HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a
silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) ...
. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early
sound-on-disc Sound-on-disc is a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or play back sound in sync with a motion picture. Early sound-on-disc systems used a mechanical interlock with the movie projector, while more recent syste ...
systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in
sound-on-film Sound-on-film is a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying a picture is recorded on photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog ...
led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid-to-late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively shorts. The earliest
feature-length A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...
movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie (although it had only limited sound sequences) was ''
The Jazz Singer ''The Jazz Singer'' is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolate ...
'', which premiered on October 6, 1927. A major hit, it was made with
Vitaphone Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone was the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one ...
, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. In the United States, they helped secure Hollywood's position as one of the world's most powerful cultural/commercial centers of influence (see
Cinema of the United States The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios (also known as Hollywood) along with some independent film, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century. The dominant style of Am ...
). In Europe (and, to a lesser degree, elsewhere), the new development was treated with suspicion by many filmmakers and critics, who worried that a focus on dialogue would subvert the unique aesthetic virtues of silent cinema. In Japan, where the popular film tradition integrated silent movie and live vocal performance (''
benshi were Japanese performers who provided live narration for silent films (both Japanese films and Western films). ''Benshi'' are sometimes called or . Role The earliest films available for public display were produced by Western studios, portray ...
''), talking pictures were slow to take root. Conversely, in India, sound was the transformative element that led to the rapid expansion of the nation's film industry.


