The Resonance of the «Déjà-Là»: Correspondences, Inversions, and Material Frictions Between Chion’s Impossible History and the Electroacoustic Imperative

Traditional media historiography often treats the evolution of cinematic sound as a clean, teleological march toward technological optimization. Yet, Michel Chion’s interrupted yet contemporary interrogation, unfolding along the opening of an impossible history and unrealized paths («possibles non réalisés»), reopens an originary wound: the fracture between material resistance—fixation on the medium and localization within the audiovisual fabric—and synthetic erasure (or the neutralization of the indices of materiality).

This study returns to the foundations of audiovisual theory, placing Chion’s recent critical essays in dialogue with the concrete topography of Louis Malle’s cherished 1957 film. What emerges is not a claim of historical, logical, or syntactic priority, but rather a constellation of correspondences wherein analytical models, themselves advenient, illuminate our compressed and optimized digital everydayness—a contemporary landscape that all too often drives toward that linguistic and formal leveling that aligns well with the concept of technological lissage — to ultimately extend as a methodological imperative aimed at refounding the analysis of the electroacoustic device.

The English translation of this article is currently being finalized and will be available here shortly on June 8th.

Figure 1: The place of enunciation and the dissimulated author. Still 727 from shot 121 of Ascenseur pour l'échafaud(1957), portraying Florence (Jeanne Moreau) in a lateral tracking shot. The shop window reveals a hidden silhouette, Hitchcockian in nature, corresponding to Malle’s profile—hypothesized by the author as a deliberate and otherwise unrecorded cameo. // Daniele, Romina. Ascenseur pour l'échafaud: il luogo della musica nell'audiovisione, p. 211. [Elevator to the Gallows: The Place of Music in Audio-Vision]. Milano: RDM Records & Books, Edizioni Letterarie, 2011. [ISBN: 9788890490590].

Figure 2. Guide to Reading and Argumented Index.

configuring itself as a calculated musical insert. Chion’s explicit use of the term «cluster» claims a precise musical categorization of the accident, elevating the simultaneous agglomeration of notes to a pure apport de réel.

When we return to our 2010 study, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud: il luogo della musica nell'audiovisione (Milano, RDM Records), and cross-examine this datum with the sound design of Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (by Louis Malle, 1957), we observe a brilliant formal analogy: the harsh industrial noise textures, the metallic clattering of the grate, and the heavy structural thuds of the stuck and falling elevator cabin behave exactly like non-intentional «apports de réel», sharing the same material density as the organ «cluster» in Gwangi, but with a transdiegetic value. Louis Malle does not treat these mechanical noises as clean post-production environmental effects, and their insinuation between the filmic and the profilmic is less accidental but equally surprising, as we shall see; yet, they are preserved in their raw and resistant state. These emissions rub directly against the minimalist instrumentation, anchoring the scene to a secure yet estranging spatial gravity that lays bare the physical entrapment of the subject, and reveals the techno-linguistic apprehension of the author working on the filmic text during the montage phase.

Critical inquiry has widely demonstrated how these sounds dialogue in counterpoint with Pierre Michelot’s double bass and Kenny Clarke’s drums—the only two instruments present in the tracks dedicated to the elevator sequence—operating a textual friction within the soundtrack for the described scene (see in this regard the analysis in the volume Daniele, 2010, pp. 155-159). In the tracks specifically recorded for the elevator cage (Julien dans l'ascenseur and Évasion de Julien), Miles Davis, Barney Wilen, and René Urtreger do not play at all. The music is reduced to the bone, to the absolute structural essence: a duo composed exclusively of Pierre Michelot’s double bass and Kenny Clarke’s drums. The «non-intention» attributed to those sounds does not reside, therefore, in the unpredictability of the event, but rather in the material and anti-narrative status of the sound itself. It is not a clean, «catalog» sound effect crafted to blend invisibly into the cinematic illusion. It is «non-intentional» precisely because its acoustic violence, its analog grain, and the manner in which it unexpectedly fuses with Michelot and Clarke’s jazz strip it of any mere function as commentary or environmental effect. It becomes autonomous matter. This instrumental rarefaction causes the industrial, metallic, and mechanical noises of the elevator not to overlap with a melodic line, but rather to occupy the textual space left vacant by the trumpet and the piano, merging with the rhythm section into a single, dense, avant-garde sonic body. Although Chion’s structural example refers to a pure absence of intention on the level of the diegesis (resolved in the accidental cluster-event), the critical perception of the creaks and industrial cuts of that elevator—which exhibits the material flagrancy of the analog cinema of the late 1950s—makes the syntactic foreignness defined by the French theorist as «non-intentional» resonate.

Non-intention, here, reveals itself as nobly material and analog: the contemporary listener and viewer does not securely associate those noises with the mechanical origin of the elevator destined to collide, nor do they passively assimilate them into the filmed object. These extremely real and concrete sounds activate an imperative dialogue with every other filmic element, to the point of being understood as an integral part of the jazz fabric, constituting to all intents and purposes an avant-garde micro-musical texture.

This resistance to artificial smoothing becomes even more symptomatic when placed in comparison with the criticism leveled by Chion in the second chapter of Pour une histoire impossible du cinéma against Eo (2022) by Jerzy Skolimowski. Here emerge the nodes of a denunciation of the dual contemporary crisis linked to the virtualization of geographical and linguistic space through modern digital optimization.

On one hand, on the visual level, he criticizes the omniscient and detached flight of drone cameras, which performs a geometric leveling, causing the loss of the visual altitude and the terrestrial anchoring of the donkey’s point of view, elevating itself artificially to the sky. Chion writes: «It seems to me that Skolimowski could have stayed at the level of the donkey, at human/animal eye level. Filmed from the sky on several occasions, his donkey seemed to me to "step out of character" and become an extra.»

On the other hand, on the sonic and cultural level, Chion identifies a true linguistic and geopolitical lissage, attributed to the practice of universal subtitles and to the choice of making characters speak in a standardized English (as in Anatomie d'une chute, by Justine Triet, 2023). This process strips the media of their material friction, erasing regional speech and physical distances: «The point is that there is always a spot where languages clash against each other, and avoiding this clash in a multilingual film, relying solely on subtitles, means transmitting a reality devoid of thickness.»

All too often, this macro-narrative leveling of the idiom corresponds to the contemporary micro-phonic level, where a similar process of technological smoothing (lissage) erases the thickness of frequencies. This digital lamination brings us back to Florence in Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, within the visual framework of Paris, when the space literally strips itself of all its sonic connotations. Yet, the total silencing of the urban landscape and the suppression of the very words spoken by the protagonist create a deeply localized and linguistically strategic void, within the scope of the false subjective shot upon which the entire sequence is based. The surrounding metropolis does not go missing in the silence that envelops it; on the contrary, even on the ideological level, it takes upon itself an immense and crushing weight, actively resisting the placeless virtualization that defines modern digital soundscapes.

This dialectic connects, in fact, to the principle of the «déjà-là» (the already-present) that Chion evokes in the third chapter regarding The Silence of the Lambs (1991). In truth, Jonathan Demme’s film has inhabited Chion’s analytical registers since the 1990s. Already in La Musique au cinéma (1995), Chion highlighted how the mixing performed an almost «obscene» operation: «the glass is there, but the sound behaves as if the air between the characters had been sucked away», eliminating every environmental reverberation of the cell. Through the miniaturization of detail (sighs, tongue clicks), cinema no longer uses sound to describe space, but to annul physical distance, depositing the sonic block directly into the spectator's ear.

Today, with the third chapter of the impossible history, the French theorist tightens the mesh of this analysis and registers the configuration of the separation glass and the positioning of Hannibal as a simple «cinema effect» internal to the dynamics of the screenplay, elevating the barrier itself to an expression of the «déjà-là». We are tempted to join Chion in the unanimous consensus paid to this sequence, without forgetting that we have always opposed radical theoretical reservations to it: by raising questions concerning the manner—«Has he been standing for only five seconds, or has he remained in that position for an hour? And does this idea come from the director or, as far as I know, from the performer Anthony Hopkins?»—the French theorist today finally recognizes the configuration of the separation glass and the positioning of Hannibal as a «cinema effect» in keeping with the dynamics of the screenplay. The glass as «déjà-là» is an inflexible and already present visual datum; however, the erasure of air and acoustic distance transforms the entire sonic block into a conspicuous and manipulative «cinema effect». An artifice useful for channeling the emotional reaction of the spectator rather than preserving the flagrancy of matter.

Now, as can be seen, classical media historiography postulates a linear march toward absolute transparency and the total isolation of frequency bands; for this reason, the general public was able to welcome this entirely post-production and non-realistic sound manipulation with enthusiasm and astonishment. On the other hand, however, what we define here as contemporary technological-sonic lissage, by tending to eliminate all friction, generates artificial spaces afflicted by a radical lack of place and apprehension. The Silence of the Lambs contains everything and nothing: the persistence of an originary wound of the medium that resides as much in the ideology of the modes of production of meaning as in the resistance of materials subjugated or loaded with effect. A specular correspondence and contrast is thus established with a practice of a different ideological weight, such as that of Louis Malle, an operation that allows us to reactivate the analytical cores of our 2010 study.

