"if you girls didn't talk about me, you just wouldn't talk at all."

Letter to Three Wives has what Kaja Silverman claims is the only female voice-over in the history of the classical Hollywood film. The voice-over of Addie Ross-- performed with a bubbly, musical knowingness by Celeste Holm-- never quite lands anywhere, inhabiting the minds of the three wives; it never even accedes to an image, as is more typical of the acousmetric, but we get a sense of her presence that is more like the presence of a ghost when, in the last shot some force knocks over a champagne glass, a force which, we are lead to infer is Addie Ross. Instead of losing power through synchronization, the film hints that Addie has powers that her friends cannot even imagine (letter6.mpg). But what's even more interesting is that this voice emerges as a replacement for more conventional voices of transmission--the radio and the telephone. We first hear Addie's voice after one of the wives has tried to tune in to one of the radio plays she has written; the car radio's broken, but this does not prevent the play of other disembodied voices that are allowed to emerge when other broadcasts cannot (letter1.mpg). Similarly, when the wives find out that one of their husbands has run off with Addie, all three are tempted to make a phone-call to their husbands to ascertain which husband has left. Instead, having already experienced innumerable delays, they must disembark on an all-day boat trip and picnic. (letter2.mpg) Without the certainty of the telephonic voice of their husbands, the voice-over of their absent friend possesses their thoughts. (letter3.mpg) Since the film draws comparisons between the filmic voice-over and electronic voices that are more daily experienced, I would call this voice radiophonic instead of acousmetric. By utilizing this term, it would facilitate a reading of this voice-over that would include the cultural history of the radio and a critique of the mass media. In fact, the film is an extended meditation on both subjects. This film negotiates the place of radio in the home, as well as the value of the mass media in general; the theme of mediated voices culminates in a scene in which a radio executive rhapsodizes on the ability of the radio voice to inhabit, penetrate, and ultimately reprogram housewives. (letter4.mpg). Later in the film, the upward mobility of the voice will threaten inauthenticity as it "puts on airs." (letter5.mpg) The protagonists in this film struggle for a form of self-possession in a sensorium of voice colonization.