History


Early steps

The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the concept of cinema itself. On February 27, 1888, a couple of days after photographic pioneer
Eadweard Muybridge Eadweard Muybridge (; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first ...
gave a lecture not far from the laboratory of
Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...
, the two inventors met privately. Muybridge later claimed that on this occasion, six years before the first commercial motion picture exhibition, he proposed a scheme for sound cinema that would combine his image-casting
zoopraxiscope The zoopraxiscope (initially named ''zoographiscope'' and ''zoogyroscope'') is an early device for displaying moving images and is considered an important predecessor of the movie projector. It was conceived by photographic pioneer Eadweard Mu ...
with Edison's recorded-sound technology. No agreement was reached, but within a year Edison commissioned the development of the
Kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...
, essentially a "peep-show" system, as a visual complement to his
cylinder A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...
phonograph. The two devices were brought together as the
Kinetophone The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...
in 1895, but individual, cabinet viewing of motion pictures was soon to be outmoded by successes in film projection. In 1899, a projected sound-film system known as Cinemacrophonograph or Phonorama, based primarily on the work of Swiss-born inventor François Dussaud, was exhibited in Paris; similar to the Kinetophone, the system required individual use of earphones. An improved cylinder-based system, Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, was developed by Clément-Maurice Gratioulet and Henri Lioret of France, allowing short films of theater, opera, and ballet excerpts to be presented at the Paris Exposition in 1900. These appear to be the first publicly exhibited films with projection of both image and recorded sound. Phonorama and yet another sound-film system—Théâtroscope—were also presented at the Exposition. Three major problems persisted, leading to motion pictures and sound recording largely taking separate paths for a generation. The primary issue was synchronization: pictures and sound were recorded and played back by separate devices, which were difficult to start and maintain in tandem. Sufficient playback volume was also hard to achieve. While motion picture projectors soon allowed film to be shown to large theater audiences, audio technology before the development of electric amplification could not project satisfactorily to fill large spaces. Finally, there was the challenge of recording fidelity. The primitive systems of the era produced sound of very low quality unless the performers were stationed directly in front of the cumbersome recording devices (acoustical horns, for the most part), imposing severe limits on the sort of films that could be created with live-recorded sound. Cinematic innovators attempted to cope with the fundamental synchronization problem in a variety of ways. An increasing number of motion picture systems relied on
gramophone records A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near ...
—known as
sound-on-disc Sound-on-disc is a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or play back sound in sync with a motion picture. Early sound-on-disc systems used a mechanical interlock with the movie projector, while more recent syste ...
technology. The records themselves were often referred to as "Berliner discs", after one of the primary inventors in the field, German-American
Emile Berliner Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) originally Emil Berliner, was a German-American inventor. He is best known for inventing the lateral-cut flat disc record (called a "gramophone record" in British and American English) used with a ...
. In 1902,
Léon Gaumont Léon Ernest Gaumont (; 10 May 1864 – 10 August 1946) was a French inventor, engineer, and industrialist who was a pioneer of the motion picture industry. He founded the world’s first and oldest film studio Gaumont Film Company, and worked ...
demonstrated his sound-on-disc Chronophone, involving an electrical connection he had recently patented, to the French Photographic Society. Four years later, Gaumont introduced the Elgéphone, a compressed-air amplification system based on the Auxetophone, developed by British inventors Horace Short and Charles Parsons. Despite high expectations, Gaumont's sound innovations had only limited commercial success. Despite some improvements, they still did not satisfactorily address the three basic issues with sound film and were expensive as well. For some years, American inventor E. E. Norton's Cameraphone was the primary competitor to the Gaumont system (sources differ on whether the Cameraphone was disc- or cylinder-based); it ultimately failed for many of the same reasons that held back the Chronophone.Altman (2005), pp. 158–65; Altman (1995). In 1913, Edison introduced a new cylinder-based synch-sound apparatus known, just like his 1895 system, as the Kinetophone. Instead of films being shown to individual viewers in the Kinetoscope cabinet, they were now projected onto a screen. The phonograph was connected by an intricate arrangement of pulleys to the film projector, allowing—under ideal conditions—for synchronization. However, conditions were rarely ideal, and the new, improved Kinetophone was retired after little more than a year. By the mid-1910s, the groundswell in commercial sound motion picture exhibition had subsided. Beginning in 1914, ''
The Photo-Drama of Creation ''The Photo-Drama of Creation'', or ''Creation-Drama'', is a four-part audiovisual presentation (eight hours in total) produced by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania under the direction of Charles Taze Russell, the founder of ...
'', promoting Jehovah's Witnesses' conception of humankind's genesis, was screened around the United States: eight hours worth of projected visuals involving both slides and live action, synchronized with separately recorded lectures and musical performances played back on phonograph. Meanwhile, innovations continued on another significant front. In 1900, as part of the research he was conducting on the
photophone The photophone is a telecommunications device that allows transmission of speech on a beam of light. It was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's laboratory at 1325 ...
, the German physicist
Ernst Ruhmer Ernst Walter Ruhmer (15 April 1878 – 8 April 1913) was a German physicist. He was best known for investigating practical applications making use of the light-sensitivity properties of selenium, which he employed in developing wireless telephony u ...
recorded the fluctuations of the transmitting arc-light as varying shades of light and dark bands onto a continuous roll of photographic film. He then determined that he could reverse the process and reproduce the recorded sound from this photographic strip by shining a bright light through the running filmstrip, with the resulting varying light illuminating a selenium cell. The changes in brightness caused a corresponding change to the selenium's resistance to electrical currents, which was used to modulate the sound produced in a telephone receiver. He called this invention the photographophone, which he summarized as: "It is truly a wonderful process: sound becomes electricity, becomes light, causes chemical actions, becomes light and electricity again, and finally sound." Ruhmer began a correspondence with the French-born, London-based
Eugene Lauste Eugène Augustin Lauste (17 January 1857 in Montmartre, France – 27 June 1935 in Montclair, New Jersey) was a French inventor instrumental in the technological development of the history of cinema. By age 23 he held 53 French patents. He emigra ...
,Crawford (1931), p. 638. who had worked at Edison's lab between 1886 and 1892. In 1907, Lauste was awarded the first patent for
sound-on-film Sound-on-film is a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying a picture is recorded on photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog ...
technology, involving the transformation of sound into light waves that are photographically recorded direct onto
celluloid Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary ...
. As described by historian Scott Eyman,
It was a double system, that is, the sound was on a different piece of film from the picture.... In essence, the sound was captured by a microphone and translated into light waves via a light valve, a thin ribbon of sensitive metal over a tiny slit. The sound reaching this ribbon would be converted into light by the shivering of the diaphragm, focusing the resulting light waves through the slit, where it would be photographed on the side of the film, on a strip about a tenth of an inch wide.
In 1908, Lauste purchased a photographophone from Ruhmer, with the intention of perfecting the device into a commercial product. Though sound-on-film would eventually become the universal standard for synchronized sound cinema, Lauste never successfully exploited his innovations, which came to an effective dead end. In 1914, Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt was granted German patent 309,536 for his sound-on-film work; that same year, he apparently demonstrated a film made with the process to an audience of scientists in Berlin. Hungarian engineer Denes Mihaly submitted his sound-on-film Projectofon concept to the Royal Hungarian Patent Court in 1918; the patent award was published four years later. Whether sound was captured on cylinder, disc, or film, none of the available technology was adequate for big-league commercial purposes, and for many years the heads of the major Hollywood film studios saw little benefit in producing sound motion pictures.


Crucial innovations

A number of technological developments contributed to making sound cinema commercially viable by the late 1920s. Two involved contrasting approaches to synchronized sound reproduction, or playback:


