Philip Brophy,
100 Modern Soundtracks.
(BFI Screen Guides) London: BFI Publishing, 2004.
ISBN: 1 84457 013 4 (hb) £45
ISBN: 1 84457 014 2 (pb) £13.99
204pp
(Review copy supplied by BFI publishing)

It seems that the world is finally waking up to sound. Or, in less hyperbolic terms, film and media studies appear at last to be acknowledging on a considerable scale, the significance of the role sound plays in audiovisual texts. The history of the field has been dominated by considerations of the image as the primary source of meaning and pleasure of the text; the visual always outweighing the audible in the signifying equation, where the latter so often appears as a mere footnote or aside. Currently there are several volumes in production focusing on sound (and music) in such texts, and a noticeable increase in journal articles and conference panels interested in the long overlooked partner of audiovisual media. Philip Brophy has been a consistent and influential figure in championing and investigating the role of the soundtrack in the cinema long before this current vogue in scholarship. His work as a composer and theorist necessarily informs his particular approach to the task, and in BFI’s 100 Modern Soundtracks, he manages to do far more than simply cataloguing some of the more interesting or innovative film soundtracks. Brophy also advocates and develops an alternate language for discussing sound in film.

Almost every lengthy study on film sound acknowledges the initial problems of language when approaching the subject. The visual prejudice of Western cultures have ensured a correlative linguistic bias, where visual metaphors abound. The result is that writers on film sound find themselves in situations where the existing limits of language prove too restrictive to adequately convey the way sound works, the way it moves and the way it sounds. Theorists like Michel Chion have attempted to resolve this difficulty by forging new words and terms which more accurately represent their ideas without the confusion of attempting to work with visually-charged language. Brophy confronts this challenge by manipulating language with a poetic sensibility, sparking the aural imagination in the ear of the reader.

In his introduction to the catalogue of modern soundtracks he has compiled, Brophy establishes the conditions upon which the selection was made, while at the same time quite convincingly arguing for a specific approach to acknowledging, examining and discussing film sound which is specifically sonic in nature, rather than a simplistic imposition of visual models onto sound. What seems to be at the core of this approach is the move to a more experiential style of writing on and about sound, where the sensation of hearing informs the language and the very structure of analysis. As such, there is an emphasis on the amalgamation of score and sound design in the interpretive and perceptual process of listening.

Clearly, the soundtrack is a chimera of the cinema. It is sound and noise; noise and music; music and speech; speech and sound. At no point can it be distilled into a form which allows us to safely state its essential quality […] Despite the many existing ways in which critics and practitioners tend to separate the two forces, they continue to combine according to a unique, mutative and hermetic logic – little of which conforms to literary models, operatic figures, painterly diagrams or photographic allusions. (1)

The ear and the flesh of the audience does not distinguish between these forces as though they are discrete elements. Sound is a physical event and is perceived through the body as such. In order to understand the operation of the film soundtrack, this inherent quality of sound and its perception needs to be considered without the distinctions between score and sound design which Brophy notes critics and practitioners seem so attached to. What comes of this perspective is the realisation of a more holistic approach to film sound where the voice as much as the sound effect becomes a sensual instrument rather than solely a vehicle for speech and its associated meanings.

However, Brophy significantly limits his employment of this approach in this context by defining his use of the ‘modern soundtrack’ as the subject. Arguing that “cinema is a spectacular practice” of modernism-as-destruction (3), Brophy goes onto claim that “all that is modern in cinema is the result of technological, metaphysical and existential enquiry” (4). His conclusion is that:

Cinema’s modern audiovisuality therefore has less to do with the enlightened Classical arts of literature, theatre, painting – even music; it has more to do with endoscopic exploration, plastic surgery, chemical alteration, electroshock therapy and nerve stimulation. (4)

By focusing on films which reveal “the scars, make-up and covering of these operations” while their soundtracks “acknowledge the mutated state of being which arises from decentred and deconstructed audiovisual distribution” (4), Brophy ultimately assembles a collection of films which challenge the relevance of an interpretive paradigm that demands the separation of score and sound design. In many of the films contained within, what is generated is more akin to a soundscape which defies the organising principles traditionally imposed on the soundtrack.

Brophy notes “key transformations by which the modern soundtrack is manifest” that are prominent in the films included in the collection. These include “ruminations on the nature of recorded sound”, “the spatialisation of atmospheres and environments” and “celebrations of electricity” (4). Such “transformations” of a sonic nature can ultimately occur at a narrative, diegetic and spectatorial level. Here again Brophy emphasises the very nature of sound in its numerous layers of manifestation (physical, psychological, phonological to name a few of those he identifies) and notes that the modern soundtrack is marked by “heightened sensation” (5) of one or more of these layers. This notion of excess and overloading runs through both the films and Brophy’s treatment and discussion of them. There is no restraint in his approach; the kinetic power of sound is present in Brophy’s treatment of each soundtrack, enlivening the very language of examining sound and its reception.

The selection of films featured in 100 Modern Soundtracks is diverse and carefully considered. As well as the titles one would expect to feature owing to their previous treatment in studies of film sound (like The Conversation (USA, 1974), Psycho (USA, 1960) The Exorcist (USA, 1973) Once Upon a Time in the West(Italy/USA, 1968) The Birds (USA, 1963)), there is a proliferation of less acknowledged works filling out the list which makes for a useful reference guide to films to keep an ear out for. Speaking personally, my own enthusiasm for film sound was excited with the concise but deliciously evocative treatment of soundtracks such as Suspiria (Italy/West Germany, 1977) Magnolia (USA, 1999) Videodrome (Canada/USA, 1983) and Akira(Japan, 1988).

There are so many more challenging, animate, writhing, pulsing ideas on modern film sound contained in Brophy’s book than one could imagine would fit in its modest size and many more again than I could convey in a short review. His style is a practical direction of how critics and theorists might go some way to effectively convey the work of sound, and the affect that the modern soundtrack creates for its audience. In his writing, throbs the sensation of the bass and hiss of his sonic subject.

Katy Stevens
La Trobe University, Australia.

Created on: Tuesday, 7 March 2006 | Last Updated: 7-Mar-06