Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning

10 Sounds

239 10 Sounds Coauthored with Carl Lewis Sound! We have looked at several films made in the silent period. Few of them, of course, were shown without sound; some early films were presented by lecturers and many were accompanied by live music. But for a long time now recorded sound has been a major part of documentaries—especially the information conveyed through voiceover commentary and interviews. Words often link together the images and carry much of the argument. Speech, however, is only part of the way that documentaries use sound. They also frequently use music, effects, and ambient sound (the background noises that emanate from the world pictured). Think again of The River. The voiceover commentary imposes a particular form of organization on seemingly scattered visual material. The music does, too. And so does the sound of the factory whistles and the flood warning horns. It is the combination of visual, verbal, and sonic discourses that shapes the film into the story about the Mississippi. We have already discussed how Night Mail’s carriage interiors were built on a set for adequate space and light, with workers re-creating their nightly routines. As in The River, the crew also had to shoot silent and add the sound afterward. But this was not a disadvantage. In fact, under Alberto Cavalcanti’s sound direction, the simple story of an overnight postal train is crafted into a complex assemblage of speech, music, noises, and poetry. Over brief opening credits, trumpet fanfares jolt the viewer to attention. The short musical excerpt quickly establishes what is to come. Agitated, repeated 240 chapter ten ascending notes suggest a forward, climbing and repetitive motion. And indeed, much of the film illustrates movement, speed, and urgency with shots of the train wheelschurningroundandround,thesoundoftrainwhistles,rattlingtracks,hissing steam, the clang of metal, the thump of leather mail pouches, and the whoosh of the wind created by the train’s velocity. The musical score quickly disappears from the film, not returning until the closingsequence.Avoiceover,aninvisiblemalevoicewithacarefullyconstructed nondescript professional quality, speaking in short sentences, explains the technicalaspectsofthetravelingpostoffice ,itsroute,functions,andmechanisms.Sometimes it gives details of what is in the images; at other times it gives information that is not available visually. There are also snatches of overheard conversations. Conversations of the English and Scottish workers were recorded separately and then carefully matched with the location shooting. And then at the end, we hear a poem written for the film by W. H. Auden together with music composed for the film by Benjamin Britten. It is only after the story has been told—when we have learned everything the filmmakers want us to learn about the night mail delivery system—that we are escorted back into the world of “artificial” sound. As we see a long shot of the train traveling through the Scottish countryside, the rhythmic percussive sound, almost a repetition of the rumbling and clanging we have heard at other points in the film, commences. The recitation also begins rhythmically, with a strong 4/4 meter: This is the Night Mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner and the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time. The poem is not sung or spoken, but intoned on a single vocal note. It doubly emphasizes the strong meter of this part of the score, the voice functioning as the lead instrument over the orchestra, a vocal punctuation to the beat that the orchestra is accentuating. The voice then drops out for another repetition of the relentless orchestral rhythm, reentering with a slightly more insistent tonal quality as the poem honoring—almost eulogizing—the night mail service continues. Suddenly, the mood of the music changes, and trumpets, like the ones heard at the start of the film, are heard again in a similar fanfare. Wind instruments reintroduce the agitated music previously played and aurally paint a rushing sensation. sounds 241 There is a slight ethereal quality to this short section of the score, and the words of the text seem to take on more importance than the meter previously established. The rhythm then returns to prominence, and as the train finally begins to reduce speed and pull into the station that is its final destination, the trumpet fanfare sounds five times before the...