Advanced sound-on-film

In 1919, American inventor Lee De Forest was awarded several patents that would lead to the first
optical sound Optical sound is a means of storing sound recordings on transparent film. Originally developed for military purposes, the technology first saw widespread use in the 1920s as a sound-on-film format for motion pictures. Optical sound eventually ...
-on-film technology with commercial application. In De Forest's system, the sound track was photographically recorded onto the side of the strip of motion picture film to create a composite, or "married", print. If proper synchronization of sound and picture was achieved in recording, it could be absolutely counted on in playback. Over the next four years, he improved his system with the help of equipment and patents licensed from another American inventor in the field,
Theodore Case Theodore Willard Case (December 12, 1888 – May 13, 1944) was an American chemist and inventor known for the invention of the Movietone sound-on-film system. Early life and education Theodore Willard Case was born in 1888 in Auburn, New Yo ...
. At the
University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...
, Polish-born research engineer
Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner (also known as Joseph T. Tykociner; 5 October 1877, in Włocławek, Congress Poland – 11 June 1969, in Urbana, Illinois, United States) was a Polish engineer and a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. In 1921 he bec ...
was working independently on a similar process. On June 9, 1922, he gave the first reported U.S. demonstration of a sound-on-film motion picture to members of the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers The American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) was a United States-based organization of electrical engineers that existed from 1884 through 1962. On January 1, 1963, it merged with the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) to form the Insti ...
. As with Lauste and Tigerstedt, Tykociner's system would never be taken advantage of commercially; however, De Forest's soon would. On April 15, 1923, at the New York City's Rivoli Theater, the first commercial screening of motion pictures with sound-on-film took place. This would become the future standard. It consisted of a set of short films varying in length and featuring some of the most popular stars of the 1920s (including Eddie Cantor,
Harry Richman Harry Richman (born Henry Reichman Jr.; August 10, 1895 – November 3, 1972) was an American singer, actor, dancer, comedian, pianist, songwriter, bandleader, and nightclub performer, at his most popular in the 1920s and 1930s. In his peak yea ...
, Sophie Tucker, and George Jessel among others) doing stage performances such as
vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
s, musical acts, and speeches which accompanied the screening of the silent feature film ''Bella Donna''. All of them were presented under the banner of De Forest Phonofilms. The set included the 11-minute short film ''From far Seville'' starring Concha Piquer. In 2010, a copy of the tape was found in the U.S. Library of Congress, where it is currently preserved. Critics attending the event praised the novelty but not the sound quality which received negative reviews in general. That June, De Forest entered into an extended legal battle with an employee,
Freeman Harrison Owens Freeman Harrison Owens (July 20, 1890 – December 9, 1979) was an early American filmmaker and aerial photographer. Biography was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the only child of Charles H. Owens and Christabel Harrison. He attended Pine Blu ...
, for title to one of the crucial Phonofilm patents. Although De Forest ultimately won the case in the courts, Owens is today recognized as a central innovator in the field. The following year, De Forest's studio released the first commercial dramatic film shot as a talking picture—the two-reeler ''Love's Old Sweet Song'', directed by J. Searle Dawley and featuring
Una Merkel Una Merkel (December 10, 1903 – January 2, 1986) was an American stage, film, radio, and television actress. Merkel was born in Kentucky and acted on stage in New York in the 1920s. She went to Hollywood in 1930 and became a popular film ...
. However, phonofilm's stock in trade was not original dramas but celebrity documentaries, popular music acts, and comedy performances. President Calvin Coolidge, opera singer
Abbie Mitchell __NOTOC__ Abriea "Abbie" Mitchell Cook (25 September 1884 – 16 March 1960), also billed as Abbey Mitchell, was an American soprano opera singer. She performed the role of Clara in the premiere production of George Gershwin's ''Porgy and Bes ...
, and vaudeville stars such as Phil Baker,
Ben Bernie Benjamin Anzelwitz, known professionally as Ben Bernie (May 30, 1891 – October 23, 1943),DeLong, Thomas A. (1996). ''Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . P. ...
, Eddie Cantor and
Oscar Levant Oscar Levant (December 27, 1906August 14, 1972) was an American concert pianist, composer, conductor, author, radio game show panelist, television talk show host, comedian and actor. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for rec ...
appeared in the firm's pictures. Hollywood remained suspicious, even fearful, of the new technology. As '' Photoplay'' editor James Quirk put it in March 1924, "Talking pictures are perfected, says Dr. Lee De Forest. ''So'' is
castor oil Castor oil is a vegetable oil pressed from castor beans. It is a colourless or pale yellow liquid with a distinct taste and odor. Its boiling point is and its density is 0.961 g/cm3. It includes a mixture of triglycerides in which about ...
." De Forest's process continued to be used through 1927 in the United States for dozens of short Phonofilms; in the UK it was employed a few years longer for both shorts and features by British Sound Film Productions, a subsidiary of British Talking Pictures, which purchased the primary Phonofilm assets. By the end of 1930, the Phonofilm business would be liquidated. In Europe, others were also working on the development of sound-on-film. In 1919, the same year that DeForest received his first patents in the field, three German inventors, Josef Engl (1893–1942), Hans Vogt (1890–1979), and Joseph Massolle (1889–1957), patented the
Tri-Ergon The Tri-Ergon sound-on-film system was developed from around 1919 by three German inventors, Josef Engl (1893–1942), Joseph Massolle (1889–1957), and Hans Vogt (1890–1979). The system used a photoelectric recording method and a non-standa ...
sound system. On September 17, 1922, the Tri-Ergon group gave a public screening of sound-on-film productions—including a dramatic talkie, ''Der Brandstifter'' (''The Arsonist'') —before an invited audience at the Alhambra Kino in Berlin. By the end of the decade, Tri-Ergon would be the dominant European sound system. In 1923, two Danish engineers, Axel Petersen and Arnold Poulsen, patented a system that recorded sound on a separate filmstrip running parallel with the image reel. Gaumont licensed the technology and briefly put it to commercial use under the name Cinéphone. Domestic competition, however, eclipsed Phonofilm. By September 1925, De Forest and Case's working arrangement had fallen through. The following July, Case joined Fox Film, Hollywood's third largest studio, to found the Fox-Case Corporation. The system developed by Case and his assistant, Earl Sponable, given the name Movietone, thus became the first viable sound-on-film technology controlled by a Hollywood movie studio. The following year, Fox purchased the North American rights to the Tri-Ergon system, though the company found it inferior to Movietone and virtually impossible to integrate the two different systems to advantage. In 1927, as well, Fox retained the services of Freeman Owens, who had particular expertise in constructing cameras for synch-sound film.


