Which film(s) introduced the technique whereby the sound or dialogue from a new scene is sometimes heard before the visual cut? Particularly if the preceding scene finishes on a lingering shot.
It’s been standard practice for decades, but the idea that sound and picture transitions don’t have to be simultaneous has always struck me as a brilliant one that I would never have thought of myself. It improves the flow of the film and helps to tighten up the transition between scenes. Very old films which don’t use the technique can feel rather plodding in comparison.
Could it work the other way too, with the sound from a scene lingering slightly into the next? I’m not sure I can think of an example of that.
I don’t know which film introduced it, but I can answer your second question. I’d only use the sound from the previous scene in a new scene if I was delibrately trying to confuse the audience, or it was a dream carryover sequence.
I feel just the opposite. I have never liked the thought that goes thru my mind for just a second or two, “WTF with the sound – it doesn’t match the picture…oh, that flaw was intentional.”
The earliest use I can remember is from Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935). A woman finds a dead body, and in a close-up, as she opens her mouth to scream, the shriek of a train whistle is heard, with a jump cut to the train. You can see it at 00:39 in this clip.
It seems like you could use it fairly easily without confusing the audience. Consider an indoor scene with a couple arguing. The woman wants to run away and join the circus, the man forbids it. “There is absolutely no way I will allow you to join that flea-bag circus! Over my dead body!” Then it cuts to the second scene which is an outdoor shot of a circus being set up. The camera moves in and zooms in on the woman walking toward the circus with a suitcase – maybe there is the end of a man’s necktie sticking out of the case. The audio from the man’s tirade carrys over to the video of the circus and walking woman.
I have no idea what the movie was, and I can’t even see the actors’ faces in my head. But I remember a scene in an otherwise forgetable movie in which a man and a woman are in bed having sizzling hot sex, and suddenly the audio switches to a man insisting vehemently, “It’s not what you think. I know what you’re thinking, and it was absolutely not that!” Then the video switches to the man who was having sex now arguing with his wife, not the woman he was having sex with, and it very obviously was what she thought it was. The juxtapositioning of the sound and video smacked me in the face with the guy’s treachery. But that’s all I remember of the movie.
If there’s anyone who beat Hitchcock to it (this sequence immediately came to mind, too), I’d wager it’s either Rene Clair or Rouben Mamoulian, though I’d have to wrack my brain to come up with a specific example.