24/2000 - HFS

eration, which produced a strong sense of impotence in the
servants of the Empire. This mentality of impotent revolt
remained even under the socialist rule when, after the World
War II, most of the former Austro-Hungarian territories
became socialist countries. Having no control over their
lives, people could choose between despair and mockery of
their situation. The cultural sphere chose humour, although
their humour did not always produce laughter. Its main
characteristics were a total lack of respect for authority and
power accompanied by the humorist’s lack of illusions
about himself. This type of humour, however, produced one
typical character: a simple people’s man who is constantly
cracking jokes. Despite all his troubles, this disillusioned
joker keeps telling jokes, often sarcastic ones, at his own
expense; fooling around he hides his real face from his totally
non-humorous surrounding. Each mid-European nation
has one such humoristic character in its cultural heritage;
however, most certainly the best-known is The Good Soldier
Schweik, creation of Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek.
The paper follows basic characteristics of Schweikian
humour (in the chapters Schweik — False Insanity,
Rebellious Pessimism and Irony). It displays the ways in
which revolting pessimism and scepticism manifested themselves
in mid-European countries, with Kundera as its most
prominent representative (The Main Enemy’ of Socialist
Doctrine: pessimism and irony). However, this ’pessimistic
humour’ has been best developed in the animated sphere, i.
e. in cartoons, and in the following chapters the author of
the paper proceeds by reviewing this aspect: Middle
European Cartoons — To Die is Fun; Saul Steinberg and his
Influence — a philosophical line; Middle European
Animated Films — ’Schweik’ Anomaly; Animation — the Art
of Accelerated Metamorphosis; Czech Puppet Films —
Images from the Marionette’s Life; Trnka’s Bitter
Resignation; Schvankmeier’s Surrealist Pessimism; Twodimensional
’Puppets’ of Bretislav Pojar; Zagreb School of
Animation: Freedom Limited by Self-censorship;
Dovnikovi}’s Naive Heroes; First Case Study: One Day of
Life by Dovnikovi}; Absolute Losers of Nedjeljko Dragi};
Second Case Study: Passing Days by Nedjeljko Dragi}. The
conclusion of the paper is the chapter: Instead of a
Conclusion: Humour Outlives Politics. (Text is the author’s
translation from Swedish).
Ante Peterli}
The Taming of Sound — the
Beginnings of Sound Film
UDC: 791.43:681.8
With the introduction of sound technology the field of film
perception widened and the communicative channel became
richer which consequently produced a slightly different film
poetics in comparison with that of the films of the silent
period.
Hrvatski filmski ljetopis 24/2000.
In the period immediately after the appearance of sound
technology filmmakers focused their attention on the most
expressive possibilities of the usage of sound, namely, its
loudness, the possibility of making it more or less loud, or
to remove it completely. Shifts in loudness, especially lowering
of sound, produced a particular rhetorical accent and
tension in the anticipation of the ending, like in the film
Hallelujah (King Vidor, 1929), where in the last sequence of
the hunt through the swamp the music and all the previous
’noises’ die out leaving nothing but ’silence’. The effect of
producing almost complete silence thus obtained its rhetorical
and dramatic function that it has not lost to the day.
Very early the authors also used the ability of some sounds
to overshadow other, momentary sounds. Several films give
good examples of deviations in relation to the sounds of
reality, such as Sous les Toits de Paris (Under the Rooftops of
Paris, 1930) and Le Million (Million, 1931) directed by René
Clair where the songs of street performers ’overshadow’ all
other sounds. In this manner Clair unifies a dissected scene
and draws the attention towards movement, gestures and
faces — incidentally evoking silent films. The practice of
hegemony of only one sound also obtained a certain stylistic
value since an event underlined by only one particular
sound would turn into something unreal and fantastic, as in
Dreyer’s film Vampyr (1932) where over 95% of the film is
’covered’ with music consequently creating the atmosphere
of a fantasy world.
As opposed to the ’obsession’ with music started by the first
sound film The Jazz Singer (1927), there were also some
films with almost no music at all. In a classic gangster film
Scarface (1932) by Howard Hawks, for example, predominate
dialogues supplemented with noises, while the loudest
elements are shots from machine guns and the sound of racing
cars — the most important elements of the iconography
of gangster film in the making. In dialogue screwball comedies
the noises were just realistic signs of ambiance, and
there were only several kinds: footsteps, murmur, opening
and closing of doors, shots, various sirens and bells (churches
and clocks). Particular sound could also obtain a value of
a ’sign’ with a huge rhetorical impact. Besides the abovementioned
sounds, as far as human voice was concerned,
apart from words and singing, filmmakers preferred screaming
(crime movies, horror movies), and, as a sort of curiosity,
whistling. For example, in the movie Scarface the killer,
shown only as a shadow, ominously whistles, the same thing
does the psychopath in the movie M, whereas the TV series
Whistler, produced at the end of 30’s, took on whistling as
its emblem.
Sound connected with editing that assumed temporal and
spatial discontinuity in the representation of the world
opened a way to the realization that sound could be transferred
from frame to frame, that it could ’spill’ over the
whole scene, and that the source of sound need not necessarily
be present on the screen (off sound). An even greater
level of detachment from real appearances and the real-life
perception of sound were achieved with the usage of voiceover
technique and interior monologue. Partly thanks to the
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