Sound Technique in Alphaville

"The images seem to illustrate the information being presented in the audio track. Shots of Natasha and Lemmy are edited together and lit in such a way that they seem to disappear and reappear in a rhythm that mirrors the verbal pulse of the voiceover: ‘Light that goes…light that returns.’ A medium shot of Natasha is sustained in the visual track as ‘Oh beloved of all, beloved of one alone…your mouth silently promised to be happy’ is spoken in the voiceover. As the line is uttered, Natasha’s mouth softly breaks into a fragile smile, providing a visual illustration of the imagery evoked by the audio track. The power of the visual image is that it augments the expressions of the voiceover by conveying subtle nuances that might not be possible to convey in a verbal manner.

It is rare that the visual track of a film is enlisted in the service of the audio track in such a way. As Mary Ann Doane points out in her article, 'The Voice in the Cinema', sound is most commonly used so that it merely augments the meaning conveyed through images. Sound often completes our sensory experience of the represented world, but visual information is usually endowed with primacy. The fascinating aspect of the interlude in Alphaville is the way in which this relationship is inverted: the visual track contains images that merely illustrate the aural information presented in the sequence. Images of Natasha and Lemmy show different expressions, motions, relations of bodies. Collectively they illustrate the overall sensibility being discussed in the monologue: that of being in love"

Sound Technique in Alphaville