In 1957, the French director valued the mechanical noises of the cage—and the studied acoustic subtraction of the metropolis—conferring upon the sonic materials such a concrete value as to act short of a neutralization of the medium, which at the time was already deeply rooted in the formal fabrics of classical transparency, well before the analog became post-modern or the digital was coded. While the structural friction in the 1991 film seems almost contingent, and is partially absorbed by the hyper-presence of the voice, Malle’s 1957 choice configures itself as a true techno-aesthetic strategy that restores to audio-vision the material density of an authentic place of the text.

II. Epistemological Formulations of the Electroacoustics Magazine Manifesto

This analytical bridge finds its proper visualization in relation to the Manifesto of Electroacoustics Magazine: the editorial project — in which extreme importance is given to the so-defined «electroacoustic sense» — founded on the epistemological concept of the work of art, viewed as such in consideration of historical-artistic, cultural, and aesthetic values, and of reflections on the conditions of knowledge, on the means of production, on the modes of production of meaning. This project is therefore emancipated from traditional categories and genre definitions of artistic making, as it is inherent to formal and compositional processes which, from the perspective of technical and expressive research, primarily imply an analysis of systems of thought and of the structuring of the same for creative purposes.

This logic sees contemporary creators at work within a technological framework, even when they do not explicitly employ digital or electronic tools. Therefore, when we analyze the audiovisual syntax of 1957, we do not find ourselves before a primitive and pre-electronic relic. Although Malle and Miles Davis worked with acoustic instruments and physical film, they were already operating within a radical technological logic of recording, microphone placement, and tape manipulation that directly coaided the syntactic processes of thought concerning the real that becomes filmic.

The manifesto asserts that the contemporary landscape must be understood through the terrain of the audiovisual, as a place of convergence and ferment; and that the histories of modern technological arts, such as photography and electronic music, are internally defined by the profound passage from analog friction to digital imaginaries. Today, the audiovisual device represents the definitive place where these digital, musical, and visual imaginaries confront each other to trace human consciousness back to its own cognitive origin.

Part I. The Trajectory of the Recent Chapters Chionians and the Articulation of Acoustic Matter

I.I. The Trajectory of the Recent Chapters: Between the «Impossible», «Lissage», «Déjà-Là», and Pan-Significance

The progression of Chion’s recent online chapters allows for the articulation of a three-moment interrogation into acoustic matter, examining the way in which structure, body, and signal interact in the history of cinema:

Figure 5: Confinement in Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1957). The vertiginous low-angle frame smashes Julien’s body (Maurice Ronet) inside geometric, inflexible perspective lines. Visually, this claustrophobic rigor corresponds to the drastic timbral stripping of the soundtrack: the silence of Davis’s trumpet leaves space solely for the material friction (frottement) of the drum brushes and the pizzicato of the double bass, which resonate in the vacuum as mechanical and biological extensions of the elevator shaft.

The Impossible and the Destructuring of the Origin (Chapter 1 – Morlaix)

• Key Concept: Interlocking/embedding («enchâssement») as a geometric structure of the impossible.

• Analytical Focus: In Morlaix (Jaime Rosales, 2024), the wild and acodified use of cinematic parameters (arbitrary variations of ratio, still frames, narrative loops) renders the film impossible to recount in words.

• Analytical Focus: The interlocking/embedding (the film within the film) is not a virtuosity, but the illustration of Lacan’s maxim according to which «the impasse secretes the fictions that rationalize the impossible from which it originates».

• Sonic Connection: This formal dead end bonds with the Chionian «impossible anacusmetro» (1981): if the acousmetre is the omnipresence of the «déjà-là», the anacousmetre represents the traumatic, abrasive, and corporeal fall of the voice that scratches the margins of the visible, exhibiting its constitutive lack.

• The Structural Counterpart of Rohmer: To understand the true scope of the Chionian rejection of the «Rohmerian» cliché applied to Morlaix, it is necessary to go back to the direct use that the theorist makes of the cinema of Eric Rohmer. In Écrire un scénario (1985), Chion indeed takes Pauline à la plage (1983) as a master model of comédie de moeurs capable of dismantling the monopoly of the classical Hollywood screenplay. In that essay, Rohmer is praised for a virtuous and elegant construction that distributes the action within the rigid boundary of a single week, rejecting visual gags to confer a voluntaristic weight upon the word. The Rohmerian word is therefore not the «chaotic flow» or the documentary direct sound recording (presa diretta) of Rosales, but a logical architecture that culminates formally in the pronounced sentence.

Digital Standardization and «Lissage» (Chapter 2 – EO)

• Key Concept: The «lissage» (the smoothing/polishing) of contemporary media.

• Analytical Focus: Looking at EO by Jerzy Skolimowski, Chion diagnoses the erosion of concrete matter on two distinct fronts. He criticizes the visual choice of the omniscient flight of drones, which abandons the terrestrial perspective of the animal for a virtual verticality. In parallel, he identifies in linguistic lissage the result of universal subtitling and the globalization of English in dialogues; practices that act like a clinical patina, removing the acoustic friction and the specific thickness of mother tongues. This geopolitical leveling can accommodate, by extension, a critique of the lissage of the acoustic signal.

Structural Anteriority and Material Accident (Chapter 3 – The Valley of Gwangi / The Silence of the Lambs)

• Key Concept: The «déjà-là» (the already-present) and the encounter with the «apport de réel».

• Analytical Focus: Chion unites in this chapter the physical accident of The Valley of Gwangi (the cowboy who accidentally falls onto the organ, provoking an unforeseen sonic «cluster», a pure contribution of reality) and the famous sequence of the encounter between Clarice and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The pivotal principle is that the spatial and objectual configuration preexists the entry of the characters: the organ (which was already there in the desert) or the cell preexist the subjects. Lecter is already there, immobile and frontal, before the framing and the subject converge upon him. On the audiovisual plane, textual analysis reveals a paradox: while the découpage visually erases the presence of the dividing glass, making it almost invisible and leaving Clarice ideally exposed, the sound mixing cancels the environmental acoustic absorption on Lecter’s voice, restoring it in an unnaturally close close-up devoid of reverberations, which sharply contrasts with the oppressive heaviness of the micro-noises of the cell-cage.

The Suspended Time and the Capitalization of the Medium (Chapter 4 – Blade Runner)

• Key Concept: The «suspended time» and «pan-significance».

• Analytical Focus: This progressive reconfiguration of acoustic matter finds its historiographical fulfillment in the recent fourth chapter of Chionian reflection (June 2026), wherein cinema is defined as a «concrete art» regulated by the principle of «pan-significance». In this theoretical horizon, the articulation of the text is no longer parcelable into abstract macro-categories: every single minimal element recorded and fixed onto the support — from the microscopic tressaillement (shudder) of an actor, to a millimetric raccordo of montage, up to the mixing of sound waves and lights (one may think of the test sequence in Blade Runner) — becomes an absolute bearer of meaning. Within this phenomenological grid, the main axis of direction and perception is no longer the visual order, but rather the «time» wonderfully held back, whose controlled pause configures itself as the sole condition capable of allowing the eye and the ear of the spectator to perceive and see the waves and luminous flows moving. It follows a radical historicization of the underground currents — such as the transnational trajectory of the «laconic film» between the late 1960s and the early 1970s (from Kubrick to Leone and Pasolini), characterized by wide and deliberate textual extensions stripped of music or dialogues — which Chion mobilizes in open opposition to the rigid categorical compartmentalizations of traditional criticism.

The choices made at the mixing desk are never mere technical options; they are profound ideological and formal actions that sometimes flatten the material world into a frictionless, or placeless, commodity, and at other times preserve its raw and inflexible bones to lay bare the work on the «conditions of knowledge, on the means of production, on the modes of production of meaning».

On one hand, we have the clinical digital lamination of the contemporary — Eo and The Silence of the Lambs — where every physical barrier is smoothed away and places are neutralized to cradle the listener, even within the most terrifying story. On another, we have a dialectic relationship in favor of a complex electroacoustic friction — Ascenseur pour l'échafaud —, in which the raw physical properties of sound generate meaning independently of classical definitions of musical or cinematic genre.

I.II. The Musicological Counterpoint: Inverse Correspondences and Resistances of Matter

Rather than considering these three contemporary perspectives as isolated phenomena, our 2010 research offers a precise musicological parallel to Chion’s current formulations. Rooted in Chion’s fundamental principle according to which film music intervenes directly on the meaning of filmic reality through its formal (technical-aesthetic and linguistic) qualities and its modes of production, the study investigated the visual framework and the specific structural positionings of the soundtrack within film language.

