The sense of being there: Sonic mediation and the role of the human voice in the short documentaries of Vittorio De Seta

This article examines the use of sound and the role of the human voice in Vittorio De Seta’s celebrated series of ethnographic short films on traditional labour in southern Italy. Made in the 1950s, these films constituted a radical departure from established documentary practice by virtue of their employment of cinemascope and technicolour as well as their innovative approach to on-location sound. Critics have sometimes taken issue with De Seta’s aestheticization and idealization of the predicament of his working-class subjects. Yet, against the frequent impression that their painterly and poetic visuals are chiefly responsible for this idealization, I argue that the films’ sonic dimension displays a higher degree of mediation and abstraction, especially with regard to voices. Using De Seta’s films as a case study, I also venture into a broader discussion of audio-visual techniques in non-fiction cinema and their power to manipulate pro-filmic reality.