The Second Film Criticism Conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, gathered film professionals from all over the globe to share their expertise on this year’s topic, Sound in Cinema. As one of the speakers, I was supposed to prepare material about sound in Ukrainian films, and it immediately put me in pensive mode, as evidently, for the cinema of my home country, the sound was always not as much technical or even artistic tool but rather a philosophic category. In this text, I invite you to travel back in time and discover how the specific perception of sound shaped Ukrainian cinema and in what relation it stands to national mentality and worldview.
Speaking of the sound in Ukrainian cinema, we must mention that its history is inseparable from the general history of Soviet cinema. And though in my research I will try to focus on a national component, it is important to keep in mind that many milestones of Ukrainian cinema were shaped by the overall political situation that had a key influence on every aspect of culture, be it through censorship or resistance artistic movements.
Soviet approach to cinema
With the arrival of Soviet power, cinema was proclaimed the most important form of art and made a tool for propaganda. The vast majority of Soviet-era films are imbued with demonstrative patriotism. Leading themes in politicized cinema were the plots of the unity of the people in the struggle against class enemies and foreign invaders, the glorification of human merits that help establish revolutionary ideas, and the heroism of workers sacrificing themselves for a bright future. One of the most serious tasks of cinema back then was the conquest of the audience en masse. For this, it was necessary to master traditional genres: comedy, melodrama, adventure film, detective. Sound-wise, it mirrored in symphonic and choral forms, overall, something epic and undoubtedly impressive. The word was perceived as a tool for overcoming the social muteness of previously oppressed workers and peasants.
In 1930, the state program of transformation of folk art into academic art was implemented, refining the sound from everything rustic according to a new unifying standard.
Later, in 1960s, during Khruschev’s thaw, the folklore trend returned, and it was characterized by a tendency towards “originality of the source “, a deep research of the folk roots, restoration of old traditions, which was very much reflected in the soundscapes of Ukrainian films – but more on that later.
Sound historically played a big role in the Ukrainian history
Of all the Slavic languages, the Ukrainian language is considered to be the most poetic and melodic, and since the dawn of times Ukrainians have been called “a singing nation” and their language, “the language of the nightingale”. Even when we read biographies of the leading personalities of Ukrainian cinema, we will most probably find a connection to sound, to music. For example, Danylo Demutsky, the director of photography of the iconic film Earth, had a father who was a conductor of a village choir and collected samples of folk music, and that was a very common environment for people to grow up in. Even if you were not an artist, music would be a significant part of your life.
Storytelling through the tradition of kobzars
Long before cinema entered our lives, and even before the majority of Ukrainians became literate, the national history, legends, and epic ballads were transmitted through kobzars – wandering singers. Most of them used to be warriors who travelled a lot and saw many unconventional things, and, being wounded, they would retire to earn a living with storytelling. It’s interesting that many of them were blind, so the words and the music were two main instruments for them to deliver the story, and those were two means through which for ages the story would be perceived and remembered. It was especially meaningful because Ukraine, being historically divided between the Russian Empire and neighbouring Western countries had little to nothing of official records that would reflect the Ukrainian perspective, so the tradition of kobzars helped to preserve the national take on multiple events.
When cinema entered the picture, it was quite challenging for Ukrainian filmmakers, deprived of the leading national feature, to operate via the silent tool. In this regard, it is interesting to explore the heritage of the Ukrainian director who created his most famous trilogy still in the silent era yet in it already worked with the perception of the sound.
Olexandr Dovzhenko: Sound in silent films
Of course, we’re talking about Olexandr Dovzhenko and his trilogy Zvenigora-Arsenal-Earth, which is considered to be the harbinger of the most important period in the national cinematic history, Ukrainian Poetic Cinema. Dovzhenko was a very paradoxical artist. He created his films in the Soviet time, under the vigilant eye of the system, yet he maintained this strong national feature, a poetic and lyrical worldview. In everything, be it image, light, sound, or character, he was longing for beauty. And beauty first and foremost was found in natural and organic.
At this stage, to understand the way sound was later established in cinema, is important to turn once again to Ukrainian history. Traditionally agrarian nation, Ukrainians always had a close connection with the land, and with the specific territory. Their beliefs and their perception of the world were shaped by harmonious coexistence with forces of nature. The reality was sacralized. Each phenomenon was perceived as a personalized reflection of a certain spiritual state, a private manifestation of a global universe filled with primordial moral and ethical problems. The subjective interpretation of sound and image mattered more than real life. From the rational point of view, it provokes a lot of paradoxes.
Death and Laughter
Close interaction with pristine nature dictated the rhythm of life. In this setting, death was never a tragedy but an organic part of life circle. There is a scene from Dovzhenko’s film Earth, where the old man is dying in the apple garden, surrounded by his family. There is no grief, no tears. Death happens organically, and the old man asks for a last bite before departure. He’s given an apple, and the life-affirming sound of crunching makes his grandkids laugh. Death and laughter are united together in a most natural way.
