracy, that's people's first response is to deny all knowledge. But no. But I think what was interesting was which is why I think editing is so important just as a general rule was. You know, when you said that I was kind of listening to what it was in the majority of it was an ending that I'd written, which in the time of writing and recording it, I thought I needed because again, my sense of the whole piece was not there because I'm contributing to something and I'm trying to create something which I think does a lot of it does a lot of things at once. And I think with a lot of writing, you're kind of always overthinking or overwriting sometimes, which is why you need an editor who's gonna go in and say, no, you don't need that. And as soon as I heard how you'd cut it, but also how you'd intercut what I'd said with the dialogue clips and the soundtrack, the ending that you'd found and it made much more sense, which I think was great. And I was like, yeah, I don't need that at the end. You know, it worked much better through your editing. And I think that's that's something that more and more is being ignored, which is why it's in terms of podcasting. I think the fact that we edit it and we think like editors on the podcast is really important. And I think in podcasting, it's as important as is in writing to a certain degree, because you do want the freedom and you do want the sense of spontaneity in the sense that it feels unlike writing. But also, it's still important to make it a pleasurable experience and one that doesn't feel too long or too kind of it goes to tangential sometimes. I think that in the right context, you definitely need to harness that. And I think you did that really well. I enjoyed the the chance to do something audio that was different to what we normally do, which is converse and not worry too much about the delivery. And there was some that was interested in terms of how you approached it as well, because you took a very different kind of sonic approach to how you actually deliver your spoken word than you do normally on the podcast.

Dario Llinares [01:50:22] Yeah. I'm still not hundred percent sure whether that works had ever invited critical self is like, you know, I don't know whether it sounds a little bit too monotone. I'm not a voiceover artist. So it was a case, I think, of just trying to slow down and even lower my voice a little bit because I think I do speak with passion when I'm technically speaking about films and everything really on the podcast. And I think that just sort of tempering that in order to deliver clearly. And I was very conscious that I want to get an absolutely clean recording of my bits in between, because I think that that gave almost a sort of I don't know what the word is, maybe a benchmark like an anchoring point for everybody else's voice because there's so many voices on there, not just the film voices, but the contributors voices as well. I think that's one of the strong suits about it, is that everybody's got an interesting voice on there and also not just an interesting sound of the voice, but their diction, their delivery. Say, for example, somebody like Catherine Wheatley, who's a very academic high, a high level of depth in her analysis, lots of references, very philosophical, and then moved to Mark Kermode, who is somebody who's, you know, absolutely at the forefront of media broadcast journalism and film criticism at talks in that way and just delivered that fair play to him just, I think, off the top of his head, because he's got that information and that knowledge about The Exorcist, particularly, at his fingertips.

Neil Fox [01:51:46] Yeah. And you are setting up a different sonic space, you know, which I think is which is important. You're letting the audience know that this is not what we would normally do on an episode. It's a different thing, which I think is the same as what we do when we do a live thing. We put we don't realise it as much, but until I am sure there is a difference between how we introduced an episode live to how we do our kind of chats, which I think is it was really it was just fascinating to hear. You know, when I heard the cut, I was like, oh yeah, this is not just you nattering about film like this. It feels different, which was nice and. Yeah, and I think it does set the tone for what comes. I think that the, I don't think it's monotone. I think it's I think it's coherent. I think it sets the right level of pace, the right level of, it sets the right level for the experience of what comes after. Yeah. Which is really good.

Dario Llinares [01:52:39] I was really tempted to play about with the with the software and give myself some kind of like, you know, Darth Vader-ish echo or something like that. But I resisted that temptation.

Neil Fox [01:52:49] Which is again kind of I think when you're talking about the voice and kind of playing around with the voice as a sound, I think that's probably is quite tempting isn't it. Yeah. I'm glad you didn't.

Dario Llinares [01:52:59] Yeah. Me too at the end. But yeah I mean it's just lovely to have those different kind of voices and yeah. Obviously having Farshid contribution on Kiarostami, that was the main difficult point I think in terms of does that work sonically only because he's pointing to an effect that he describes it very well, but it's very difficult to really have a sense of it in your unless you're looking at the screen and you understand what the disembodied voice the actors met through and how it works, you know, unless you can kind of see that being set up in the frame. So I don't know again, that's the other bit that maybe would lend itself maybe more to a video essay.

Neil Fox [01:53:37] Yeah, see, I would. I think you should resist that.

Dario Llinares [01:53:41] Okay.