Let us return to the claustrophobic core of Malle’s elevator. The interaction between the naked, isolated pizzicato of Pierre Michelot’s double bass and the inflexible mechanical noise of the machine creates a transdiegetic space. The soundtrack systematically denies the reassuring and traditional structures of an orchestral or instrumental score, while the noise of the diegetic apparatus and the sonic-musical signal act in a dialectic relationship that coincides with the «electroacoustic sense». When we juxtapose our 2010 models with Chion’s recently published definitions of the «déjà-là» and the «sentiment du concret», we observe a mirrored and inverse analysis that shows the living resistance of matter prior to its technological capitulation.

The loss of matter, the erasure, the clinical smoothing (lissage) of which Chion writes today allows us to see by contrast how, in a work such as Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, matter is alive, pulsating, resistant, and present: in the rendering of the sonic lack within the diegesis, where the music on the soundtrack dialogues with the structure of the «montage» in the pivotal scene with Florence; and in the dialectic counterposition between the sounds of the elevator and the avant-garde soundtrack, in the scene with Julien. — And let us remember that, in the Florence sequence, the false subjective, or the «real objectivity of the silent place»), implies the studied subtraction of the city’s environmental noises to exhibit the impersonal enunciation of the text, transforming the urban space into a rigid and silent geometric-linguistic container that isolates the character’s body and makes her vulnerability resonate. —

If Michel Chion, in the first chapter of his essay, goes so far as to define Morlaix a «beloved film» precisely by virtue of that expressive disarray and that acoustic-visual variation devoid of legible codes, our bibliographical analysis imposes a necessary reversal of course. Certainly, a film configured exclusively on direct sound recording (presa diretta), anchored to the environmental noises of the small Breton town and to the naked musicality of the spoken word, is destined to enthuse the cultists of a certain Nouvelle Vague sentiment — or those critics inclined to superficially dismiss the work under the lazy label of a «rohmeriano» preciousness, justified only by the dense presence of sentimental and youthful digressions. This is a juxtaposition that tightly constrains Chion radically: «Rien à voir, à mon avis» («Nothing to do with it, in my opinion»), he cuts short, denying any direct kinship with the Nouvelle Vague or with the cinema of Jean Eustache. Where criticism discerns French dialogic naturalism, Chion traces an opposite structural mechanism based on embedding/interlocking (enchâssement); a formal choice that shifts Rosales’s genealogy outside transalpine borders to anchor it to a deep Hispanic matrix (from Cervantes to Raúl Ruiz). Yet, according to the French theorist: «the resources, the changes of ratio or coloration seem unleashed and vary disorderly, without referring to a legible code. What is more, the end is not an end, it seems as though one is caught in a loop. All this contributes to making this film impossible to recount except by evoking its cinematic form, and this literally, as it proceeds. It comes at the perfect time, since in my view it is about the impossible.» This Chionian idealization forces us to look severely at the relationships between materials and processes of meaning. It is not enough to accumulate chaotic materials (be they fragments of direct sound recording or continuous changes of visual format) to automatically generate meaning. The risk — to cite an expression that Chion himself uses in the third chapter as a warning — is that the film slides into a sterile «gesticulation» or into a «formalisme» («formalism») as an end in itself, incapable of becoming an authentic narrative. Where Chion sees an impossible story linked to the specificity of the device, we trace an impossibility of wanting to continue, an ostentation in the lack of meaning rather than in openness, a voluptuousness toward remission.

I.III. The Morlaix Case and The Impossible Anacousmetre

Reading and interpreting Michel Chion directly in the language of origin, we clash precisely with the most intimate paradox of audiovisual enunciation: «At the dawn of cinema, the "already-there"... was not yet there. A certain number of films were necessary to confer existence and meaning upon it.»

This means that cinema and the recorded track have invented a specific way of making one experience the being-as-origin: in the «montage» and the découpage, the device isolates the objectivity of the world (the profilmic) and transforms it into a destiny. Apparently neutral elements are fragments of the world that man did not create expressly for that specific action, but which welcome the action itself, found it, and make it «concrete» in time. Thus is configured the opening in which three parallel dimensions coexist: the impossible of an origin that gives itself only when it is «déjà-là» (already-present), the impossible of a film that cannot be translated into linguistic codes (Morlaix), and the impossible of a pure voice that resists the prison of the flesh (the «anacousmetre»).

If cinema is the place where the origin manifests through the trauma of recording, contemporary criticism struggles to understand texts that exhibit this wound in a radical way. It is thus that we can attempt an understanding of the intrinsic reasons for which Chion expresses an unconditional feeling of affection for the case of Morlaix by Jaime Rosales, an exhibition of the «impossibile» which, according to a precise historiographical line, unites the formal anarchy of Rosales to the monumental and primigenio attempt of D.W. Griffith in Intolerance (1916).

The word «impossibile» reveals itself as the secret center—recognized retrospectively by Chion himself—of all his theoretical reflection. It binds itself double-threaded to his own biography: divided between the institutional, paternal validation of Pierre Schaeffer and the psychoanalytic horizon of Jacques Lacan. It is no coincidence that the pivotal section of his first essay, La Voix au cinéma (1981) — a deeply Lacanian text —, was programmatically titled «l'impossibile anacusmetro» (l'impossible anacousmêtre). If the acousmetre is, par excellence, the entity of the déjà-là — a u-topic voice (devoid of place) that preexists the framing and enjoys omniscience and omnipotence precisely because it is not yet bound to the prison of visibility and the flesh (the voice before the mirror stage) —, the anacousmetre (that is, the non-acousmetre) represents the mirrored drama of presence. It stages the inconceivable and violent union of the body with the voice: the traumatic impact between the purity of the origin (the voice alone, the silent call) and its fall into corporeal and visual determination.

As much in the visual and structural chaos of Morlaix as in the radical de-synchronization of the acousmetre, the filmic text ceases to be a code to be decoded and offers itself as pure material resistance. Cinema discovers itself then as the art of the Impossible: a device which, in the desperate attempt to capture itself while it gives itself, can retain the origin only by exhibiting its very own, ungraspable lack.

On the other hand, the historiography of the media reminds us that we have plenty of radical precedents founded on the total abjuration of extradiegetic music, and with a far greater theoretical thickness:

• The American Direct Cinema (1960s): The aesthetic of Leacock and the Maysles brothers elects synchronous direct sound recording (presa diretta) devoid of musical commentary as an ethical bulwark against the manipulation of the spectator.

• The observational documentary of Frederick Wiseman: In masterpieces such as Titicut Follies (1967), institutional hum and the naked word alone structure the rhythm of the «montage», without any orchestral crutch.

• The fictional radicalism of Dogme 95: Lars von Trier’s vow of chastity definitively historicizes the prohibition of using music not present on the set as a marker of authenticity.

• The chromatic guerrilla warfare of the Czechoslovak Nová Vlna (e.g., Sedmikrásky / Daisiesby Věra Chytilová, 1966): A monumental model of formal decomposition that demolishes the classical visual code by alternating arbitrarily and in full disarray sequences in black-and-white, saturated monochromatic tinting, and color, attacking the stability of bodies and space through a «montage» that brutally dissects the details of faces.

• The multi-format collage and the destructuring of the portrait in the Jean-Luc Godard of the 1960s (from Vivre sa vie to La chinoise): Where the use of traumatic jump-cuts that shatter the anatomical continuity of the framed face, combined with the frontal clash between films of differing grain, mattes, and unstable visual formats, acted as a device of political estrangement, demonstrating that formal rupture acquires meaning only if it becomes an explicit critique of the ideology of the medium.

For all these monumental precedents, we could debate whether the breaking of the code — be it the harshness of direct recording or the chromatic-structural decomposition of the frame — corresponds to a retreat into arbitrariness, or to an act of formal resistance that refounds a precise regime. On the other side, Chion seems to elect Morlaix as his «film chéri» precisely by virtue of that disarray in which the changes of ratio and coloration seem «déchaînés» («unleashed») and devoid of a describable dialectic tension, that is to say, one corresponding to an apprehension toward the processes of writing. In doing so, the French theorist performs a fascinating operation of philosophical anchoring: he enlists Lacan’s famous maxim according to which «l'impasse sexuelle sécrète les fictions qui rationalisent l'impossible», to elevate the film to a poetic demonstration of the cinematic «impossible» and of the irreconcilable body-voice fracture (his «impossible anacousmêtre»). However, the risk — «one must dare» («bisogna osare»), Chion says — is that the post-digital anarchy of Morlaix ends up consuming the void without critical redemption. It is precisely this radical gap between the illegible contemporary and the endurance of cinematic modernity that illuminates, by contrast, the underground and far more rigorous operation performed in 1957 by Malle.

In Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, the interlocking/embedding does not occur through the fragmentation of visual formats on a documentary basis, but through a stylistic indifferentiation of grammars: he interlocks the noises of the machine into the structural voids of the electroacoustic modal fabric.

Both models, however, reject commercial lissage (smoothing): if Morlaix exhibits the wound of enunciation through the impossibility of critical reading, Ascenseur exhibits it through material flagrancy, a decomposition of traditional codes that interrogates reality on the plane of its very own linguistic mechanisms.