But the moment this natural way of things gets disrupted, the same sound produces different emotions. Another example from Dovzhenko’s film Arsenal: soldier, amidst the havoc of the war, is being under the influence of the laughing gas, and it’s horrifying. Even though this scene is from a silent film, it’s exactly the contrasting quality of unheard sound that makes a desired impression on us. Here, death and laughter make us feel uneasy, desperate. There are many other examples of Dovzhenko using sound in his silent films: a horse talks to a rider; dance as a celebration of life; character is being shot but the bullet never kills him.
Dovzhenko was the forefather of the poetic cinema, which we will come back to later. For now, let’s step aside and have a look at something radically different that was happening at the same time.
Experiments of sound pioneers
Probably, many are familiar with Dzyga Vertov, the great avant-gardist and insanely creative documentary filmmaker. His most famous film is Man with a Movie Camera, still a silent film. He is also the creator of the very first Soviet sound film called Symphony of Donbas, or Enthusiasm. Donbas, the industrial region in the East of Ukraine, becomes the main character of this film that can impress even today.
Vertov and his artistic group thought the movie camera was not an instrument in the hands of an artist, but a magical “movie eye” capable of seeing what the human eye does not notice. Together with the “radio ear” it was meant to organize the vision and the hearing of workers, decipher the visible and audible world.
Vertov sought to capture documentary sound. With his film, he proved in practice that documentary sound recording is possible. Before Symphony of Donbas, it was believed that sound recording was possible only in a special “velvet studio”, and that only artificial sounds could be recorded. Vertov was a witness to the construction of new studios in Europe, which strived to completely isolate themselves from street noises, doing everything possible to avoid the slightest extraneous sound. Yet Vertov’s group meets the noise halfway.
Cinema and music are both temporal arts, arts that work with time. The fundamental idea that Vertov believed in was the following: music is not in the sound but in the relationships between sounds. In the same way, cinema is not an image with synchronized sound, but a combination and juxtaposition of both, enhanced by editing. For his film, the director wrote a sound partiture, a symphony of industrial sounds. In his script, he describes sounds in terms of movement: as an “invasion” or “penetration”.
Vertov completely disrupts the correspondence between image and sound that we are accustomed to seeing in cinema; they exist independently of each other. Example: we see an assembly hall but hear factory noise. The “cinema eye” and the “radio ear” perceive the world separately and meet only on the screen for the sake of unexpected, unnatural combinations. Vertov emphasizes the idea of desynchronization that triggers the metaphor. Drunkards on the screen suddenly appear to the sound of church hymns, and those praying, to the “drunken sounds”. The collision of sound and image strikes a spark of meaning, gives birth to thought.
Vertov believes that the new collective existence requires the education of the sensory environment of all members of society, so that noise can gradually be perceived and incorporated into the creative imagination of Soviet people, and then, of course, not only Soviet people: the sounds of machines are understandable to workers of all countries, it is a universal language. They are meant to overcome the alienation of the Tower of Babel.
This unique experiment was a prototype for Musique concrète, the avant-garde music created from noises of natural and mechanical origin that became popular in the 50s and influenced the pop musical of the 60s, and later, with the invention of the computer, in the 80s.
Ukrainian Poetic Cinema
The 60s were specifically fruitful for Ukraine. In those years, a number of films were produced that were later united under the title Ukrainian Poetic Cinema. It was a unique current in national cinema, unmistakably recognizable by its stylistic tone, allegorical cinematic language, and lyrical worldview. In the 60s, the camera became much freer, and filmmakers were exploring documentary aesthetics, trying to find out if the camera could see as a person. Quite soon they found out that optical technology only simulates human POV without conveying the complexity of emotional perception. Filmmakers began a search for ways to transfer their emotions.
Ukrainian Poetic Cinema was a part of this global search. Coming back to the roots of the national consciousness, it was characterized by a certain detachment from the real world and a highly introverted perspective. Every element became colored by a strong personal approach.
Overall, Ukrainian filmmakers of that era believed that cinema found itself under the pressure of literature, while it should be a synthesis of all arts. They strived for the full appliance of semiotics in cinema: a certain sign structure, each element of which would receive meaning only in relation to another element. Within this approach, a particular director creates his own world with symbols making sense within his particular universe. In such a cinema, the audience cannot be a passive consumer. It must actively participate, decipher, and create their own symbolic connections.
In this new system, sound was seen not just as a technical addition or emotional enhancer, but as an independent component and a spiritual and philosophic principle.
With a certain creative freedom that was given to the artists in the 60s, Ukrainian cinema turned to magic, mystic, pagan perception of the surrounding world. The narratives are built around the myths of the creation and destruction of the world, the cosmological and eschatological aspects of existence.
Milestone: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Sergei Parajanov is considered to be the first film of this new unique era. The story is simple and can be told in a few words: in a small village in the mountains, a young man, Ivan, falls in love with the daughter of the man who killed his father. Though their families share a bitter enmity, Ivan and Marichka decide to be together, yet a tragic incident separates them, and they can reunite only in death.
