Colloquium: Dr Carlo Cenciarelli (Cardiff University)

Listening at the Ends of Cinemagoing: The Cinema as A Quiet Place (2018-2021)

When the film A Quiet Place Part II was released, in May 2021, cinemas around the world had been empty for a long time. After months of closures due to COVID-19, with many Hollywood studios deciding to distribute their movies directly on digital platforms, the global theatrical release of this much-awaited horror sequel was seen by the industry as a 'referendum on the future of moviegoing' (Paramount). The film imagines a post-apocalyptic future where humans must stay silent in order to survive, and the filmmakers were adamant that it would have to be experienced in cinemas. 'THIS is the experience theatres were made for', promised the film trailer. By emphasising the importance of watching (and listening to) A Quiet Place Part II in the technological space of the cinema, the film's marketing campaign repeated a common strategy of using sound to make a case for the continuing significance of moviegoing. Yet whereas the 'permanent campaign for moviegoing' (Acland) historically has been fuelled by showcasing the loudness of cinematic sound, the A Quiet Place franchise uses 'spectacular silence', rather than 'spectacular sound' (Grainge), as its unique selling point. In this talk, I will argue that the franchise's reversed sonic economy is part of a broader shift in the meanings and values of the cinema as a place for listening. Analysing the sonic strategies, marketing materials, and reception of A Quiet Place Part II, and situating the film's pandemic theatrical release in the broader discourse on the 'ends of cinema' (Grusin and Szczepaniak-Gillece), I will explore how the current challenges to cinemagoing and the increasing relocation of cinematic listening to smaller screens are contributing to a re-coding of the cinema as a quiet place.

Carlo Cenciarelli is Lecturer at Cardiff University. He has written articles on the media afterlife of classical and popular music, with publications in edited collections and in journals including Music and Letters, Twentieth-Century Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. He is the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening (Oxford, 2021) and is currently working on a book on mobile music and the moving image.