PARTE II: The Transdiegetic Sonic Body and the Reversal of the Silent Opening

As previously anticipated, within this complex texture two distinct modalities immediately emerge to constitute the status of matter: on one hand, the mechanical friction of the claustrophobic closure through the transdiegetic soundtrack — that is, structured according to a dense counterpunti-dialectical relationship between the diegetic level of noises and the non-diegetic level of the score during Julien’s entrapment —; on the other hand, the complete erasure of urban sound within the false subjective upon which is founded what we define as the silent urban opening, embodied in the pivotal scene of Florence’s walk, which we have already analyzed under the microscope in the 2011 book and whose summary can be found in Appendix A.

In Ascenseur, Malle utilizes radical acoustic omissions and presences to exhibit the friction of materials. The French director thus creates linguistic relations and counterpoints that lay bare the worldly and psychological fractures of his environments, anchoring them to the physical and claustrophobic density of analog cinema from the late 1950s. The framework is not chronological but linguistic.

II.I. The Claustrophobic Closure: Electroacoustic Friction and Density of Matter

In the claustrophobic core of the elevator, matter is neither erased nor smoothed away; on the contrary, it resists and demands to be listened to in its rawest form. The linguistic estrangement — which in Christian Metz’s theories (1968) is fulfilled at the moment a filmic element is subtracted from its immediate referentiality to assume an autonomous textual function — does not occur here by means of an artificial alteration, but rather through the exasperation of the very natural and concrete elements of the diegetic sound itself. The noises of the plunging elevator are not merely deafening, but are technically dislocated at the exact moment they interact with the meshes of the soundtrack, generating a single electroacoustic sonic fabric.

In this specific node, the hybridization is not limited to a textual cohabitation, but becomes «para-acusmatic» — occupying a threshold of adjacency and deviation with respect to the pure acusmatic —: the mechanical noise strips itself of its narrative and anecdotal contingency to become pure sonic morphology, integrating itself vertically into the spectrum of musical frequencies. Far from resolving into that «smoothing» (lissage) devoid of apprehension that is unfortunately typical of contemporary production — or into the plague of that unleashed and disorderly embedding in which people mistakenly discern an certain linguistic development — this process reclaims the material density of the analog wound. The hybrid does not erase the friction; on the contrary, it exasperates the physical presence of the cinematic device through an unpacified coexistence between the frequency bands. — By the term «para-acusmatic» we intend to define here a liminal condition of filmic listening: a situation in which the source of the sound is diegetically identified and confined within the visual space (the elevator cage), but the status of the acoustic material, by virtue of density and syntactic dislocation, deviates toward the morphological properties of the reduced listening typical of the Schaefferian acousmatic phenomenon. The term para-acousmatique (or para-acusmatic) appears rarely in international avant-garde essays: employed for the most part in border zones of French Lettrist and Situationist performance (see the historical theorizations on the vocal manipulations of Guy Debord or Gil J Wolman) to indicate a laterality with respect to pure acousmatic listening. It is adopted here in the context of filmic textual analysis. The Greek prefix para- (indicating proximity, alteration, or the overcoming of a limit) is engrafted onto the Chionian concept of the «acousmatic» to define a situation in which the visual source is theoretically known and confined (the noises in the falling elevator), but the sound behaves in a partially autonomous way, altering the standard diegetic pact and emancipating itself toward electroacoustic composition, until it intersects with the soundtrack and assumes the status of pure concrete morphology. —

The instrumental rarefaction and timbral stripping in Julien dans l'ascenseur — due to the duo composed exclusively of the naked pizzicato of Pierre Michelot’s double bass and the neurotic hammering of Kenny Clarke’s drums — transmutes the rhythm section into a cell generating concrete resonances, where the grave strings of the double bass seem to evoke the tense elasticity and the friction of the steel cables, while the cymbals and brushes of the drums reflect, through acoustic sympathy, the high metallic frequencies of the cage. Let it be well understood: even though we are describing a cinematic event, this does not imply that this description is to be considered conclusive: far from it! No other way remains to experience this event than to make a return to Malle’s 1957 film. Neither the CD of the soundtrack nor this description in periphrasis can substitute for the cinematic event in itself. — It follows that wherever a filmic object programmatically eludes critical articulation (such as the formal chaos of Morlaix), it redefines the very limits of theoretical investment, shifting the axis from textual analysis to the pure statement of its material resistance.—

The musical subtraction in terms of melody produces a radical reconfiguration of the enunciation space. The industrial, metallic, and mechanical noises of the cabin — the creaks, the electrical shut-offs of the stopping cage — do not superimpose themselves onto a preexisting musical theme, but rather interlock into the structural voids of a modal fabric «already-ahead-of-itself», in line with a status of a «déjà-là» of the most authentic kind: a Heideggerian advenante. The noise of the diegetic apparatus and the signal of the rhythm section do not fuse to smooth the space, but collide within the same textual enclosure, exalting the acoustic, even unpleasant grain of confinement, and elevating the analog friction to a transdiegetic avant-garde sonic body. The indefinite pitch of the creak and the percussive attack of the jazz note weld into an indivisible material continuum. The bass does not accompany the noise of the machine, nor does the noise disturb the weave of the bass; both cohabit in a phono-fixed groove that anticipates the intuitions of spectral music and industrial sound design, extending the horizon of cinematic sonorization toward the territories of avant-garde acousmatic research (typical of contemporary phonology laboratories). The elevator cabin ceases to be a mere scenographic element to transform into a true autonomous electroacoustic resonator: a black box in which the analog glue between noise and instrument unveils the most visceral and least virtualized core of modern cinematic sound.

From this perspective, the formal autonomy of cinematic sound is no longer measured by its fidelity to the visual, but by its capacity to become a permanent inquiry into its own conditions of knowledge, its own processes, and its modes of production of meaning. This complex audiovisual textuality anticipates the insights of successive electronic avant-gardes: Malle’s work does not wait for historiographical codification to legitimize itself; nor does it need the most advanced analog or digital systems of the High-Tech corporate industry. It inhabits, from its very inception, the originary anticipation of its own linguistic becoming, demonstrating that the «black box» of the elevator is not a mere diegetic expedient —and that the filmic text is not an exercise in style—, but a technical-linguistic and aesthetic resonator in which composition discovers its deepest, most visceral, and radically integrated nature. Furthermore, let us not forget that if Julien’s cabin saturates space through a transdiegetic sonic body, Florence's famous night walk (Nuit sur les Champs-Élysées) represents its exact structural reversal: a spatial opening defined by a diegetic sonic void.

II.II. Materiality Indices, Acousmatic Filters, and Spatial Thresholds

To fully validate how these strategies of linguistic and historical resistance operate at a micro-textual level, it is necessary to reexamine more closely the precise audiovisual mechanisms at play.

In the claustrophobic core of the elevator, the severe minimalist reduction forces the spectator into an oscillation toward a state of «reduced listening» («l'écoute réduite»). This structural confinement operates through three distinct phenomenological levels:

• The Preserved Friction and Textual Estrangement: The industrial and harsh noises of the elevator mechanism — the clattering of the metal, the dull hum of the electrical grid, the heavy structural thuds — are intentionally preserved, demanding to be listened to in their rawest form. They represent what Chion defines as the «sentiment du concret» (the feeling of the concrete), forcing the spectator’s ear to oscillate between causal listening (the origin of the cage) and a genuine «reduced listening». By excluding the distraction of the main melodic line of trumpet and sax, attention is channeled entirely toward the purity and morphological violence of the remaining sonic materials (the creaks, the thuds), independently of their cause or their narrative meaning. It is here that the linguistic estrangement theorized by Metz (1968) and already detailed in the 2010 text (Daniele, 2010, pp. 155-159) is fulfilled: by subtracting the melodic section (trumpet, sax, piano), the text forces the perception of the «raw acoustic matter». The diegetic noise is technically dislocated, subtracted from its mere indexical function and transformed into an autonomous textual unit that interacts with the meshes of the soundtrack to generate an unprecedented electroacoustic sonic body.

• The Low-Frequency Impulse and Biological Extension: Melodic safety is completely denied; Miles Davis’s soaring trumpet remains entirely silent, depriving the spectator of any traditional cinematic comfort. The vertical void is occupied exclusively by the naked and isolated pizzicato of Pierre Michelot’s double bass, echoing inside the dark shaft. As demonstrated by the monographic analysis (Daniele, 2010, p. 212; infra, Figure 5), this low-frequency pulse does not function as accompanying music, but interlocks millimetrically with the cuts of montage and with the slow times of the camera. This beat ceases to act as external music and substitutes itself for the character’s biological pulse and the mechanical movement of the elevator, configuring itself as an «inner clock» and as a rhythmic extension of the metallic cage.

• The Minimalist Reduction and Structural Confinement: The beat of the rhythm section introduces a concrete, modal, and irremovable weight that occupies a large part of the space, refusing to let the ear escape through any concept of virtualization or lamination (lissage). The walls of the elevator function as a «para-acusmatic confinement device» which, while anchored to the brutality of the falling elevator, works as an electroacoustic element of the music that in turn fuses with the flesh of the profilmic.