However, by bringing to the narrative visuals and sounds, the film becomes multi-layered and extremely complex, with all technical and artistic means working together to create a cinematic universe.
As we mentioned already, the favorite hero of the average Soviet film was the one who overcomes “darkness” and “muteness”, reaching the ability to speak up and open the way to an enlightened future. Yet in Paradjanov’s film, on the contrary, the hero returns to a primitive, “experiential” state, plunging into blissful and intimately warm silence and darkness.
All the important sound elements of the film serve to depict the mental state of the main character, who is trying to overcome grief and crying for help. The film is difficult to understand by ear only, it sounds more like a dream. Having listened to the entire timeline without visuals, it is impossible to recreate a complete storyline. The sound here has its own narrative. The sound recipient does not perceive the same information that is received visually; in most cases, there would be an absence of the source of the sound. The noise density of the film is impressive.
In this film, we observe a shift in the functionality of speech and music. Speech can function as music or noise, just as sound can convey information. Deliberately, Parajanov makes his characters speak in the Hutsul dialect, making their speech unclear; there are almost no dialogues, and the plot itself is collateral. It is not possible to dub this film, or the meaning of the speech would be assigned that was not supposed to be there. At the same time, sound provides us with much more information and becomes a character: shepherds with trembitas’ weeping voices, the knocking of an axe foreboding death, rushing sound of the storm predicting Ivan’s tragic death.
Dance as a replacement of speech
Another common feature of Ukrainian films is dance replacing speech or action. Through dance, a lot of hidden or suppressed emotions get expressed; whatever cannot be said, finds its way out through the dance. Such examples can be found in Stone Cross by Leonid Osyka (man leaving his homeland for good and being unable to stop the frantic farewell dance); or in The White Bird Marked with Black by Yuri Ilyenko (the lead female character, dancing first with Soviet soldier and then with fellow Western Ukrainian villager, unable to decide whom to give her love to – at the same moment, war comes to the country). Through the body language and the music, we follow the psychological doubts of heroes, and the disharmony in sound often reflects the inner drama within characters.
The romantic era of poetic cinema couldn’t thrive for a long time. The censorship was gradually coming back. In one of the last productions of the Ukrainian poetic cinema, Babylon by Ivan Mykolaychuk, even though action takes place in the village and similar organic environment, sounds of nature are used as a tool to desacralize love, friendship, and loyalty. Example: we see a couple in love – we hear pigs squeaking.
Era of Urban Prose
After the era of the Ukrainian poetic cinema, came an era known as an Urban Prose, represented by such directors as Roman Balayan, Kira Muratova, Viacheslav Krysztofowycz. The themes of loneliness and misunderstanding between people are prominent in their films. There was an almost complete rejection of words as carriers of meaning; in this new world, no one heard anyone anymore, and unlike characters from poetic cinema, they didn’t have nature as an alternative mean of communication, being surrounded by grey concrete blocks and civilization.
Modern Times
One of the most interesting Ukrainian films that were made in recent years was the comedy-drama My Thoughts are Silent by Antonio Lukich. It follows a sound engineer and musician who goes through a crisis in both professional and personal life. A Canadian company invites him to record the sounds of Ukrainian animals for the game about Noah’s Ark. He fulfils the assignment with enthusiasm and creativity, but his mother comes along and constantly disturbs and distracts him. He is motivated by one goal: if he manages to record the voice of a rare Rakhiv mallard, he may be able to leave Ukraine and travel to Canada.
In this film, sound plays a key narrative component, forcing the plot to move forward and defining the fate of the main character.
What’s next?
Presently, Ukrainian cinema is going through challenging times. The country is at war and culture is not a priority. Both tangible and intangible heritage are destroyed, cities are leveled with the ground, memory is lost and reshaped. It is eerie and humbling to see history repeating itself: watching Vertov’s film made almost one hundred years ago and recognizing the same patterns, same narratives, and same political tools. In this, there are traps and opportunities for Ukrainian filmmakers. Art can be a tool for propaganda, but it can also be a therapeutic tool that might help heal those injured by war, educate future generations, and preserve memory that otherwise will dissolve in the ruins of past lives. How will the future of Ukrainian cinema sound? Only time can give an answer.
What to explore
Sound can be theorized and analysed, yet before that, it should be listened to. To better understand sound in Ukrainian cinema, I recommend you watch the films mentioned in the article:
Arsenal by Olexandr Dovzhenko (1929)
Earth by Olexandr Dovzhenko (1930)
Enthusiasm: Symphony of Donbas by Dzyga Vertov (1930)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Sergei Parajanov (1964)
The Stone Cross by Leonid Osyka (1968)
The White Bird Marked with Black by Yuri Ilyenko (1971)
Flights in Dreams and Reality by Roman Balayan (1983)
My Thoughts are Silent by Antonio Lukich (2019)