Evaluating on Movie "M" for sound

I could tell this movie was gonna have a lot of old technology problems like hiss, clips and stuff when I began the movie at black and white graphics, also estimating the time of movie it was released about 3/4 th of a century ago. However I didn't get that disappointed by the end of the movie. A good movie is the one that expresses its self being alive without any thing making its viewers out of its magic in my point of view. For this movie "M" It was about the same to be a good movie except I felt out of the story every time there is a distracting sound that seems to not fit in the place, or the sense of lack of sound or in other term , the editing had a lot of flaws in that sense but It was made a lot years ago and still made it to entertain for the viewer like me in this 21st century. That could be made a remark that how sound could influence to make a great movie.
M has a good sense of sound put together to make it a good movie even with its flaws of feeling of unreality.

"M"

This film was not bad for being made in 1931 and having no music to progress the plot, except for the ominous whistling. I can't really say that I have seen any movie like it. My level of enjoyment that I get from watching movies is largely due to how good the soundtrack and/or themes are. So this just goes to show how good a job the director did in letting a lot of the images speak for themselves. Maybe it left more to the imagination. It is also pretty cool finding out that this was the first film to tie a musical theme to a character.

On “M”

Other than the singing of some children during their game playing and the ‘leitmotif’ (Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”) whistled by and associated with the murderer, there was no music in the film – which, if only subconsciously, probably made what was heard somewhat more emotionally powerful.

Despite the German dialogue (and my non-knowledge of the language) the sounds of people speaking – individually, in small groups, or in crowds – did seem to carry some non-linguistic information. Crying, calling out and/or screaming are obvious evidence of emotional state, but the volume and rapidity of the speech may be as well. The sounds of the quickly gathering crowds, for example, seemed to crescendo and increase in tempo when recognizing a possible child abduction. The tonal quality of some of the individual voices – especially that of Peter Lorre (nasal, whiny, ‘demented’) as the pedophiliac serial killer – might help define some attributes of the character.

More surprising to me than the lack of music was the presence, in such large quantity and from a wide variety of sources, of tobacco smoke (and I was a four pack a day person till 1992). The clouds of drifting smoke occasionally took on a role of their own. In some scenes it added another layer of mystery, while in others it seemed to intensify the feelings of the characters involved in the scene.

I was pleased to have finally seen the film – only some seven years older than myself – and had the chance to understand a little of its importance to the history of cinema. (I knew that I’d get to say ‘cinema’ sooner or later…)

on Mon Oncle

10 September 2010

A quick note for those few who might, for whatever reason, read my class required blog entries :

I am at least three times as old as any of my fellow students in this class and more than twice as old as our beloved Professor. I am auditing the class and so am not at all concerned with grades – I’m simply trying to learn something new (can you really teach an Old Dick new tricks?) before I shuffle off this mortal coil. My entries are not meant to be curmudgeonly, clever, offensive, or erudite, they are simply what I might write if I were keeping a diary.

OK, now – about Mon Oncle:

I first saw this Jacques Tati film in the early 1960s, while in graduate school at the University of New Mexico. It was part of a series of French films being shown at the local Albuquerque ‘art theatre’ and was my particular favorite in the series. At the time I was a battle-scarred veteran (4 years in the US Army), an oc-casional user of perception altering chemicals and a paid up member of the Young Socialist Alliance.

My general understanding of the film then, in addition to enjoying the obvious comedic bits, was that it seemed to illustrate – through satire – the French hopelessness at the outcome of class struggle. Hulot and his neighbors, symbolic of the working class, having little or no chance against Arpel and the plastics industry ­– heartless, capitalist exploiters of human labor.

Watching the film again, well past my days as a ‘Young’ anything, I still felt there still might be something of the class struggle involved – if only in sub-textual form. But there also seemed to be a little more hope as well. The symbolic acceptance of the industrialist’s dachshund into the horde of worker dogs, the Hulot visits to the dominion of the well-to-do, and ultimately the acceptance of some shared values by the nephew, Gérard and Arpel, as Hulot departs for what I sincerely hope are greener pastures.

Listening to the sound (which I honestly didn’t remember even hearing during my first viewing) was an eye (ear?) opener for me. Not only the music, but also the sound ‘effects,’ offer the potential for a much deeper understating of the film. I’m beginning to understand a little of what Chion means by added value.

Sound and movie

Movie " Mon Oncle" Created by French filmmaker "Jacques Tati" This movie is the one of the most different movie I have experienced in prospect to things I hear in the movie. It is about fifty years old movie and for today's technology the things put in this movie clearly is out of date yet The conceptual grasp that it had in its time could have been pretty unique. The movie had almost all of its sound recorded in the studio and could be felt the sounds were very unlikely to be coming from the things that seemed to be coming from. The most unnatural effect I felt in the movie was the feeling of incompleteness for it to be convincing enough to make it through me. The sounds felt to be same thing repeated over and over again, There seem to be focusing of sound in limited forms. The were a lot of inaccuracy of the timing of the sound that was felt. What ever the bad comment I put forward, I am impressed that even the move had its entire sound remade in the studio and yet came out to be good. the cinema and sound had come a long way since then but we should always praise the early stages of any advancement .