Advanced sound-on-disc

Parallel with improvements in sound-on-film technology, a number of companies were making progress with systems that recorded movie sound on phonograph discs. In sound-on-disc technology from the era, a phonograph turntable is connected by a mechanical
interlock An interlock is a feature that makes the state of two mechanisms or functions mutually dependent. It may be used to prevent undesired states in a finite-state machine, and may consist of any electrical, electronic, or mechanical devices or system ...
to a specially modified
film projector A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying motion picture film by projecting it onto a screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras. Modern ...
, allowing for synchronization. In 1921, the
Photokinema ''Photo-Kinema'' (some sources say ''Phono-Kinema'') was a sound-on-disc system for motion pictures invented by Orlando Kellum. 1921 introduction The system was first used for a small number of short films, mostly made in 1921. These films presen ...
sound-on-disc system developed by Orlando Kellum was employed to add synchronized sound sequences to D. W. Griffith's failed silent film ''
Dream Street Dream Street were an American pop music, pop boy band that was formed in 1999 by Louis Baldonieri and Brian Lukow. The band disbanded in 2002 following a legal dispute between parents of the band members and the band's managers. History The ...
''. A love song, performed by star Ralph Graves, was recorded, as was a sequence of live vocal effects. Apparently, dialogue scenes were also recorded, but the results were unsatisfactory and the film was never publicly screened incorporating them. On May 1, 1921, ''Dream Street'' was re-released, with love song added, at New York City's Town Hall theater, qualifying it—however haphazardly—as the first feature-length film with a live-recorded vocal sequence. However, the sound quality was very poor and no other theaters could show the sound version of the film as no one had the Photokinema sound system installed. On Sunday, May 29, ''Dream Street'' opened at the Shubert Crescent Theater in
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
with a program of short films made in Phonokinema. However, business was poor, and the program soon closed. In 1925,
Sam Warner Samuel Louis Warner (born Szmuel Wonsal, August 10, 1885 – October 5, 1927) was an American film producer who was the co-founder and chief executive officer of Warner Bros. He established the studio along with his brothers Harry, Albert, and ...
of
Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
, then a small Hollywood studio with big ambitions, saw a demonstration of the Western Electric sound-on-disc system and was sufficiently impressed to persuade his brothers to agree to experiment with using this system at New York City's Vitagraph Studios, which they had recently purchased. The tests were convincing to the Warner Brothers, if not to the executives of some other picture companies who witnessed them. Consequently, in April 1926 the Western Electric Company entered into a contract with Warner Brothers and W. J. Rich, a financier, giving them an exclusive license for recording and reproducing sound pictures under the Western Electric system. To exploit this license the Vitaphone Corporation was organized with Samuel L. Warner as its president.Crafton (1997), pp. 71–72.
Vitaphone Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone was the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one ...
, as this system was now called, was publicly introduced on August 6, 1926, with the premiere of ''
Don Juan Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni ( Italian), is a legendary, fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. Famous versions of the story include a 17th-century play, ''El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra'' ...
''; the first feature-length movie to employ a synchronized sound system of any type throughout, its
soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack ...
contained a musical score and added sound effects, but no recorded dialogue—in other words, it had been staged and shot as a silent film. Accompanying ''Don Juan'', however, were eight shorts of musical performances, mostly classical, as well as a four-minute filmed introduction by Will H. Hays, president of the
Motion Picture Association of America The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distrib ...
, all with live-recorded sound. These were the first true sound films exhibited by a Hollywood studio. Warner Bros.' ''
The Better 'Ole ''The Better 'Ole'', also called ''The Romance of Old Bill'', is an Edwardian musical comedy with a book by Bruce Bairnsfather and Arthur Elliot, music by Herman Darewski, and lyrics by Percival Knight and James Heard, based on the cartoon chara ...
'', technically similar to ''Don Juan'', followed in October. Sound-on-film would ultimately win out over sound-on-disc because of a number of fundamental technical advantages: * Synchronization: no interlock system was completely reliable, and a projectionist's error, or an inexactly repaired film break, or a defect in the soundtrack disc could result in the sound becoming seriously and irrecoverably out of sync with the picture * Editing: discs could not be directly edited, severely limiting the ability to make alterations in their accompanying films after the original release cut * Distribution: phonograph discs added expense and complication to film distribution * Wear and tear: the physical process of playing the discs degraded them, requiring their replacement after approximately twenty screenings Nonetheless, in the early years, sound-on-disc had the edge over sound-on-film in two substantial ways: * Production and capital cost: it was generally less expensive to record sound onto disc than onto film and the exhibition systems—turntable/interlock/projector—were cheaper to manufacture than the complex image-and-audio-pattern-reading projectors required by sound-on-film * Audio quality: phonograph discs, Vitaphone's in particular, had superior
dynamic range Dynamic range (abbreviated DR, DNR, or DYR) is the ratio between the largest and smallest values that a certain quantity can assume. It is often used in the context of Signal (electrical engineering), signals, like sound and light. It is measured ...
to most sound-on-film processes of the day, at least during the first few playings; while sound-on-film tended to have better
frequency response In signal processing and electronics, the frequency response of a system is the quantitative measure of the magnitude and phase of the output as a function of input frequency. The frequency response is widely used in the design and analysis of s ...
, this was outweighed by greater
distortion In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signa ...
and
noise Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference aris ...
As sound-on-film technology improved, both of these disadvantages were overcome. The third crucial set of innovations marked a major step forward in both the live recording of sound and its effective playback:


Fidelity electronic recording and amplification

In 1913, Western Electric, the manufacturing division of AT&T, acquired the rights to the de Forest
audion The Audion was an electronic detecting or amplifying vacuum tube invented by American electrical engineer Lee de Forest in 1906.De Forest patented a number of variations of his detector tubes starting in 1906. The patent that most clearly covers ...
, the forerunner of the triode
vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied. The type known as ...
. Over the next few years they developed it into a predictable and reliable device that made electronic amplification possible for the first time. Western Electric then branched-out into developing uses for the vacuum tube including public address systems and an electrical recording system for the recording industry. Beginning in 1922, the research branch of Western Electric began working intensively on recording technology for both sound-on-disc and sound-on film synchronised sound systems for motion-pictures. The engineers working on the sound-on-disc system were able to draw on expertise that Western Electric already had in electrical disc recording and were thus able to make faster initial progress. The main change required was to increase the playing time of the disc so that it could match that of a standard reel of 35 mm film. The chosen design used a disc nearly 16 inches (about 40 cm) in diameter rotating at 33 1/3 rpm. This could play for 11 minutes, the running time of 1000 ft of film at 90 ft/min (24 frames/s). Because of the larger diameter the minimum groove velocity of 70 ft/min (14 inches or 356 mm/s) was only slightly less than that of a standard 10-inch 78 rpm commercial disc. In 1925, the company publicly introduced a greatly improved system of electronic audio, including sensitive condenser microphones and rubber-line recorders (named after the use of a rubber damping band for recording with better frequency response onto a wax master disc). That May, the company licensed entrepreneur Walter J. Rich to exploit the system for commercial motion pictures; he founded Vitagraph, in which Warner Bros. acquired a half interest, just one month later. In April 1926, Warners signed a contract with AT&T for exclusive use of its film sound technology for the redubbed Vitaphone operation, leading to the production of ''Don Juan'' and its accompanying shorts over the following months. During the period when Vitaphone had exclusive access to the patents, the fidelity of recordings made for Warners films was markedly superior to those made for the company's sound-on-film competitors. Meanwhile,
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...
—the new name for the AT&T research operation—was working at a furious pace on sophisticated sound amplification technology that would allow recordings to be played back over
loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or ...
s at theater-filling volume. The new moving-coil speaker system was installed in New York's Warners Theatre at the end of July and its patent submission, for what Western Electric called the No. 555 Receiver, was filed on August 4, just two days before the premiere of ''Don Juan''. Late in the year, AT&T/Western Electric created a licensing division, Electrical Research Products Inc. (ERPI), to handle rights to the company's film-related audio technology. Vitaphone still had legal exclusivity, but having lapsed in its royalty payments, effective control of the rights was in ERPI's hands. On December 31, 1926, Warners granted Fox-Case a sublicense for the use of the Western Electric system; in exchange for the sublicense, both Warners and ERPI received a share of Fox's related revenues. The patents of all three concerns were cross-licensed. Superior recording and amplification technology was now available to two Hollywood studios, pursuing two very different methods of sound reproduction. The new year would finally see the emergence of sound cinema as a significant commercial medium.


Travel

In 1929 a "new
RCA Photophone RCA Photophone was the trade name given to one of four major competing technologies that emerged in the American film industry in the late 1920s for synchronizing electrically recorded audio to a motion picture image. RCA Photophone was an opt ...
portable sound and picture reproducing system" was described in the industry journal Projection Engineering. In Australia,
Hoyts The Hoyts Group of companies in Australia and New Zealand includes Hoyts Cinemas and Val Morgan. Hoyts operates more than 450 cinema screens and 55,000 seats, making it Australia's second largest movie exhibitor after Event Hospita ...
and Gilby Talkies Pty., Ltd were touring talking pictures to country towns. The same year the White Star Line installed talking picture equipment on the s.s. Majestic. The features shown on the first voyage were ''
Show Boat ''Show Boat'' is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on Edna Ferber's best-selling 1926 novel of the same name. The musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock worke ...
'' and ''
Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
.''


