Throughout this process, I’ve been thinking a lot about my interest in sound and what first got me hooked and that film was M. Though it was one I’d already seen, I decided I better embrace my what inspired me so I went back and watched M again. So, without further ado, here are a few of my original insights and comments on the sound in Fritz Lang’s M.
The most striking aspect of Fritz Lange’s M, to me, is the way in which the sound and the image are constantly edited in a similar fashion and treated as equally essential to the story. M uses a discontinuous soundtrack that, rather than simply using sound to unify the images, treats sound as the image’s equal by applying the same set of conventions to it that dictate how the spectator is guided to take notice of specific elements. The cinematic conventions of video editing further the plot by conducting the spectator’s attention. These conventions—such as the close-up, the shot-reverse-shot, and the slow motion effect—are unnatural and seemingly obvious, but to the spectator they are often hard to notice; they seem natural and thus appear invisible because they mimic how our concentration is often refocused based on what is most significant. Rather than including every action that happens within the world of the film, filmmakers edit the image track to only include the action that is relevant to the plot to help sustain the attention of the viewer and carry the plot.
Lange uses this approach to accentuate the sounds that are important to the narrative to emphasize their influence to the viewer. Rick Altman believed sound served “to anchor the body to a single continuous experience [… ] providing a satisfying and comfortable base from which the eyes can go flitting about, […] satisfying our visual desire without compromising our unity and fixity.” This analysis of the continuous soundtrack approaches the issue of sound in a way that fails to consider the mental processes of the spectator and the realistic perception of audio.
Think about your own lives. The constant stream of unimportant and distracting noises in our busy realities condition us to tune out most sounds unless they command and hold our attention. The relatively subtle sound effects and lack of any background music in M guarantee that the viewer pays more attention to the ones that are included. This is an example of Michel Chion’s concept of rarefaction. By making the very presence of any sound scarce, we pay more attentions to the ones that do exist. The lack of the continuous soundtrack (and with that, less distractions from the narrative) in M is essentially what prevents the viewer from tuning out the sounds that are so important to the plot.
The relatively muted sound of street noise as Elsie Beckmann walks home from school causes the blaring horn of the car that almost hits her to stand out and startle the viewer; the threat of danger evoked by the car horn occurs right before her kidnapping and this use of sound ups the viewer’s suspense—however unknowingly—in preparation for what is to come. Furthermore, the lack of background music in M results in the increased attentiveness to music when Hans Beckert’s whistled motif is first heard as he buys poor Elsie a balloon. The sudden musical motif takes on a significance that would not be nearly as effective if the viewer were constantly hearing background music throughout the film.
In addition to sounds and images both being treated as equal and only being included when they serve the purpose of furthering the plot, they also assert their respective dominance and narrative importance by, at times, contributing to the scene in a way that the other cannot. In the scene where Elsie is kidnapped, the image we are shown is of a posted warning about the kidnapper as Elsie bounces her ball against it. The kidnapper himself walks up and talks to Elsie, but we only see his shadow. In order to keep up the air of suspense and intrigue until the moment where we first see Beckert’s face, the image cannot show us the kidnapper but must rely on the dialogue to convey that he has kidnapped her.
Later in the film, after the blind balloon man recognize Beckert’s whistle and Beckert has been marked with the “M”, there is complete silence in the film as the men tail Beckert; just as the men trying to catch him are pursuing him based on image alone—the image of the “M”—the viewer can only watch what is happening and thus must construct their own interpretation of the sounds and conversation between Beckert and his victim. This process mimics how we perceive events as they occur in reality. When we experience sound without a visible source, we make inferences about its origin; likewise, when we see an event occur but cannot hear the sound that accompanies it, we attempt to mentally reproduce the accompanying sound based on the image to discern its meaning.
M astutely shows us how the independence of sound and image shape the meaning of the film and offer unique possibilities of their own to perpetuate and evoke realism in the viewer and thus provide a more honest and meaningful film. Lang’s M posits sound and image as equals to emphasize their unique power through their situational ability to contribute something to the narrative in a way that the other cannot. The film capitalizes on how the forces of sound and image work together in our every day mental processes in order to stimulate a higher level of understanding in the spectator.
The images and sounds that make up our individual reality are too overwhelming to be attentive to them all and thus we must pick and choose what to focus our attention on based on what holds meaning and captures our interest. We naturally filter out some sights and sounds, while concentrating wholeheartedly on others, to form our own cohesive interpretation of the world. These psychological tendencies, while subtle and often unnoticeable, guide how the audience perceives and interprets a film. Through the competing forces of sound and image, these tendencies dictate what the viewer pays attention to, and consequently, what the viewer takes away from the narrative. This concept would best be taken advantage of through a cinema that uses sound and image as separate entities that are only implemented when they are absolutely necessary to further narrative progression. Approaching films through the subjective method of human perception, focusing on its tendency to succumb to distraction and only focus on what demands to be noticed, would yield a minimalist cinema that heightened the significance of each image and each sound simply through its very existence in the film. Although seemingly jarring at first, the spectator would eventually learn to analyze the confirmed importance of each element, and through their confirmation of its inherent importance, be continuously active in their interpretation of the film rather than passively allowing the film to happen in front of them.
an·ti·cin·e·phile 