Sound and the masters: The aural in Indian art cinema

Abstract

The study of art cinema has emerged as a richly discursive, but, at the same time, a deeply contested terrain in recent film scholarship. This article examines the discourse of art cinema in India through the prism of sound style and aesthetics. It analyses the sonic strategies deployed in the films of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Mani Kaul, in order to identify the dominant stylistic impulses of sound in art cinema, ranging from Brechtian epic realism on one hand to Indian aesthetic theories on the other. Locating sound as a key element in the discourse of art cinema, the article surveys the different modes through which aesthetic philosophies were translated into formal strategies of sound recording, designing and mixing. Using previous scholarship on art cinema in India as the point of departure, this study combines theoretically informed textual analysis with new historical insights on Indian cinema.