Movie Sound

[TC Chris]

We have a weekly movie series at our downtown theater, the successor to the summer film festival that ran aground during the Covid epidemic. The series is films that don't make it to the cineplexes: small films, foreign films. I go to all of them. Last week's film was a sort of bonus: Billy Wilder's classic Sunset Boulevard in glorious restored black-and-white on the big screen.

This week was a French film, a new one, The Marching Band. It's about a famous international orchestral conductor who needs a marrow transfusion to overcome acute leukemia. He finds a genetic brother--they were both adopted from the same family--who plays trombone in a local factory band.

What impressed me was the glorious audio of a large orchestra, recorded well and played back over a superb theater sound system. As an old audiophile, I know what good sound can sound like, but my modest home systems never approach it. In the theater, the sound was effortless and real. Wow. There was no need to suspend belief and pretend. It was the real thing.

If you want a nice gentle movie with no guns or explosions but a lot of music, find this one and stream it (or if it shows in a nearby theater, make the trip and hear it as it should be heard).

Chris Campbell