The Unheard Voice in the Sound Film

Abstract

Much has been written on the “disembodied voice” in film. This article seeks to address the inverse: speaking characters whose words go unheard. Often thought rare, this phenomenon is quite common, and to address this blind spot, I propose the neologism “the voice-out” and identify ten categories thereof. In so doing, I illuminate a number of understudied sound-image relations within the cinema.