II.III. The «Electroacoustic Sense» as an Epistemological Threshold

The elevator is a space of temporal suspension and decomposition of classical narrative logic, and it is a laboratory of applied concrete music.

II.IV. L’imperativo storiografico e linguistico

In definitiva, siamo di fronte ad una collisione, meglio definita differenza, tra la dematerializzazione contemporanea e l'opera di Louis Malle. Se l’attuale transizione digitale opera per via di una laminazione che azzera le resistenze fisiche dei supporti e la specificità dei cronotopi diegetici, traducendosi nel migliore dei casi in un'anarchia autoriale stilistica e grammaticale, l'opera mallesiana agisce secondo il principio originario della differenza, di riduzione e resistenza.

Il potere audiovisivo non si emancipa nell'ottimizzazione o nella normalizzazione tecnologica degli spazi, né si disperde nell’arbitrio di un’anarchia priva di terreno; esso si autoafferma, piuttosto, nella riduzione del mondo profilmico alle sue strutture linguistiche. È un’estetica della sottrazione che, silenziando l'eccedenza significante, opera un’apertura del testo all’origine, facendo in modo che il dispositivo filmico esibisca la postura investigativa dello sguardo e lo statuto fenomenologico della conoscenza — i modi della produzione di senso sono differenti e sempre aperti.

Ci avviamo alle conclusioni e all’esposizione del dramma formale della chiusura. L'atto fisico di sigillare la struttura — di arrestare la curvatura sintattica e grammaticale di un film e di un testo — configura la lacerazione ontologica della clausura, intesa come sacrificio della forza espansiva del senso. Eppure, laddove il "Caso Morlaix" di Jaime Rosales risponde al trauma del congedo testuale attraverso un loop centrifugo, l’indifferenziazione dei discorsi di Malle è filosofica oltre che stilistica: si fa risuonatore di un'origine trattenuta, aprendo il campo al paradosso della soglia conclusiva.

Parte III: Sintesi storiografica e il futuro dell'audiovisione

Le corrispondenze strutturali tra gli ultimi tre saggi critici di Michel Chion e la nostra analisi del 2010 di Ascenseur pour l'échafaud rivelano alcuni problemi cruciali dell'audiovisione e dell’elettroacustica, ponendo quest'ultima di fronte a un'urgenza ineludibile: la necessità di indagare criticamente se stessa e la propria natura materica per non farsi assimilare dall'appiattimento estetico odierno. Proprio in reazione a questo rischio, si osserva come la contemporanea pratica del "levigamento" (lissage) e della laminazione digitale — rintracciabile nel sound design contemporaneo in ideale continuità con le critiche linguistiche chioniane — non è che l'estremizzazione di quell'horror vacui che la Hollywood classica tentava di imporre attraverso mixaggi fluidi e trasparenti. D’altra parte, l'avanguardia storica — dalle teorie del contrappunto di Ejzenštejn fino alle radicali fratture acustiche della Nouvelle Vague — ha sempre cercato di preservare l'«apport de réel» (il contributo di realtà) attraverso la resistenza dei materiali e la marcatura delle soglie strutturali.

Se la teoria del cinema ha ampiamente sviscerato e decostruito i propri dispositivi tecnologici, rintracciando nell'impianto audiovisivo analogico e digitale precise strategie di enunciazione e di resistenza materiale (dall'«apport de réel» del cluster accidentale al lissage della laminazione contemporanea), la riflessione musicologica appare spesso disciplinarmente più giovane, meno ricca e storicamente arroccata su astrattismi formali.

Il dialogo con la materia disintegrata e ricomposta in Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) di Luciano Berio, in cui in esame abbiamo la composizione elettroacustica che scompone l’elemento testuale e fonetico originario per riorganizzarlo in nuove costellazioni strutturali, rappresenta il nostro tentativo fin qui per la musicologia verso un rigore analitico affine a quello dello sguardo inquadratura per inquadratura proprio della critica del film. Con l’auspicio di rintracciare, anche nel micro-tessuto del supporto elettroacustico, quell’«attrito materico transdiegetico» capace di dialogare coraggiosamente con le teorie del dispositivo.

Trovando questi parallelismi intellettuali, la comunità elettroacustica acquisisce uno scudo analitico vitale contro la patina clinica dei media digitali contemporanei.

Quando ci si rende conto che l'architettura del «déjà-là» (il già-lì) è una condizione tecnico-linguistica ed estetica ad-veniente del mezzo audiovisivo, diventa possibile valutare il sound design contemporaneo non per la sua novità tecnologica, ma per il rapporto che il mondo concreto ha da sempre con l’indagine originaria; nell’ottica dello scuotimento necessario all’apertura di una percezione e coinvolgimento intellettuale reclamati, lo strappo dalla passività ipnotica della dimensione mondana o commerciale è «già davanti a sé» nell’apertura originaria della ricerca.

III.I. L’imperativo elettroacustico: tra Ricerca Scientifica e Composizione Concreta

Se la teoria del cinema ha ampiamente decostruito i suoi dispositivi e le sue strutture linguistiche, e se l'avanguardia storica ha radicalmente scardinato la linearità della notazione classica, la sfida odierna per la ricerca musicologica non risiede nell'algoritmo, ma nell’esplorazione della dialettica tra analisi scientifica e composizione concreta, intesa come fonte di conoscenza autonoma e come atto di apprensione investigativa volto a catturare l'autenticità dell'esistenza.

I risultati filologici più solidi si ottengono applicando analiticamente queste categorie del linguaggio cinematografico alla materia elettroacustica: un nastro, un supporto elettroacustico o un suono fissato non si esauriscono nella loro codifica musicale; la loro vera vita si attiva nell'attrito materico transdiegetico che interroga il significato epistemologico dell'essere che investiga e compone. Quando si analizza il materiale acustico come entità concreta e spazializzata che si differenzia tanto dalla laminazione del digitale contemporaneo quanto dall’incastonatura che rifiuta di farsi leggere, la ricerca opera in quel territorio in cui l’elemento grezzo, l'indice di materialità originale, è strutturato e preservato come oggetto di apprensione.

Chion usa lo statuto del digitale per ridefinire i concetti storici di acousmètre, rumore e vuoto. Il digitale ha modificato irreversibilmente il nostro orecchio di spettatori del XXI secolo; di conseguenza, quando oggi riascoltiamo la tromba di Davis o il cigolio dell'ascensore del 1957, il nostro è già un ascolto "post-digitale". Riconoscere questo scarto storiografico e testuale non è un limite, ma un atto di autonomia tecnico-linguistica.

Ci auguriamo che anche la musicologia elettroacustica superi così la passiva catalogazione archivistica e, mutuando la precisione dello sguardo inquadratura per inquadratura, si possa fare indagine permanente sulla tensione strutturale e la produzione linguistica ed estetica che rivendica il suo luogo. E che esistano sempre occhi per udire ed orecchie per vedere oltre l’anestesia clinica del mezzo, a favore delle possibilità originarie e non realizzate («possibles non réalisés») della nostra stessa conoscenza.

III.II. Conclusioni Impossibili.

Perché parlare è sapere che il pensiero deve farsi estraneo a se stesso per dirsi e per manifestarsi. Cioè vuole riprendersi mentre si dà. Ecco perché sotto il linguaggio dello scrittore autentico, di colui che vuole tenersi il più vicino possibile all'origine del suo atto, si sente il gesto di ritirare, di trattenere la parola espirata.

— Jacques Derrida, Forza e significazione

Vivendo stabilmente nell'apertura della ricerca, in cui anche chiudere un saggio si configura come un atto doloroso, se rivolgiamo il pensiero alla traccia derridiana capillare che innerva tanto la nostra riflessione teorica quanto la prassi compositiva della nostra traccia Necessity (Part II) (in Spannung, 2015), l'intuizione originaria continua a rivelarsi in tutta la sua urgenza. Ecco che avvertiamo la necessità di spalancare una parentesi su argomenti eternamente connessi, capaci di ricalibrarsi e continuare nell'orizzonte di un'opera magna. Mentre il cammino di Voce Sola sfida la storia, il costrutto e il tempo secondo una traiettoria di resistenza profonda che evoca la cattedrale temporale proustiana, non possiamo evitare di sottolineare come finanche questa nostra ultima riflessione sia, strutturalmente, già lì, «già-essente-stata»; originariamente «avanti a sé».

Bibliografia e Riferimenti Online

I. Monografie e Manifesto dell'Autrice (Letteratura Primaria)

Daniele, Romina (2010/2011), Ascenseur pour l'échafaud: il luogo della musica nell'audiovisione, Milano, RDM Records & Books, Edizioni Letterarie [ISBN: 9788890490590]. Nota: Studio monografico d'elezione, utilizzato come base analitica strutturale per la decostruzione del quadro visivo, dei blocchi di montaggio e delle soggettività audiovisive nel film di Louis Malle.

