Ritualized cinema; aural ritual
Ritualized cinema (CHION 2009, 489) refers to an audiovisual style in which some specific, often very simple actions (such as opening a door, doing a certain gesture) are recurrently done, to the extent that they end being "ritualized." When such ritualized actions provoke a specific sound, the sound itself, and its repetition, becomes an aural ritual.
An early example of ritualized cinema is the idiosyncratic walking, or putting his hat on and off, adopted by Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp. Indeed, ritualized actions are often found in comic films, in which their repetition can reach the level of absurdity. French films from the 1950s-1960s, notably those by Jacques Tati and Pierre Étaix, exemplify at its best this later trait.
Ritualized cinema is illustrated in this excerpt from Pierre Étaix's Yoyo (1965, France). The loud creaking of the door (a typical Foley) is not only excessively amplified at the expense of other sounds, but this noise will reoccur regularly throughout the film. The creaking, as well as the action that creates it (the ceremonious opening of the doors by the valets) takes on a character of aural ritual.
[C. V.]
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