Neil Fox [01:53:42] Because I think that what it does is unique and really quite special in the sense that I know that film and film really well. But the fact that when he's talking about it and then you have the clips, I can't understand what's being said, kind of increases the cinematic imaginary in my own head. And I am relying on the memories of seeing the film, a film which is always about what's heard and not seen. You know, there's so much that that's not seen. It's such a beautiful piece of work. And I think that it really typifies what the whole episode is about, which is about what we do in our relationship to the sounds that we hear in cinema and how isolating that brings about a different response in us. And I just thought it was really. Yeah. What it brought to mind was, was how the best criticism that I love and I mean the best in terms of my kind of one of my favourite things about criticism is reading and increasingly listening to people talk or write about films I haven't seen and describe them on the page or in this case through sound and imagine what that experience is going to be like and them seeking out the experience for myself. And when I watch it carrying the unfolding experience of seeing it, but also tapping into that feeling I had when I read someone talked so beautifully, inadequately or passionately about it. And I think that that's such an exciting thing that reminds me of kind of really getting into cinema where so much of what excites you is what you read, you know, or what you hear someone talk about. And we talked about things like Moviedrome a lot, you know, but just knowing that you were going to hear Alex Cox talk or Mark Cousins later on talk about the film and how their voice inspired and excitement to then watch, the thing I think is increasingly lost, I think. And I think that's what that's what's beautiful about this episode and this contribution in particular. Is it it's completely of itself that if you if you did have the images with it, I wonder what would be lost? And I think that's the case for all of them. Because this is about what's almost lost anyway because people think so visually in terms of cinema.

Dario Llinares [01:56:01] Yeah. I just think maybe thinking about sort of, you know, six months down the road, a further life. This went with my academic hat on. Where does it you know, I mean, because it's still so hard to put things into an academic context that are sound only, you know.

Neil Fox [01:56:14] You've got to milk your outputs.

Dario Llinares [01:56:16] You've got to milk your outputs, for sure. And it it's interesting you said that because it's like one of the things that I got from it, just myself listening to the analysis was Jennifer O'Meara on Anomalisa. I mean, that gave that film a whole new dimension for me, which is really interesting, that sense of the how the voice was being almost used as it as a way that the male character was trying to control the female character and how the Kaufman-esque script was playing with that little bit.

Neil Fox [01:56:44] Yeah, absolutely. That was a, yeah. Lots of great reframing of films that you can't take her operating on one level and then that kind of criticism and scholarship which brings a new a new reading on it. And the last thing I wanted to to raise was just how pleasurable it was to hear Max von Sydow's voice in the Mark Kermode segment and be reminded of the other voices in that sequence, and remembering or being reminded of Mercedes McCambridge's as performance is just kind of amazing, but also how von Sydow's voice, brings such gravitas and such a kind of authority, and such a faith to it that the scene is just kind of elevated again. And I'm not sure it works without him being cast to do that, to do that side of it, you know, which is about his filmography and our understanding of on set. But also, that iconic voice and just reminder of just one of the iconic voices of cinema and just how powerful it is to hear him kind of speak.

Dario Llinares [01:57:48] Yeah. It is very much a sense that his voice is so resonant through his other films and the characters he played in other films. That gives him that sense of he definitely could be a priest, too, as an exorcist, you know what I mean? But then the accent as well, just the sort of tone of it is on the soft doing battle with the voice of McCambridge. So there's a sort of vocal kind of tension between the two that I think just comes out in that little that little clip towards the end particularly.

Neil Fox [01:58:17] Yeah. And I think that interplay between the three voices, you know, Karras as well, because the voices are ultimately doing battle, you know, and it comes through the voice doesn't it like everything because it's you remember that scene. It's not a physical scene in the traditional sense. You know, they're not physically wrestling, they're vocally wrestling. It's the words and how the words delivered and the strength of the belief that comes through the voices is so important. And also a reminder which you kind of touch on in the essay, which is the voice as a sound, you know, and what how those three sounds are playing together as not just as voices and not just as vehicles for dialogue, but sounds which are turning us about Karras' belief, von Sydow's belief, and an obviously the voice inside Regan on what that believes and how that's being put across. And I think, again, a reminder that the great filmmakers understand everything about what they're doing and maybe it's not conscious or maybe it is an automatic thing. But I think that at some level, Friedkin knows when he hears the actors that that matters. You know, because you could cast other people that might give the same physical and the same visual sense. But it's got to be in the voice as well. And I think that on a certain level, the great filmmakers know what they're doing in terms of voices.

Dario Llinares [01:59:36] I mean, maybe that's the one thing that's come out of this, almost like a central argument maybe is the wrong word. But like a takeaway is that the interplay between voices is as important as anything else, because if you look at the other the other three sections that we haven't mentioned so far is if you look at Laura's the interplay is there between Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston and you mentioned as well that Laura actually sounds like Tilda Swinton.

Neil Fox [02:00:00] Yeah, she sounds really like Tilda Swinton which just adds such an amazing dimension to it.

Dario Llinares [02:00:04] It's crazy, isn't it? And then In the Heat of the Night, of course, is all about the interplay and the sort of racial undercurrents of that interplay. And then interesting that Ian's piece on Aimee Mann section in Magnolia is about interplay between diegetic and non-diegetic as a device. So it's all kind of like interplay of voices is fundamental there, I think.

Neil Fox [02:00:25] Is that something that you kind of knew or thought about before in terms of what kind of themes might emerge, you know, like how much of what you wrote came pre the episode or how much of it was shaped by the actual process of editing and discovering what people were thinking in terms of the voice.