Daniele, Romina (2010), «Il dialogo con la materia disintegrata e ricomposta», un'analisi di Thema (Omaggio a Joyce)di Luciano Berio, Milano, RDM Records & Books Edizioni Letterarie.

Electroacoustics Magazine (2026), Arts and Technologies: Manifesto of the Editorial and Epistemological Project, RDM Records, Progetto Periodico Tecnico-Scientifico. URL: rdmrecords.com/electroacoustics-magazine-and-news. Nota: Testo programmatico che delinea la logica culturale tecnologica, l'interdisciplinarità e il "senso elettroacustico" all'interno dei processi sintattici che governano la costituzione delle opere d'arte contemporanee.

II. Fonti Storiografiche e Teoriche Contemporanee (Elettroacustica e Cinema)

Barnouw, Erik (1993), Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Nota: Testo di riferimento storiografico per la genealogia, i presupposti etico-teorici del Direct Cinema americano (il cinema d'osservazione di Leacock e dei fratelli Maysles) e l'evoluzione documentaristica di Frederick Wiseman basata sulla rinuncia alla manipolazione musicale extradiegetica.

Berio, Luciano (1976), Poesia e musica — un'esperienza (1959), in La musica elettronica, a cura di H. Pousseur, Milano, Feltrinelli, pp. 124-135.

Chion, Michel (1985), Écrire un scénario, Paris, Cahiers du Cinéma / Éditions de l'Étoile (ed. consultata e aggiornata: Paris, Cahiers du Cinéma, 2007). Nota: Testo teorico-metodologico fondamentale in cui Chion analizza formalmente "Pauline à la plage" (1983) di Eric Rohmer. Il film viene utilizzato come modello di riferimento per dimostrare la tenuta strutturale e logica della parola parlata nella tradizione cinematografica francese, eletto a principale alternativa geometrica ai codici della sceneggiatura classica hollywoodiana.

Chion, Michel (1981), La voix au cinéma, Paris, Éditions de l'Étoile/Cahiers du Cinéma (trad. it. La voce nel cinema, Torino, Pratiche Editrice, 1991).

Chion, Michel (1991), L'Art des sons fixés ou La Musique Concrètement, Fontaine, Editions Metamkine (trad. it. L'arte dei suoni fissati o La Musica Concretamente, Roma, Edizioni Interculturali, 2004).

Chion, Michel (1990), L'Audio-vision. Son et image au cinéma, Paris, Nathan (trad. it. L'audiovisione. Suono e immagine nel cinema, traduzione di Dario Tomasi, Torino, Lindau, 1997; ristampa 2001). Focus Teorico (Gli «indices de matérialité»): Vedi in particolare il Capitolo 6 ("Il confine del suono") e i paragrafi dedicati alla distinzione tra "Resa" (rendu) e "Riproduzione", e alla definizione strutturale degli "Indizi di materialità" (i dettagli che rinviano alle costrizioni materiali della produzione del suono e della sua propagazione: sfregamento, respiro pesante, rumore di fondo dello spazio acustico).

Chion, Michel (1995), La Musique au cinéma, Paris, Fayard (trad. it. La musica nel cinema, Milano, Ricordi-Lim, 1996). Nota: Studio mirato sul contrasto drammaturgico tra il commento di musica classica e i silenzi tensivi applicati alla confessione degli agnelli di Clarice Starling.

Chion, Michel (2003), Un art sonore, le cinéma: histoire, critique, esthétique, Paris, Cahiers du Cinéma (trad. it. Cinema, un'arte sonora, traduzione di Alessandro De Francesco, Venezia, Marsilio, 2007). Focus Critico: Testo fondamentale per l'integrazione analitica su The Silence of the Lambs, in cui si teorizzano i concetti di "centralizzazione del suono", la resa acustica delle barriere, gli effetti della "standardizzazione del ripulito" e la registrazione in "presenza assoluta" e priva di riverbero della voce elettroacustica di Hannibal Lecter.

Chion, Michel (2023-2024), Ciclo di conferenze e seminari accademici, Parigi. Interventi incentrati sulle sequenze sonore di EO e sulla ridefinizione digitale del "punto di ascolto" animale.

Chion, Michel (2026), Pour une histoire impossible du cinéma [Per una storia impossibile del cinema], Tracciati critici online e percorsi di storiografia impossibile. Riferimento online: michelchion.com (Sezione saggi e interventi critici).

Capitolo 1: The Valley of Gwangi (Jim O'Connolly, 1969). Teoria dell'«apport de réel» (contributo di realtà) e il «cluster» «non intenzionale».

Capitolo 2: Eo (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022). Critica della posizione della telecamera nei droni (perdita della quota visiva) e teoria del lissage linguistico causato dalla sottotitolazione universale e dalla standardizzazione dei dialoghi nei film multilingui.

Capitolo 3: The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991). Formulazione del «déjà-là» (il già-presente / l'infrazione invisibile della barriera acustica).

Di Scipio, Agostino (2000), Da un'esperienza in ascolto tra phoné e logos. Testo, suono e musica in "Thema (Omaggio a Joyce)" di Berio, in «Il saggiatore musicale», VII, Bologna.

Von Trier, Lars / Vinterberg, Thomas (1995), Dogme 95: Le vœu de chasteté [Il voto di castità], Copenhagen.

Nota: Manifesto teorico-espressivo applicato alla finzione che storicizza il divieto di utilizzare commenti musicali non presenti nel profilmico (obbligo del suono esclusivamente diegetico e in presa diretta) come marca di autenticità e sottrazione retorica.

Zavagna, Paolo (1992), «Thema (Omaggio a Joyce)» di Luciano Berio. Un'analisi, in «Quaderni della Civica Scuola di Musica», a. XI, nn. 21-22, pp. 58-64.

III. Orizzonti Filosofici, Semiotici e Teoria del Cinema

Aumont, Jacques (1983), «Le point de vue», in «Communications», n. 38 (trad. it. «Il punto di vista», in Lorenzo Cuccu - Augusto Sainati, Il discorso sul film. Visione, narrazione, enunciazione, Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1987, pp. 23-44).

Aumont, Jacques (1989), L’oeil interminable. Cinéma et peinture, Paris, Librairie Séguier (trad. it. L’occhio interminabile. Cinema e pittura, Venezia, Marsilio, 1991).

Bazin, André (1945), Ontologie de l'image photographique, in Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?, Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 1958 (trad. it. Che cosa è il cinema?, Milano, Garzanti, 1986).

Benjamin, Walter (1936), Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, in «Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung», V, 1 (trad. it. L'opera d'arte nell'epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica, Roma, Donzelli, 2012).

Benveniste, Émile (1971), Problemi di linguistica generale, Milano, Il Saggiatore.

Bernardi, Sandro (1998), «I regimi dello sguardo», in Introduzione alla retorica del cinema, Milano, Franco Angeli, pp. 72-79.

Branigan, Edward (1984), Point of View in the Cinema, Berlin/New York/Amsterdam, Mouton.

Casetti, Francesco (1986), Dentro lo sguardo, Milano, Biani.

Debord, Guy / Wolman, Gil J (1956), «Mode d’emploi du détournement», in Les Lèvres Nues, n. 8. Nota: Testo teorico d'avanguardia cruciale per la mappatura storica delle prime manipolazioni e dislocazioni vocali laterali rispetto all'ascolto acusmatico puro, posto qui in dialogo genealogico con la nozione di "para-acusmatico".

Deleuze, Gilles (1984), Cinema 1. L'immagine-movimento, Milano, Ubulibri (nuova ediz. Torino, Einaudi, 2016).

Deleuze, Gilles (1989), Cinema 2. L'immagine-tempo, Milano, Ubulibri (nuova ediz. Torino, Einaudi, 2017).

Derrida, Jacques (1963), Force et signification, in «Critique», n. 193-194; poi in L’écriture et la différence, Paris, Seuil, 1967 (trad. it. Forza e significazione, in La scrittura e la differenza, Torino, Einaudi, 2002).

Eisenstein, Sergei M. / Pudovkin, Vsevolod I. / Aleksandrov, Grigori V. (1928), «Manifesto sul suono», in S. M. Eisenstein, La forma del film, a cura di Pietro Montani, Torino, Einaudi / Venezia, Marsilio, 1986. (Nota: Comprende anche il riferimento a Ejzenštejn, 1985, Teoria generale del montaggio).

Heidegger, Martin (1927), Sein und Zeit, Halle, Niemeyer (trad. it. Essere e tempo, Milano, Longanesi, 2005).

Manovich, Lev (2001), The Language of New Media, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press (trad. it. Il linguaggio dei nuovi media, Torino, lages, 2002).

Focus Teorico: Analisi della transizione tecnologica dal cinema analogico al digitale; utile al testo per mappare i concetti di perdita della materia cinematografica, frammentazione del supporto e la «levigatura clinica» (lissage) delle strutture testuali contemporanee messe in luce da Chion.

Metz, Christian (1968), «Immagini soggettive, Suoni soggettivi, "Punto di vista"», in Essais sur la signification au cinéma (Tome I), Paris, Klincksieck (trad. it. La significazione nel cinema, Milano, Moizzi, 1975, pp. 129-155).

