ABSTRACT
As an art form, cinema is related to sound more than is generally perceived. Its speaking form emerged less than a century ago. Through talking cinema, the voice of each person and the voices of the many could be heard: their words, their cries, their sighs, their songs … cinema became vocal. In films, the specific personalities of the speakers were soon characterized by the registers and timbres of their voices, just like they were for opera singers. These voices could therefore signal a range of tensions and intentions that were either in conflict or in tune with each other. Film directors, just like opera composers, therefore became “voice directors” as much as stage directors; they became orchestrators composing with all of the sound registers of real life, just as much as they were “image directors” and storytellers.
