The cinema is an audiovisual medium, one among many that saturate our contemporary media experience. Despite our habitual references to motion pictures, we are not only film spectators but film auditors as well. We pay attention to narrative cues found not only in what we see on the screen but also in what we hear, whether it’s background music that warns us tragedy is imminent or the screeching of cars on the street that signals a high-speed chase or the indistinct voices of guests at a gala event.