Metz, Christian (1991), L’énonciation impersonnelle, ou le site du film, Paris, Méridiens Klincksieck (trad. it. L’enunciazione impersonale, o il luogo del film, a cura di Augusto Sainati, Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1995).

Miccichè, Lino (1975), Il neorealismo cinematografico italiano, Venezia, Marsilio.

Panofsky, Erwin (1932), La prospettiva come «forma simbolica», Milano, Feltrinelli, 1961.

Sainati, Augusto (1998), «Supporto, soggetto, oggetto: forme di costruzione del sapere dal cinema ai nuovi media», in Costruzione e appropriazione del sapere nei nuovi scenari tecnologici, Napoli, CUEN, p. 154.

IV. Filmografia Esaminata e Coordinate Testuali

Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Ascensore per il patibolo) — Regia: Louis Malle. Colonna sonora: Miles Davis. Francia, 1957.

Riferimenti: La Sequenza della Tomba Architettonica (pizzicato del contrabbasso di Pierre Michelot); La Sequenza dell'Odissea Notturna (inquadrature 119–124, Nuit sur les Champs-Élysées).

EO — Regia: Jerzy Skolimowski. Polonia / Italia, 2022.

Morlaix — Regia: Jaime Rosales. Spagna, 2024. Riferimenti: Struttura narrativa fondata sull'incastonatura (enchâssement); rottura sistematica del codice cinematografico classico attraverso variazioni acodificate di ratio, fermi immagine, accelerati e passaggi arbitrari dal colore al bianco e nero; struttura a loop conclusiva.

Salesman — Regia: Albert e David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin. USA, 1969. Riferimenti: Pietra miliare del Direct Cinema americano fondata sull'interazione sincrona tra microfono e macchina da presa, priva di commenti musicali manipolatori.

Sedmikrásky (Le margherite) — Regia: Věra Chytilová. Cecoslovacchia, 1966. Riferimenti: Modello monumentale di destrutturazione visiva della Nová Vlna; impiego anarchico e acodificato di passaggi dal bianco e nero a viraggi cromatici, combinato con un montaggio frammentario che aggredisce la continuità visiva dei volti.

The Silence of the Lambs (Il silenzio degli innocenti) — Regia: Jonathan Demme. USA, 1991. Riferimenti: Sequenza della parete divisoria tra Hannibal Lecter e Clarice Starling (trasparenza ottica ed effetto di vicinanza acustica).

The Valley of Gwangi (La vendetta di Gwangi) — Regia: Jim O'Connolly. USA, 1969.

Titicut Follies — Regia: Frederick Wiseman. USA, 1967.Riferimenti: Modello monumentale di documentario d'osservazione; totale assenza di partitura extradiegetica, in cui il ritmo del montaggio è strutturato esclusivamente sulla parola nuda e sul brusio istituzionale della presa diretta.

Vivre sa vie (Questa è la mia vita) — Regia: Jean-Luc Godard. Francia, 1962.

Riferimenti: Dispositivo di straniamento formale basato sull'uso di jump-cuts traumatici, scomposizione anatomica dei dettagli dei volti e collisione multiformato della grana della pellicola.

Appendice A: Regesto delle marche stilistiche e dei livelli fenomenologici in Nuit sur les Champs-Élysées (Daniele, 2010)

1. L’apertura urbana muta come rovesciamento semiotico

Se l'ascensore di Julien è un vuoto saturato dalla materia acustica transdiegetica, la camminata notturna di Florence lungo i Champs-Élysées rappresenta la sua alternativa semiotica: un'apertura spaziale definita dal vuoto sonoro diegetico. Entro il quadro visivo di Parigi, lo spazio non è esplicitamente virtualizzato o estetizzato per il consumo globale, come accade nei moderni non-luoghi digitali. Al contrario, Malle opera una totale sospensione del paesaggio urbano e la sottrazione finanche delle parole stesse pronunciate dalla protagonista, la quale si muove in un monologo interiore disarticolato.

Questa strategia costruisce una falsa soggettiva o un'oggettività reale del luogo muto, i cui rari rumori d'ambiente si mescolano ambiguamente con il fuori campo — in un serrato, ma poetico, dialogo con i ritmi del montaggio. Nel vuoto sonoro diegetico, la tromba di Miles Davis interloquisce direttamente con la struttura del montaggio visivo attraverso una dialettica di presa e rilascio dei piani continuamente discontinui, in cui l'immagine di Jeanne Moreau viene ripetuta ma differenziata. L’apertura urbana muta di Ascenseur resiste attivamente alla virtualizzazione priva di luogo, sia sul piano tecnico sia su quello linguistico. Il vuoto di Florence non è l'assenza di mondo, ma una presenza testuale in cui i rapporti strutturali interrogano la realtà a livello filosofico.

2. I tre livelli fenomenologici e linguistici del rovesciamento acustico

Questa discesa nell'isolamento esistenziale è indicata testualmente attraverso una radicale sottrazione del sonoro diegetico, articolandosi su tre precisi livelli fenomenologici e linguistici:

• La soglia acustica e il fade incrociato: La sequenza si avvia all'inquadratura 119 con un netto scoppio di tuono diegetico. Questo oggetto sonoro subisce un deliberato cross-fade (dissolvenza incrociata) verso le battute di apertura del tessuto jazz (Take 3). Questa estensione transdiegetica del sonoro agisce come un vero e proprio cuneo strutturale: la soglia spaziale del reale viene violata nel momento esatto in cui il rumore naturale si dissolve nel tessuto modale della colonna sonora, recidendo chirurgicamente il legame dell'audio-spettatore con la realtà indiziale del quadro visivo.

• La cancellazione del mondo e il vuoto diegetico: Sebbene il quadro visivo presenti una metropoli brulicante — affollata di auto in movimento, vetrine illuminate e pedoni di passaggio — il paesaggio sonoro-concreto di Parigi subisce una totale sospensione. Ancor più radicalmente, si compie qui la sottrazione finanche della voce della protagonista; vediamo le sue labbra muoversi in primi piani tormentati, ma i suoi pensieri parlati sono del tutto privati di presenza acustica. Come già evidenziato nelle nostre analisi (Daniele, 2010, p. 197), questa strategia non è un semplice espediente psicologico, ma costruisce un tessuto lessicale preciso imperniato sulla falsa soggettiva — o un'oggettività reale del luogo muto — in cui i rari rumori d'ambiente udibili si mescolano ambiguamente con il fuori campo, entrando in un serrato dialogo con i ritmi del montaggio.

• La tromba acusmatica e il potere della parola muta: In questo vuoto sonoro diegetico, la tromba di Miles Davis si comporta come l'autentico surrogato acusmatico (la tromba al posto delle parole), interloquendo direttamente con la struttura del montaggio visivo attraverso una dialettica di presa e rilascio dei piani continuamente discontinui, in cui l'immagine di Jeanne Moreau viene ripetuta ma differenziata. La musica occupa lo spazio fisico delle parole mancanti della protagonista, trasformando il monologo interiore disarticolato in una "poesia spezzata" che incarna perfettamente ciò che Chion definisce il potere supplementare della parola muta. Questa sospensione della parola assoluta e difensiva persiste finché la musica non si interrompe bruscamente all'inquadratura 123-124 sul suono freddo, materico e reale della portiera di un'auto che si chiude, frantumando istantaneamente l'isolamento estetico e scaraventandola nuovamente nel mondo fisicamente condiviso.

Introduction: Epistemological Premise

I. Critical Nuances and Correspondences from Pour une histoire impossible du cinéma

In the recent writings of Michel Chion, particularly in the third chapter of Pour une histoire impossible du cinéma and starting from the analysis of The Valley of Gwangi (1969) by Jim O'Connolly, the French theorist highlights the concept of the non-intentional event as an element that brings a contribution of reality («apport de réel»). This phenomenon is activated when an actor, backing away terrified inside a church, inadvertently falls onto the keyboard of an organ, provoking an anarchic and involuntary «cluster». This accidental sonic collision acts upon the perception of the audio-viewer as the unplanned physical result and byproduct of a body impacting against an apparatus, generating a genuine feeling of the concrete rather than

Figure 3: The shattering of Morlaix (The crisis of the post-digital code).

The polyphonic fragmentation and formal anarchy in Morlaix (Jaime Rosales, 2024). The film adopts continuous and seemingly chaotic variations of ratio, fast-motion (accelerati), and passages between black-and-white and color which, as highlighted by Michel Chion, act «in disarray» («in disordine»), refusing to become a grammatical code or a reassuring temporal delimitation (past/present). This decomposition of cinematic form is indissociable from the story itself: a structure of loops and interlocking settings («enchâssement») which, as Chion says, is not sterile mannerism, but a specific means of cinema that cannot be explained except through cinema itself.

Figure 4: The spatial typologies of confinement.

