#3
One thing we never want to forget, amid all the sound design theory and Sound Studies scholarship: we do this because we love movies.
How do we discover and learn?
Every movie fan accumulates knowledge over the years, only by relentless watching and listening.
Sometimes we respond to heartfelt recommendations by friends and family, only to be disappointed that their tastes and interests are so divergent from our own. Skeptical of other fans’ lists of favorites (don’t we all dislike the obnoxious “listicles” that serve as click-bait on line?) the careful Film Professor might guide their students to the cornucopia of critical books and articles (Kael, Denby, Eisenstein, Brownlow, Bazin, Cahiers du Cinéma, and countless others) only to discover that students have had very little exposure to older films. (And by “older,” I mean anything that pre-dates the Marvel Comics film franchise.) For the occasional student who expresses a desire to “get started” as a newbie film fan, I sometimes would shovel a bibliography at them, at other times make an off-the-cuff verbal call. One such easy referral for my teaching colleagues is Not to be Missed: Fifty-four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film (2014, Public Affairs, NY) by Kenneth Turan, who was the leading film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1991 to 2020. Ken Turan’s plain-spoken writing style makes it simple for anyone to become a fan of classic movies without drowning in academic language.
I had an odd experience listening to an audio book version. The reader hired for the recording was superb… a first-class announcer who reads fluidly in a pleasing voice. One excellent drama, Mrs. Miniver (1942, Dir. William Wyler) starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, is so well-regarded that the title comes up frequently in Turan’s book. Every film maven known to me has pronounced the lady’s name as “Minn’-uh-ver” emphasizing the first syllable. How jarring, then, to have the recording reader glaringly enunciate the name as “Mrs. Min-Eye’-ver”, and, ever professional, he does it consistently!
