The film The Summer Is Gone symbolizes the social shock and cultural transition during the reform of state-owned enterprises in the 1990s with the combination of audio tones and cultural memories. The mutual introduction of passive music and individual emotions triggers the audience’s emotional identification of industrial culture, and identifies the implicit narrative form in which the creators consciously restrain their own emotions. At the same time, the film further characterizes the complex emotions of the social collective in the context of “the nation is retreating while the people is advancing” with unconscious references to active music, vocals and the fate of the times. The film’s diverse, specific and cultural sound symbols not only bring the audience immersive auditory experience when showing the cultural sociological significance of the changing era, but also provide an important sample for how to establish a narrative mechanism for effective interaction between sound and images in Chinese films.