(Above) Structural anteriority and the transparent enclosure («déjà-là» as a cinema effect) in The Silence of the Lambs (1991): the case that operates on a double track; the unbreakable glass barrier is nearly concealed by the «montage», while the sound direction exacerbates the confinement through a hyper-realistic and close-up treatment of the voice.

(Below) Visceral material friction («frottement») in Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1957): the physical entrapment of Julien Tavernier within the heavy mechanical structure of the elevator cabin. Malle rejects smoothing, orchestrating a structural convergence between the industrial noises of the cage and the jazz rhythm section (bass and drums) to generate that «sentiment du concret» and that resistance of materials that shatters the flatness of the filmic space.

Figura 5: L'incontro collaborativo. Jeanne Moreau e Miles Davis durante le storiche sessioni di registrazione notturne per Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1957) a Parigi. L'immagine cattura l'atmosfera intima e sperimentale dello studio da cui ha origine l’esperienza sonora elettroacustica della colonna sonora del film.

Malle operates here a total suspension of the urban landscape and of the protagonist's very words, configuring a mute urban opening that actively resists the virtualization of modern digital landscapes which do not care about technical-aesthetic localizations. In this topophonic void, Miles Davis's trumpet intervenes as the authentic transdiegetic surrogate of the unspoken word, interlocuting with the visual editing to isolate the character's body and make her existential vulnerability resonate (Appendix A).

Finally, this dialectic of absence and subtraction, which shifts the axis of meaning onto the pure sonic trace, reveals its own theoretical and formal archetype by tracing back to the very origin of cinematic writing. This enunciative logic, capable of redefining audiovisual power relations, finds an extraordinary historical anticipation in the plastic textures of the first French avant-garde, particularly in the theorizations on «photogénie» by Jean Epstein and on temporal density in La Chute de la maison Usher (1928). This is an elected formal territory that our research has investigated on a theoretical level in the essay Audio and Images in Epstein and which finds a concrete translation in the forthcoming audio CD The Echoes of Usher (RDM Records, 2026). The release, which exclusively documents the audio recording of the live soundtrack performance executed at the Conservatory of Milan in 2010, operates a radical «sound-thought» (suono-pensiero) reinterpretation of Epstein’s work.

Figura 6: Nuit sur les Champs-Élysées" (Miles Davis, 1957). Trascrizione dell'architettura musicale di base da pagina 212 della monografia dell'autore (Daniele, 2010). Il layout traccia esplicitamente le battute musicali, dimostrando dove gli stacchi del montaggio filmico sono strutturalmente individuati direttamente sulla partitura (evidenziati in grigio e contrassegnati da asterischi).

Figura 7: (Appendice 1a): Falsa Soggettiva. Fotogrammi chiave orizzontali a doppia colonna dall'inquadratura 123 da pagina 197 della monografia dell'autore (Daniele, 2010). Il layout traccia la discesa fisica ed emotiva di Florence (Jeanne Moreau) attraverso lo spazio illuminato al neon mentre il paesaggio urbano esterno subisce una totale cancellazione sonora.

3. Analisi delle Marche Stilistiche e della Struttura Musicale

Questa operazione di sottrazione, che formalizza l'enunciazione impersonale attraverso il vuoto sonoro della metropoli (Daniele, 2010, p. 135), trova riscontro in tre specifiche marche stilistiche individuate dall'analisi testuale della sequenza 9 (“Nuit sur les Champs-Élysées”):

• La «soggettività senza soggetto» della falsa soggettiva: L’uso della falsa soggettiva determina il passaggio da uno stato di «soggettività imprecisa» a uno di «oggettività apparente» (p.139). In tale configurazione, «la macchina da presa guarda, ma non si può risalire a chi sta dietro». È precisamente questo espediente retorico a tradurre visivamente l'istanza impersonale dell'enunciazione, oggettivando lo spazio.

• I «punti di sincronizzazione evitati»: Dal punto di vista della messa in colonna audiovisiva, l'assenza di rumori e parole si coordina a un fraseggio in cui Davis costruisce le frasi musicali «ritardando costantemente il primo suono in rapporto ad ogni piano e allo stacco tra un piano e l’altro» (Daniele, 2010, p. 135). Questo non-sincronismo strutturale genera un movimento di anticipazione che elude le sintonie lineari, delegando l'articolazione del nesso direttamente alla mente dello spettatore ed esibendo la natura costruita del testo cinematografico.

• La depersonalizzazione dei corpi nello sfondo: Il rigore geometrico del contenitore urbano entro cui si muove il corpo isolato di Florence è accentuato dall'interazione con l'ambiente. L'analisí evidenzia come la rappresentazione del mondo moderno operi a discapito dell'individualità dell'uomo, annullando le differenze: l'azione della protagonista è costantemente affiancata da «figure umane dal movimento depersonalizzato» che occupano lo sfondo della sequenza (p. 146).

Sul piano propriamente musical-compositivo, l'enunciazione e la tensione drammaturgica si compiono attraverso il trattamento del tempo e della forma da parte del solista. Davis dilata e restringe la metrica regolare del 4/4 (Daniele, 2010, p. 141) e, ricorrendo all'intervallo blues di quinta bemolle (La bemolle) in alternanza alla quinta giusta (La naturale), sviluppa una curva melodica che «prepara ma differisce in continuazione la sua cadenza», risolvendosi sistematicamente in una «falsa cadenza» (Daniele, 2010, p. 152).

Nota analitica dell'autore: Il fotogramma 727 e l'autore dissimulato

Nell'inquadratura 121, il quadro visivo cattura Florence in una carrellata laterale lungo il marciapiede parigino, con il profilo posizionato sul lato destro dello schermo. Le vetrine dei negozi alle sue spalle si trasformano in un complesso arazzo, animato dai riflessi sfocati (flou) delle luci al neon, del traffico cittadino e dei passanti.

Attraverso una stretta decostruzione musicologica condotta inquadratura per inquadratura, al Fotogramma 727 emerge un dettaglio storico vitale all'interno del riflesso del vetro: si scorgono due uomini che osservano la protagonista mentre parla da sola. Mentre uno dei due è rivolto in avanti, l'altro — che cammina di profilo parallelamente a Florence — corrisponde strettamente alla corporatura esile e alla fisionomia distinta di un giovane Louis Malle.

Sebbene la documentazione ufficiale di produzione rimanga silente in proposito, il confronto positivo con le fotografie d'archivio coeve di Malle sostiene con forza la nostra ipotesi che si tratti di un cameo deliberato e nascosto del regista. Proprio come nella celebre tradizione di Alfred Hitchcock di apparire travestito sulla soglia dei suoi racconti, Malle intreccia sottilmente la propria impronta fisica nel riflesso del suo film d'esordio. Così facendo, egli ancora il luogo dell'enunciazione autoriale direttamente dentro le trame architettoniche del mondo concreto, rispecchiando quel medesimo attrito strutturale che governa l'intera colonna sonora.

The screeching cables, the metallic click of the switch, and the pneumatic silence of the cabin no longer function as elements of suspense. Through the emphasis placed on the electroacoustic sense, we are forced to hear the sequence as if the elevator itself were a tape recorder, a media-fixing device that manipulates phonic matter. The mechanical noises interlock with the silences of Davis’s trumpet not out of emotional counterpoint, but out of morphological affinity: they are both sonic bodies isolated from their original context and hurled at the spectator with a friction («frottement») which contemporary digital cinema (lissage) does not have care about. In this way, the enunciative horizon is historicized: the impersonal enunciation becomes incarnate in the very matter of concrete sound.

The phenomenological investigation into the materiality indices and spatial thresholds of Ascenseur pour l'échafaud cannot be exhausted by the simple cataloging of a textual hybridization. The radicality of Louis Malle’s operation demands a critical paradigm shift, capable of emancipating itself from traditional categories and definitions of genre in artistic practice to position itself within the horizon of an authentic «electroacoustic sense», as theorized in the Manifesto of Electroacoustics Magazine (Arts and Technologies).

The moment the [para-]acousmatic nature of the cabin transforms mechanical creaking and the vibration of the double bass into a single material continuum, the work acts directly upon its own formal and compositional processes, structuring the modes of systems of thought. If, when faced with the radical formal ruptures of the coeval cinematic avant-garde — as in the extreme case of Morlaix — Chion rejects traditional critical labels to highlight a device in which expressive parameters «seem unleashed and vary in disorder, without referring to a legible code» («semblent déchaînés et varier en désordre, sans renvoyer à un code lisible»), Malle’s horizon outlines a radically different epistemological posture: a philosophical undifferentiation of discourses and grammars in which the collapse of linguistic hierarchies between music, noise, and ambience ceases to be a deconstructive gesture for its own sake or a fragmentary anarchy. Instead, this clearing away of classical codes becomes the main axis of a new, rigorous textual stability, capable of governing the very architecture of the work.

RDM RECORDS IS A FLORIDA-REGISTERED DBA OF ROMINA DANIELE, OPERATING AS A RECORD LABEL AND BOOK PUBLISHER FOR RDM ROMINA DANIELE MUSIC, A BMI-AFFILIATED MUSIC PUBLISHER.

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