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Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

9/10

Stars: Documentary featuring Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Barbra Streisand, David Lynch, Sofia Coppola, Ang Lee, Christopher Nolan, Robert Redford, Peter Weir, Hans Zimmer

Director: Midge Costin

The auteur theory - '...the belief held by many critics and theorists that it was the director alone who deserved credit for a film' - is a beloved staple of many movie reviewers.

That said, my experience as a film extra long ago convinced me that many more people - on both sides of the camera - were responsible for making a movie, not just the director. Perhaps 'referee' might be a more accurate description of the majority of film directors.

So if you are willing to accept this admittedly heretical concept, then producer-director Costin's riveting documentary (scripted by coproducer Bobette Buster) about the coming of sound in the cinema and its subsequent ear-compelling history is even more compelling.

States sound editor Costin (who is the Kay Rose Chair in the Art of Sound Editing endowed by George Lucas and Spielberg at the University of California School of Cinematic Arts) 'I hope that with this film the audience's ears and consciousness will be opened in a new way as they experience the concepts that are being discussed'.

Costin uses well-choses film clips, interviews with key sound designers and, fascinatingly, dialogue with major moviemakers, vividly to illustrate the coming of sound to the movies and its continuing progress, and in the process making Steven Spielberg's comment 'Our ears lead our eyes to where the story lives' one of the filmmaker's most cogent remarks.

Costin features captivating contributions about the evolution and use of sound in movies from such Hollywood 'legends' as Spielberg, George Lucas, Barbra Streisand, David Lynch, Sofia Coppola, Ang Lee, Christopher Nolan, Robert Redford, Peter Weir and Hans Zimmer.

More important, perhaps, I was even more gripped by the director's celebration of the vital behind-the-scenes artists whose seminal contributions to sound in the movies helped make Hollywood legends legendary, than by the collage of working-really-hard-to-appear-modest famous names called as witnesses.

Alan Frank

USA 2019. UK Distributor: Dogwoof. Colour.
95 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 12A.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 1, Swearing 1.

Review date: 03 Nov 2019