Auditory Exposures: Faulkner, Eisenstein, and Film Sound

In identifying cinematic qualities—including Eisensteinian montage—in Faulkner's major fiction, scholars have conceived of film as an exclusively visual medium. This essay provides evidence of Faulkner's familiarity with Eisenstein's cinematic praxis by examining the similarities betw...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PMLA : Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 2013-01, Vol.128 (1), p.87-100
Main Author: GLEESON-WHITE, SARAH
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
American literature
Culture
Death
Familiarity
Faulkner, William (1897-1962)
Fiction
Film theory
Literary criticism
Modernism
Modernist art
Montage
Motion picture industry
Motion pictures
Movies
Novels
Screenplays
Sound
Voiced sounds
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Summary:In identifying cinematic qualities—including Eisensteinian montage—in Faulkner's major fiction, scholars have conceived of film as an exclusively visual medium. This essay provides evidence of Faulkner's familiarity with Eisenstein's cinematic praxis by examining the similarities between the novelist's 1934 film treatment of Blaise Cendrars's Sutter's Gold and one that Eisenstein produced in 1930. It then argues that there is a striking continuity between the two treatments in the realm of sound—in particular, the imagining and inscription of film sound. Most surprising is the manner in which Faulkner's sonic experimentalism, clearly influenced by Eisenstein, works its way into the novel on which he was working at the time, Absalom, Absalom!. Informed by screen writing and film-sound technology, Faulkner's high-modernist novel contributes to emerging scholarly interest in the auditory culture of modernism.
ISSN:0030-8129
1938-1530
DOI:10.1632/pmla.2013.128.1.87