Sull'udibile al cinema. Due microanalisi da Alien e Matrix

The article aims at relating two aspects of film as a textual object. The first concerns its narratolo- gical status. Semiotic studies have often discussed “expansion” and “condensation” as two proce- dures for which a set of sense units are respectively distributed on a larger scale or concentrated in a reduced one. The second aspect is related to the contribution of the audible dimension to filmic enunciation, in the context of the so-called “audiovision”, i.e. the regime of basic enunciation of the post-silent cinema. In this sense, sound should not be considered per se, rather as an element of variable relevance within the audiovisual discourse. Moreover, sound triggers a specific perceptual dimension that has not always been fully considered in cinema studies. In order to bring together these two aspects, the contribution proposes two “micro-analyses of the audible”, by taking into consideration two very short sequences (from Alien and Matrix, so as to constitute a microcorpus of Hollywood science fiction), in which sound nevertheless plays a (curiously) pivotal role. For duration and content, the sequences seem to have a marginal role in the overall context of the filmic text: by means of sound organization, however, each condenses some fundamental textual elements of the whole film.