Cinema is an art of the image, but also of sound, and as we shall see, even before sound cinema.

Sound in cinema is not (should not be) just a confirmation of the image, to give it greater realism. To prove this, there are countless films that have exploited the sound dimension to add other meanings to the literal image, to deny or contradict it, to anticipate or replace it, or even to create irony and humor.

And since sound is a physical phenomenon (elastic movement in a material medium, usually air), it often becomes almost palpable – and in the extreme we can speak of “visceral sound”.

We have already brought together three senses: sight, hearing and touch. In the art of cinema we often find this ability for sounds to communicate touch and texture, for images to translate sounds, and for sounds to represent something that cannot be seen.

For this pair of screenings we have chosen two works that allow us to think about sound in cinema. We begin, paradoxically, with one of the last great works of silent cinema.

“The Wind” (1928) is a movie where sound is present without us hearing it – we hear it inside our heads. The images are there to summon our hearing, and even our whole body, so that we feel like the character, at the center of a gale, which is also a gust of emotions. Sjöström takes cinema as an image to its sensory limits.

“Delicatessen” (1990), is a delight for both the eye and the ear, as the sound spices up every scene, almost every gesture of the characters. By means of sounds we are guided through the apartments of a building, we hear what happens outside the image – sound is an acoustic map of the setting. Sound is humor, joy and terror, or being this a black comedy, it can also be all at once.

(Curatorship of Sérgio Pereira)