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Thinking Sideways about Sound and Montage

During editing, the filmmaker decides how each shot should be preceded and followed by other shots. Sound does not come after (or alongside) the image: sound is visible on the screen, it's part of the image, it comes out of the image, it's all around the screen, sound embraces the screen.

Precisely because the audience can't see the origin of all sounds on screen (or only for a short time, in the case of a moving camera), a sound frame envelops the image, and a film sound is produced.

Of course, one could portray image and sound separately: we could watch the film today and hear the sound next week, but it is only in accordance with reality (and thus not an act of editing) to convey them simultaneously. That is why it is confusing to call sound films a form of montage.

When a wailing sound is deliberately added to the soundtrack, then it can be called a montage. Changing the sound's volume while the image remains unchanged is also a montage. For example: a person is talking in the foreground, with an inaudible or barely audible brass band playing in the background. When the person is no longer talking, the music is turned up. Even without direct changes, sound plays a part. The “weight” a scene acquires by its length (and which provides a reason to move on to the next scene) is influenced no less by the sound than by the plot or the images. In the creation of a scene's rhythm, the interplay between the picture frame and the sound frame is crucial. Starting from the sounds, that interplay includes the length of their visible origin and their blending with movements in the image, even when these movements have no direct connection with the sounds. For example: a person puts their hands in their pocket just when the audience hears the sound of a squeaking door.

Of course, this “blending” should not be abused to create an oppressive atmosphere. It is more sincere when this synchronicity merely serves a beautiful rhythm. And by beauty, I mean the tendency to bring about a state or a development that arises from that which is chosen.

In silent films, scenes in which sounds are made visible are very different from scenes in which this is not the case (a conversation compared to a landscape); they are different, first and foremost, because the few sounds in the film theatre are perceived differently and, moreover, because the audience's perception is affected by whether they can see the sound's origin.

In the film Fortini/Cani (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 1977), there's a long, almost completely silent shot of a mountain landscape. Then a group of young people enters the frame. Although they can barely be heard, the sound is significantly louder, because the audible now aligns with the visible.

Sounds that may or may not be voluntarily stored by the audience can be rearranged, amplified or attenuated while watching a silent film. Memories of noise drift away, as it were, in the silent theatre.

With sound films, on the other hand, the “memorised sound” can be altered immediately and the audience is situated in the film's distinct sound world.

In Numéro deux [Number Two] (Jean-Luc Godard, 1975), it is argued that noise can dominate; the noise of dictators, like Hitler and Vorster, dominates. In Fortini/Cani a woman stops talking when the church bells start ringing loudly. After this bell clamour comes the shot of the mountainscape.

The dictatorial noise hides its rudeness and brutality beneath a layer of dishonesty or hypocrisy, which is often borrowed from culture or science. Dishonesty and lies are essential to the noise we must fight against. The moaning of a suffering person is disturbing, but one does not fight it, one answers it.

With every uproar, forces are discharged. Film must be an opportunity to analyse or visualise these forces and to transform them. Both film and music contribute to the equitable transfer and diffusion of these forces.

When poison has entered your body, you put your finger in your mouth and vomit, or you take an antidote or drink milk, so that you become resistant to it. Fits of laughter are not uncommon in cinema. The poison of dictatorial sound can be edited in such a way that it becomes ridiculous, or its irrationality becomes apparent. Fortini/Cani, undoubtedly, is milk. Numéro deux, being such a liberating movie, is vomit.

Images from Numéro deux (Jean-Luc Godard, 1975)

This text was originally published as ‘Zijdelings over geluid, montage’ in CINEECRI: publikaties over film 9, 1976. The English translation was published in Frans van de Staak. The Word as Archipelago (2025), the first monograph in English on Van de Staak’s work, which followed an eponymous retrospective hosted by the Spanish film festival Punto de Vista.

ARTICLE
29.10.2025
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