The death of Linnekar

The film’s famous opening sequence (1958, 1976, 1998: 0’ 0’’-4’ 7’’) has always aroused the most discussion, and it represents a very interesting case study for our enquiry. In 1958 it came in for scathing criticism from Welles, and was the focus for the most significant discoveries during the restoration phases carried out in the nineties. The scene that Welles saw, following the interventions of Muhl and Keller, was the one re-used in 1976: Mancini’s sound track predominates, accompanying the credits and also preparing the moment when the bomb hidden in Linnekar’s car goes off. The comment Welles made in the dossier shows how far it was from his own in­tentions: “I assume that the music now backing the opening sequence of the picture is temporary […] it’s not clear where you have decided to place the credits” (Welles [1957] 2008: 1). He went on to give a detailed description of his intentions for the audio: “[…] the plan was to feature a succession of dif­ferent and contrasting Latin American musical numbers […] loudspeakers are over the entrance of every joint, large or small […]. The fact that the streets are invariably loud with this music was planned as a basic device throughout the entire picture” (ivi). He also gave specific indications as to how best to obtain the desired distorted timbre: “It is very important to note that in the recording of all these numbers – which are supposed to be heard through street loudspeakers – the effect should be just exactly as bad as that. The music itself should be skilfully played, but it will not be enough in doing the final mixing to run this track through an echo chamber with a certain amount of filter” (Tully 1999). Further indications concerning his audio project emerged with the discovery of not only the negative without the cre­dits, duly reinstated in the new version, but also part of the original audio track. When the sound engineers in Schmidlin’s team removed Mancini’s music from the mix of the three DME canals they found background sounds of the sort Welles had described: footsteps, car horns, goats bleating and the voices of the extras. We do not know whether Welles ever heard this track or approved it, but there is no doubt that it corresponds exactly to the descrip­tion he gave in the dossier. Once he had retrieved this part of the audio, Murch decided to go on to interpret what Welles had said regarding the more strictly musical content. He used the music from the rest of the film, together with that featuring in the sound track prepared by Mancini, to create a sort of overture, an agglomeration of sounds and rhythms which emphasises the variety of cultures, races and social classes typical of a border outpost (Lee­per 2001: 232). This creation could be labelled ‘pansound’, a term coined by James Naremore (2004 [1978]: 66) to complement ‘panfocus’. Lastly Murch decided to associate Linnekar’s car with rock’n’roll music playing on the car radio, adopting a strategy that recurs throughout the film (Tully 1999). How­ever, in adding this detail he was clearly being creative, and it has significant repercussions in audiovisual terms. By inserting a few fragments of music playing inside the car, Murch defines a ‘point of listening’ that coincides with the viewpoint in the scene, taking in not only the car containing the bomb but all the other elements that characterise the frontier town as well. Welles’s indications were much less explicit, and could even have referred to the aural sensations of the Linnekar couple. In practical terms this could have entailed a listening point that did not coincide with the viewpoint governing the im­ages, denoting a distinctly unconventional and experimental approach. Without pursuing speculative hypotheses any further or entering into con­siderations of the respective merits of the two approaches, there can be no doubt concerning two elements at least: the inclusion of music emanating from a car radio is in fact all it takes to define the overall sense of an audiovi­sual text; and rather than simply restoration or reconstruction, Murch’s intervention was clearly on the level of co-authorship.