Triumph of the "talkies"

In February 1927, an agreement was signed by five leading Hollywood movie companies:
Famous Players-Lasky Famous Players-Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company formed on June 28, 1916, from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company—originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays—and ...
(soon to be part of Paramount),
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 ...
, Universal, First National, and
Cecil B. DeMille Cecil Blount DeMille (; August 12, 1881January 21, 1959) was an American film director, producer and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of the American cine ...
's small but prestigious
Producers Distributing Corporation Producers Distributing Corporation was a short-lived Hollywood film distribution company, organized in 1924 and dissolved in March 1927. In its brief heyday, film director Cecil B. DeMille was its primary shareholder and major talent. Corporat ...
(PDC). The five studios agreed to collectively select just one provider for sound conversion, and then waited to see what sort of results the front-runners came up with. In May, Warner Bros. sold back its exclusivity rights to ERPI (along with the Fox-Case sublicense) and signed a new royalty contract similar to Fox's for use of Western Electric technology. Fox and Warners pressed forward with sound cinema, moving in different directions both technologically and commercially: Fox moved into newsreels and then scored dramas, while Warners concentrated on talking features. Meanwhile, ERPI sought to corner the market by signing up the five allied studios. The big sound film sensations of the year all took advantage of preexisting celebrity. On May 20, 1927, at New York City's Roxy Theater,
Fox Movietone Movietone News is a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1963 in the United States. Under the name British Movietone News, it also ran in the United Kingdom from 1929 to 1986, in France also produced by Fox-Europa, in Australia and New Zealand until 197 ...
presented a sound film of the takeoff of
Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...
's celebrated flight to Paris, recorded earlier that day. In June, a Fox sound newsreel depicting his return welcomes in New York City and Washington, D.C., was shown. These were the two most acclaimed sound motion pictures to date. In May, as well, Fox had released the first Hollywood fiction film with synchronized dialogue: the short ''They're Coming to Get Me'', starring comedian
Chic Sale Chic (; ), meaning "stylish" or "smart", is an element of fashion. It was originally a French word. Pronounced Chick. Etymology '' Chic'' is a French word, established in English since at least the 1870s. Early references in English diction ...
. After rereleasing a few silent feature hits, such as '' Seventh Heaven'', with recorded music, Fox came out with its first original Movietone feature on September 23: '' Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans'', by acclaimed German director F. W. Murnau. As with ''Don Juan'', the film's soundtrack consisted of a musical score and sound effects (including, in a couple of crowd scenes, "wild", nonspecific vocals). Then, on October 6, 1927, Warner Bros.' ''
The Jazz Singer ''The Jazz Singer'' is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolate ...
'' premiered. It was a smash box office success for the mid-level studio, earning a total of $2.625 million in the United States and abroad, almost a million dollars more than the previous record for a Warner Bros. film. Produced with the Vitaphone system, most of the film does not contain live-recorded audio, relying, like ''Sunrise'' and ''Don Juan'', on a score and effects. When the movie's star,
Al Jolson Al Jolson (born Eizer Yoelson; June 9, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Lithuanian-American Jewish singer, comedian, actor, and vaudevillian. He was one of the United States' most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1920s, and was self-billed ...
, sings, however, the film shifts to sound recorded on the set, including both his musical performances and two scenes with ad-libbed speech—one of Jolson's character, Jakie Rabinowitz (Jack Robin), addressing a cabaret audience; the other an exchange between him and his mother. The "natural" sounds of the settings were also audible. Though the success of ''The Jazz Singer'' was due largely to Jolson, already established as one of U.S. biggest music stars, and its limited use of synchronized sound hardly qualified it as an innovative sound film (let alone the "first"), the movie's profits were proof enough to the industry that the technology was worth investing in. The development of commercial sound cinema had proceeded in fits and starts before ''The Jazz Singer'', and the film's success did not change things overnight. Influential gossip columnist
Louella Parsons Louella Parsons (born Louella Rose Oettinger; August 6, 1881 – December 9, 1972) was an American movie columnist and a screenwriter. She was retained by William Randolph Hearst because she had championed Hearst's mistress Marion Davies and s ...
' reaction to ''The Jazz Singer'' was badly off the mark: "I have no fear that the screeching sound film will ever disturb our theaters," while
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
head of production
Irving Thalberg Irving Grant Thalberg (May 30, 1899 – September 14, 1936) was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and ability to select scripts, choose actors, gather productio ...
called the film "a good gimmick, but that's all it was."Fleming, E.J., The Fixers, McFarland & Co., 2005, pg. 78 Not until May 1928 did the group of four big studios (PDC had dropped out of the alliance), along with
United Artists United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the stud ...
and others, sign with ERPI for conversion of production facilities and theaters for sound film. It was a daunting commitment; revamping a single theater cost as much as $15,000 (the equivalent of $220,000 in 2019), and there were more than 20,000 movie theaters in the United States. By 1930, only half of the theaters had been wired for sound. Initially, all ERPI-wired theaters were made Vitaphone-compatible; most were equipped to project Movietone reels as well. However, even with access to both technologies, most of the Hollywood companies remained slow to produce talking features of their own. No studio besides Warner Bros. released even a part-talking feature until the low-budget-oriented