Dario Llinares [02:00:44] The introduction was kind of like the hardest part in terms of how am I going to set this up and frame this. I mean, there was a temptation to just go straight into the first one and say, this is the Cinematologists Podcast, the cinematic voice and straight in. I felt that that may be a little bit of context was required and I always knew I wanted to talk about the idea of synchronisation, of the voice post sound cinema, basically, and how that's kind of taken for granted. But then if you look at the way that their voice is used in interesting ways, a lot of it is about this disembodiedness or about the way that synchronisation is played with in some way, shape or form. But when I'd heard the individual segments, it was just a case of how do they fit together? Some of the connecting parts came together a lot later, like, say, for example, the connections, say, between the Anomalisa bit and Mark Kermode's Exorcist bit. So it's getting from an animated voices to Reagan as a character that is both disembodied and an embodied at the same time. So the clips I use there from the idea of the voice animating character was one thing that just came out of the fact that I needed to get from one part to the other. And that just seemed to make sense. And then at the very end with William Brown's segment, that was just kind of like, I thought beautiful, humorous finishing point that I just sort of, oh, yeah, that's going to go at the end. That's going to finish it all off and leave it alone kind of thing.

Neil Fox [02:02:07] Yeah, it worked because of all the different types of ideas that have come in. And, you know, it's as expected from William, kind of really thoughtful and kind of intellectually stimulating piece. But it's also playful.

Dario Llinares [02:22:23] Yeah. self-referential and ironic as well.

Neil Fox [02:02:24] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So do you see this as the start of something? You know, because we both know that no piece of work is ever going to be definitive on the cinematic voice. And I think what's so great about this piece of work is it doesn't feel like you're ever trying to do that. You know, it feels like a genuine organic and instinctual, and mean and in a positive sense of like, you know, finding ideas as they come along in regards to this idea of the cinematic voice. But do you see this as something that you will kind of pursue more, not just in terms of this is an output, but just some of the things that you might have got excited about from, that come up through the process of doing it?

Dario Llinares [02:03:00] Well, there's two aspects to that question. One is that this is fitting into the work that's coming out. I've got a piece coming out about film podcasts and how they work and why they work. And it's almost kind of like a taxonomy of the film podcast, different types. And it wrestles with the concept of the "audio-cinematic" can a cinematic experience be audio only? And if it can, what is that? What constitutes that? But then also I think just in terms of work on the podcast, I think maybe one episode a year or if I could find the time. One episode a season where it does take this much more produced format and whether it's sort of audio-essay style or just written or maybe even, you know, maybe we can talk about this in the future, doing something that's more even dramatic, that we're even performing to a so even more greater extent is something I think would be interesting. And yet I'm also interested in doing something on British film critics in academia. So obviously, suddenly Victor Perkins passed away. And then there are other film critics, I think, that were formative of film studies in the UK in the 50s, 60s and 70s that have influenced a lot of the people that are, you know, teaching film theory right now. And I think as a podcast or even a series that looks back at their work. If I could get the funding for that, then that would be something that really interests me.

Neil Fox [02:04:24] Exciting, well, yeah, I for one. Yeah. On board. And I think what was interesting is kind of just the process has made me think about dropping segments into our regular kind of episodes, you know. So one of things that I'm going to do for the upcoming episodes is, you know, when I sort of review the BFI stuff. Yeah. You know, actually kind of record little segments. So this shows, you know, did nip off for two minutes about Film that's written and recorded again, just to give a different type of experience to listeners and make it feel less like, sometimes I feel like I have to kind of talk about this because I've been given a free Blu ray, but I do want to talk about it. But whether it always feels like an aside, you know, and I think that this is this has been a really good experience in terms of listening to it come together to think about yeah, actually, that there is so much more that we could be doing in terms of the audio experience for listeners and for ourselves in terms of writing and kind of creating material, which I think is worth exploring. So yeah, I'm really excited about the next generation of Cinematologists. So yeah, well done on this episode which has been an absolute joy and hopefully our listeners feel the same.

Dario Llinares [02:05:32] Thank you. If they've gotten this far over two hours, you are true stalwarts of The Cinematologists podcast. So, we thank you if you're still listening at this point. Yeah, we'll sign off there without too much of a bumph I think, because obviously it's been a big episode. Everybody knows where to contact us on social media. We'll have a new episode coming out maybe in 10 days, two weeks’ time, where I interview Blake Howard and then it will be our 100th. And yeah, we have some exciting stuff coming up for that. But until we get to that. Neil, lovely to talk to you as always, and thanks so much for the support for this.

Neil Fox [02:06:06] Absolute pleasure. Yep. Been a real joy kind of going with you on this journey. So, yeah, look forward to the next part.

Dario Llinares [02:06:15] Great. Thanks very much. Thanks once again to our audience for the continued support. We look forward to catching up with you on social media or wherever it might be. Please, everyone, stay safe. This has been The Cinematologists Podcast. Thanks for listening.

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Barthes, Roland. 1978. The Grain of the Voice. In Image, Music, Text. New York: Wang and Hill. pp.179-189.

Whittaker, Tom and Wright, Sarah. 2017. Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Perspectives. Oxford University Press.

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Chow, Rey. 2017 ‘The Writing Voice in Cinema’. In Whittaker, Tom and Wright, Sarah. Eds. Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Perspectives. Oxford University Press.