La voix au cinéma : divorces et retrouvailles

Abstract

This study of voice in the cinema opposes two traditions in film theory: on the one hand, André Bazin celebrated the way the Seventh Art preserves a twofold trace of faces (pictures) and voices (sound); on the other hand, Rudolf Arnheim’s more formalist approach insisted on the specificity of two “incompatible” languages (pictures / sound) in what he considered specific modes of artistic creation. This couple (voices/faces) suggests metaphors of marriage and separation: the article begins with absent bachelor voices reconstructed by visual means; it then deals with technical devices (playback…) and, above all, with the way divorces are organized between voices and faces, before it leads to the comedy of remarriage of voices with their visual counterparts. A short presentation of two antagonistic approaches in Casablanca and Pepe le Moko concludes the study.