Film Sound Modernism
By (Author) Andy Birtwistle
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
BFI Publishing
11th December 2025
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Music of film and stage
781.542
Hardback
272
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Despite the key contribution of sound to the development of cinema as a modern (and modernist) art form, analyses of the relationship between film and modernism often overlook the key role played by sound in film.
Film Sound Modernism addresses this critical neglect by exploring how speech, music and sound effects have been used by filmmakers to articulate the conditions and experiences of modernity. Through a wide-ranging analysis of international films, including those from Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Argentina, Senegal and Mexico, Andy Birtwistle approaches modernism as both a trans-historical and trans-national phenomenon.
He provides close readings of key examples of experimental and art cinema, including The Forgotten Village (1941), LAvventura (1960), Penthesilea (1974), A City of Sadness (1989), and Mysterious Object At Noon (2000). He then goes on to tackle topics including the use of environmental sounds in the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Tsai Ming-liang, and Edward Yang, the voices of non-actors and artist filmmakers, and the ways in which forms of creative noise challenge the traditional division of the soundtrack into dialogue, music and effects. In doing so, he investigates the forms of sonic and audio-visual experimentation that developed within the medium and re-examines cinemas place within the broader history of modernism.
Andy Birtwistle is Reader in Film and Sound at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. He is author of Cinesonica: Sounding Film and Video (2010). His research interests include film sound, avant-garde film and art cinema, and sonic arts. His writing has been published in The Journal of Sound and Culture of British Cinema and Television, Journal of British Cinema and Television, The New Soundtrack, and Visual Culture in Britain.