Stanley Cavell and the acknowledgment of silence in sound film

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze the Cavellian discussion on the issue of acknowledging silence in cinema. It is a matter of understanding what it means to qualify cinema as partially modernist art and, at the same time, partially defined by its automatism. Within the scope of a debate on the nature of the filmic image, in line with Cavell's understanding of the link between the advent of cinema and the consolidation of modern skepticism, our intention is to highlight how the acknowledgment of silence is seen as an important aspect of the essential realism of the photographic image and as something that also reveals the nature of our language. Being so, we begin by addressing the distinction between sound and image in the Cavellian ontology of cinema, discussing how the cinematic image involves the necessary “realistic” expression of the unsayable. Next, we explore the relationship between Cavell and Greenberg, a relationship also permeated by the readings of Fried, in order to think of the ways that film can be considered a modern art and the implications of this, especially regarding the filmic medium post-World War II. This so that we can, finally, think about how a modernist declaration of the filmic medium, compatible with Cavellian ideas, involves highlighting the need to recognize silence in sound cinema.