Film Booking Offices of America Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), registered as FBO Pictures Corp., was an American film studio of the silent era, a midsize producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. The business began in 1918 as Robertson-Cole, an Anglo-Americ ...
(FBO) premiered '' The Perfect Crime'' on June 17, 1928, eight months after ''The Jazz Singer''. FBO had come under the effective control of a Western Electric competitor,
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
's
RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
division, which was looking to market its new sound-on-film system,
Photophone The photophone is a telecommunications device that allows transmission of speech on a beam of light. It was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's laboratory at 1325 ...
. Unlike Fox-Case's Movietone and De Forest's Phonofilm, which were variable-density systems, Photophone was a variable-area system—a refinement in the way the audio signal was inscribed on film that would ultimately become the standard. (In both sorts of systems, a specially-designed lamp, whose exposure to the film is determined by the audio input, is used to record sound photographically as a series of minuscule lines. In a variable-density process, the lines are of varying darkness; in a variable-area process, the lines are of varying width.) By October, the FBO-RCA alliance would lead to the creation of Hollywood's newest major studio, RKO Pictures. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. had released three more talkies, all profitable, if not at the level of ''The Jazz Singer'': In March, '' Tenderloin'' appeared; it was billed by Warners as the first feature in which characters spoke their parts, though only 15 of its 88 minutes had dialogue. '' Glorious Betsy'' followed in April, and '' The Lion and the Mouse'' (31 minutes of dialogue) in May. On July 6, 1928, the first all-talking feature, '' Lights of New York'', premiered. The film cost Warner Bros. only $23,000 to produce, but grossed $1,252,000, a record rate of return surpassing 5,000%. In September, the studio released another Al Jolson part-talking picture, ''
The Singing Fool ''The Singing Fool'' is a 1928 American musical drama part-talkie motion picture directed by Lloyd Bacon which was released by Warner Bros. The film stars Al Jolson and is a follow-up to his previous film, '' The Jazz Singer''. It is credited w ...
'', which more than doubled ''The Jazz Singers earnings record for a Warner Bros. movie. This second Jolson screen smash demonstrated the movie musical's ability to turn a song into a national hit: inside of nine months, the Jolson number " Sonny Boy" had racked up 2 million record and 1.25 million sheet music sales. September 1928 also saw the release of Paul Terry's '' Dinner Time'', among the first animated cartoons produced with synchronized sound. Soon after he saw it,
Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...
released his first sound picture, the Mickey Mouse short ''
Steamboat Willie ''Steamboat Willie'' is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black and white by Walt Disney Studios and was released by Pat Powers, under the name of Celebrity Productions. The cartoon ...
''. Over the course of 1928, as Warner Bros. began to rake in huge profits due to the popularity of its sound films, the other studios quickened the pace of their conversion to the new technology. Paramount, the industry leader, put out its first talkie in late September, ''
Beggars of Life ''Beggars of Life'' is an American film directed by William Wellman and starring Wallace Beery and Richard Arlen as hobos, and Louise Brooks as a young woman who dresses as a young man and flees the law. The film is regarded as Brooks's best Ame ...
''; though it had just a few lines of dialogue, it demonstrated the studio's recognition of the new medium's power. ''
Interference Interference is the act of interfering, invading, or poaching. Interference may also refer to: Communications * Interference (communication), anything which alters, modifies, or disrupts a message * Adjacent-channel interference, caused by extr ...
'', Paramount's first all-talker, debuted in November. The process known as "goat glanding" briefly became widespread: soundtracks, sometimes including a smatter of post-dubbed dialogue or song, were added to movies that had been shot, and in some cases released, as silents. A few minutes of singing could qualify such a newly endowed film as a "musical." (Griffith's ''Dream Street'' had essentially been a "goat gland.") Expectations swiftly changed, and the sound "fad" of 1927 became standard procedure by 1929. In February 1929, sixteen months after ''The Jazz Singers debut,
Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...
became the last of the eight studios that would be known as " majors" during Hollywood's Golden Age to release its first part-talking feature, ''
The Lone Wolf's Daughter ''The Lone Wolf's Daughter'' is a surviving 1919 American silent era crime/drama/thriller motion picture starring Bertram Grassby, Louise Glaum, and Thomas Holding. Directed by William P.S. Earle and produced by J. Parker Read, Jr., the scree ...
''. In late May, the first all-color, all-talking feature, Warner Bros.' ''
On with the Show! ''On with the Show!'' is a 1929 American pre-Code musical film produced by Warner Bros. Filmed in two-color Technicolor, the film is noted as the first all-talking, all-color feature length film, and the second color film released by Warner B ...
'', premiered. Yet most American movie theaters, especially outside of urban areas, were still not equipped for sound: while the number of sound cinemas grew from 100 to 800 between 1928 and 1929, they were still vastly outnumbered by silent theaters, which had actually grown in number as well, from 22,204 to 22,544. The studios, in parallel, were still not entirely convinced of the talkies' universal appeal—until mid-1930, the majority of Hollywood movies were produced in dual versions, silent as well as talking. Though few in the industry predicted it, silent film as a viable commercial medium in the United States would soon be little more than a memory. ''Points West'', a
Hoot Gibson Edmund Richard "Hoot" Gibson (August 6, 1892 – August 23, 1962) was an American rodeo champion, film actor, film director, and producer. While acting and stunt work began as a sideline to Gibson's focus on rodeo, he successfully transitioned ...
Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...
released by Universal Pictures in August 1929, was the last purely silent mainstream feature put out by a major Hollywood studio.


