“I Adore Sound”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1034, 26 July 1930, Page 25

“I Adore Sound”

Beverley Nichols Talks of Talkies TRAMP OF ANT ARMY When I sit back in the stalls of a movie theatre, and listen to a million-dollar lady in a thousanddollar frock repeating a ten-cent sentence, I feel a little sad--1 say to myself: Scientists have sweated and pined in order to perfect the remarkable apparatus which brings the speaking likeness of this lady before me. Chemists have sat up all night, engineers have sat down all day, capitalists have reclined in positions of considerable discomfort for weeks, in order that . . . What? That I may hear a broad accent bellow into space: “Freddy, I’m not like that. Honest, I’m not. If you think women are like that, Freddy, you’re a bum.” Or words of similar import. This. I can only repeat, in accents low and soft, makes me shake my head in a graceful but melancholy fashion. I feel as though I had entered a magnificent picture gallery, designed by Lutyens, and decorated by Brangwyn, to find that its main hall was filled with postcards of the Brighton Pavilion by moonlight. Now. I adore sounds. I am not being vague or “blah.” Almost all sound, being a subtle sign of the

world’s pulsing life, interests me. l love the sound of trams rounding cor ners on the Embankment, the swirl of rain on grey slate roofs, the weird, barbaric bum of the telephone. I am not even averse to the Longfellow patter of little feet. And therefore if I were a large, rich mau with a talkie apparatus and a board of pale, subservient directors, I would take my machine out into the world and I would record such things as this: An actual performance of a revue as heard by a member of the stalls—i.e., a tornado of striking matches, hacking coughs, banging seats, patentleather shoes being rubbed together, rustling chocolate foils, whispers of “She’s not nearly as young as that,” sniffs, more whispers, of “The man in front’s got such an enormous head that . . .” rattling of bangles, post-

prandial sighs, and, through it all, the distant voice of the singer—oh, so faint! crooning, "There’s a song in my heart." Which is about the only place it will ever be. There are a thousand animal noises that might be romantically treated, by magnification. I saw a film of pond life in which tiny organisms were magnified to the size of dragons. Noise of an Oyster Think how almost unbearably exciting that film would have been if the sounds made by those minute creatures had also been reproduced! I should like to hear, for example, the tramp, tramp of an army of ants on the march- —the hurrying lisp of their tiny feet over the sands must be deafening, in its proper proportion. I should like to hear the noise an oyster really makes. It must make some noise, because I defy an oyster to produce the sort of pearl which the lady on my left was wearing last night without at least a murmur of discontent. I should like to hear the drone of bees in a hive, like an immense chorus of some strange religious order, the sweet, silken hiss of the spider as it spiffs its fairy web, the sad tapping of the death beetle in some ancient chest. . . . Indeed, the scope is unlimited. You would catch more of the humour of England by placing a machine on the counter of a ba,r in the Waterloo Road, toward closing time, than in the most elaborate scenario imaginable. More of its heroism by recording the most ordinary conversations at a midnight coffee stall. However, such things would need thought, imagination, and trouble, so we may rest assured that we shall never hear them.