FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

128 Transition and Transformation
communicates “points of view” from different characters, but also seems to underline
the presence of an Italian culture that the American “Doc” won’t understand.
The presence of the pianola in the restaurant, which is heard from Lena’s
room too, therefore also serves the purpose of creating a musical link between
Tony and Lena. Thus, the music does not only function as a background, but it
plays an equally important role in the narrative.
The Transition from Silents
Another occasion – this time visible rather than audible – when the transition to
sound has left its mark on the film would be the more limited screen space that
is an obvious result – a necessity in order to handle sound equipment adequately.
Most of the story takes place at the ranch, with only a few exceptions,
characteristically enough both related to Lena’s irruption into Tony’s closed universe
at the ranch: the scene at the restaurant where she works and lives, and
the scene at the railway station, as Lena arrives. The fact that Tony has broken
both his legs is rather convenient in the context of the newly-introduced film
sound: it offers a plausible narrative framework for immobility. A scene at the
photographer’s is completely neutral in its account of spatiality; it could just as
well be that the photographer has come to the ranch.
In addition to this general change of screen space, there are also at least four
occasions in the film where examples of devices from silent cinema surviving in
the era of sound cinema may be found. Here, a first important example in the
film is that of the insert of a framed still – perhaps a postcard – of a farm, placed
on Lena’s desk, including an explanatory printed text, which reads: “Swiss
farm” (in the German version, “Hungarian farm”). Apart from its function as a
form of intertitle, strongly reminiscent of the silents, this also serves multiple
purposes in the narrative. It motivates the accent of the actress, both in English
and in German. It also provides the character with a past, motivating her being
lost in a new, foreign context, and thus more likely to accept the offer of marriage
from a stranger.
A second example, perhaps more invisible, follows immediately upon the
scene described above, when Lena has discovered Tony’s identity, as he has
been carried home on the stretcher. She then withdraws, leaning back against
the wall, with a horrified look in her face: a typical example of silent acting
which in a silent film would have served as the means to convey the message.
(FIG. 23)