Galvanometer and light-valves: An archeology of Dolby SVA in Italy

Often more prone to recognize the vitality and variety of silent cinema, historical research on cinema sound following the introduction of sound-on-disc and sound-on-film technologies in the second half of the 1920s starts, and most of the time finishes, with the analysis of technological standards and production processes spreading from the Anglo-American film industry. Unaware of the materiality and reality of everyday practices, often the history of the technological change in sound technology has been reduced to, as Gomery puts it, “a tale of inventors as stars”. Built on the promotional discourse of the industry, historiography tends to acritically assimilate its ideology (and its inherent teleology). The CinemaScope 4-track magnetic sound, the Dolby age, the most recent digital revolution – to cite but a few examples – are thus frequently presented as universal, neutral means, “logical” and “consequent” stages of technological change. As such they appear to be media with intrinsic features, and independent from the productive and cultural system into which they are introduced. Recent historical research has nevertheless shown that the picture is far richer and more contradictory. Also in the presence of codified standards and processes, the history of film sound and film music is, primarily, a matter of adaptation: different production systems propose multiform practices, original technical solutions with which sonic style and artistic conceptions are interwoven. Where a widespread adoption of a technical innovation worldwide appears as a global feature, a more attentive investigation reveals that same phenomenon to be glocal and multiform, determined by the encounter with pre-existent practices that provide an original response to technological change, if not a resistance and, almost always, a sui generis assimilation. The history of Dolby SVA (Stereo Variable Area) in Italy, a nation that was a pioneer in its introduction, is exemplary in this sense. I shall examine only one node of the sound post-production process – optical transcription – in the period which goes from the reintroduction to Italy of the so called magnetico pistato, which went on for nearly a decade with discontinuous results. The magnetico pistato was a slightly modified version of CinemaScope’s 4-track stereo magnetic sound, the “frozen revolution” of the 1950s (Belton). Its use was superimposed on the so-called magottico or magoptical (a wholly Italian peculiarity). The anything but linear Italian transition to Dolby SVA came about in this context and it took at least five years to become established (1977-1982). I shall reconstruct this history by means of “stratigraphic” analyses of the changes made to the instruments – the optical recorders – which is corroborated by a systematic investigation of the oral memories of the maintenance technicians and the project engineers. This study was carried out as part of a research project conducted over several years at the University of Turin. The adaptation of the optical recorders (in Italian camere ottiche) requires us to consider a period of over seventy years. Progressive changes were made to the few instruments, some of which are still being used in current practice. Such a technological change is thus an extraordinary example of archaeology of technology. This perspective, essential to historiography, will lead to a better understanding of the Dolby SVA’s introduction, shedding light on the specificity of the Italian sound post-production system.