The Sonic Leakage

Throughout the trajectory of monaural sound practice in Indian cinema since 1931, available recording techniques and equipment have had a somewhat limited dynamic sound recording and production range, leading to voice and dialogue being at the top of the priority list, as previously discussed. Likewise, the freedom of a microphone in outdoor locations or on a film set had been reduced by controlling its directionality, to focus on recording ‘almost always the voice’ (Chion, 1994, p. 5), thus establishing a sound-cinema that was of an essentially vococentric nature. It is no surprise then, that the films produced in these times were mostly devotional song and musicoriented mythical or religious stories where the primary narration was carried out through either dialogue between characters or post-recorded voiceovers in some cases. Despite the limitation of the dynamic range, and the controlling and suppression of other sounds such as ambient and incidental sounds, some louder locational environmental sounds may have unwantedly intruded into the film’s directly recorded soundtrack. The predominant emphasis had been on the voice of the actors, but these stray and fundamentally unwanted sounds could provide spatial information about the real site that the film was shot in. In a well-known sequence from the legendary Indian film Devdas (Barua, 1935/1936), the eponymous protagonist Devdas is languishing over his initial arrival at a brothel in Calcutta (now Kolkata) following his recent breakup with Paro, a childhood sweetheart from his native village. Devdas’ fateful interaction with the ‘prostitute’ Chandra leaves him in a state of perpetual melancholia, claustrophobia, and remorse from which he can never recover.