Welcome to the podcast! Here's what we have in store for the series.

Here we embark on a two-part exploration of the 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story. After surveying the extraordinary career of WSS director Robert Wise, we welcome Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz (author of West Side Story as Cinema) to talk about how the film’s story and sound make it an enduring cultural touchstone. For more information on the films and sources cited, visit here.

Many of the songs in West Side Story feature the dubbed voices of uncredited ghost singers. We illuminate how West Side Story's use of "ghosts" differed from other musicals of the era and alter the screen-sound relationship. We also turn our ears toward the people responsible for giving WSS's layered soundscape its distinctive texture.

Sounding Cinema welcomes Rebekah Erdman, Cecilia Kryzda, Anastasia Scholze, and Noah Zahradnik to discuss The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Sound of Metal (2020), two titles that push film sound to its extremes. In the first of a two-part series, we consider how director Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand unsettle a strikingly realistic story by having the characters sing all their lines.

Rebekah Erdman, Cecilia Kryzda, Anastasia Scholze, and Noah Zahradnik return to Sounding Cinema to discuss Sound of Metal (2020), a film that challenges its central character--a musician-- to listen differently to the sounds and silences that define daily life and the relationships within it.

We return to the immersive musicals of Jacques Demy, exploring the serious whimsy and peculiar pairs of The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). Join Abbie McLaren, Caleb Payne, and Nathan Platte as we discuss the ways in which Demy’s film, Michel Legrand's music, and Agnès Varda’s documentary about the film play with and against the formula of the Hollywood studio musical.

Special thanks to: Samuel Ross, who wrote and recorded original and adapted music for the episode. Erika Chagdes, who helped with production preparation. Abbie McLaren, who designed our episode artwork. More resources on the episode are available here.