Transition: Europe

''The Jazz Singer'' had its European sound premiere at the
Piccadilly Theatre The Piccadilly Theatre is a West End theatre located at 16 Denman Street, behind Piccadilly Circus and adjacent to the Regent Palace Hotel, in the City of Westminster, London, England. Early years Built by Bertie Crewe and Edward A. Stone ...
in London on September 27, 1928. According to film historian
Rachael Low Rachael Low (6 July 1923 – 14 December 2014) was a British film historian, best known as the author of the seven-volume ''The History of the British Film''. The daughter of the cartoonist Sir David Low,Richards, Jeffrey. "Introduction" to Low ...
, "Many in the industry realized at once that a change to sound production was inevitable." On January 16, 1929, the first European feature film with a synchronized vocal performance and recorded score premiered: the German production '' Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame'' (''I Kiss Your Hand, Madame''). Dialogueless, it contains only a few songs performed by
Richard Tauber Richard Tauber (16 May 1891 – 8 January 1948) was an Austrian tenor and film actor. Early life Richard Tauber was born in Linz, Austria, to Elisabeth Seifferth (née Denemy), a widow and an actress who played soubrette roles at the local theat ...
. The movie was made with the sound-on-film system controlled by the German-Dutch firm Tobis, corporate heirs to the
Tri-Ergon The Tri-Ergon sound-on-film system was developed from around 1919 by three German inventors, Josef Engl (1893–1942), Joseph Massolle (1889–1957), and Hans Vogt (1890–1979). The system used a photoelectric recording method and a non-standa ...
concern. With an eye toward commanding the emerging European market for sound film, Tobis entered into a compact with its chief competitor, Klangfilm, a joint subsidiary of Germany's two leading electrical manufacturers. Early in 1929, Tobis and Klangfilm began comarketing their recording and playback technologies. As ERPI began to wire theaters around Europe, Tobis-Klangfilm claimed that the Western Electric system infringed on the Tri-Ergon patents, stalling the introduction of American technology in many places. Just as RCA had entered the movie business to maximize its recording system's value, Tobis also established its own production operations. During 1929, most of the major European filmmaking countries began joining Hollywood in the changeover to sound. Many of the trend-setting European talkies were shot abroad as production companies leased studios while their own were being converted or as they deliberately targeted markets speaking different languages. One of Europe's first two feature-length dramatic talkies was created in still a different sort of twist on multinational moviemaking: '' The Crimson Circle'' was a coproduction between director Friedrich Zelnik's Efzet-Film company and British Sound Film Productions (BSFP). In 1928, the film had been released as the silent ''Der Rote Kreis'' in Germany, where it was shot; English dialogue was apparently dubbed in much later using the De Forest Phonofilm process controlled by BSFP's corporate parent. It was given a British trade screening in March 1929, as was a part-talking film made entirely in the UK: '' The Clue of the New Pin'', a British Lion production using the sound-on-disc British Photophone system. In May, '' Black Waters'', which
British and Dominions Film Corporation Imperial Studios were the studios of the British and Dominions Film Corporation, a short-lived British film production company located at Imperial Place, Elstree Way, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. The studios (one of several facilities historical ...
promoted as the first UK all-talker, received its initial trade screening; it had been shot completely in Hollywood with a Western Electric sound-on-film system. None of these pictures made much impact. The first successful European dramatic talkie was the all-British '' Blackmail''. Directed by twenty-nine-year-old Alfred Hitchcock, the movie had its London debut June 21, 1929. Originally shot as a silent, ''Blackmail'' was restaged to include dialogue sequences, along with a score and sound effects, before its premiere. A
British International Pictures Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), originally British International Pictures (BIP), was a British film production, distribution and exhibition company active from 1927 until 1970 when it was absorbed into EMI. ABPC also owned appr ...
(BIP) production, it was recorded on RCA Photophone, General Electric having bought a share of AEG so they could access the Tobis-Klangfilm markets. ''Blackmail'' was a substantial hit; critical response was also positive—notorious curmudgeon Hugh Castle, for example, called it "perhaps the most intelligent mixture of sound and silence we have yet seen." On August 23, the modest-sized Austrian film industry came out with a talkie: ''G'schichten aus der Steiermark'' (''Stories from Styria''), an Eagle Film–Ottoton Film production. On September 30, the first entirely German-made feature-length dramatic talkie, ''
Das Land ohne Frauen ''Land Without Women'' (german: Das Land ohne Frauen) is a 1929 German drama film directed by Carmine Gallone and starring Conrad Veidt, Elga Brink and Clifford McLaglen. It was based on the novel ''Die Braut Nr. 68'' by Peter Bolt. The film is ...
'' (''Land Without Women''), premiered. A Tobis Filmkunst production, about one-quarter of the movie contained dialogue, which was strictly segregated from the special effects and music. The response was underwhelming. Sweden's first talkie, ''Konstgjorda Svensson'' (''Artificial Svensson''), premiered on October 14. Eight days later, Aubert Franco-Film came out with '' Le Collier de la reine'' (''The Queen's Necklace''), shot at the Épinay studio near Paris. Conceived as a silent film, it was given a Tobis-recorded score and a single talking sequence—the first dialogue scene in a French feature. On October 31, '' Les Trois masques'' (''The Three Masks'') debuted; a Pathé-Natan film, it is generally regarded as the initial French feature talkie, though it was shot, like ''Blackmail'', at the Elstree studio, just outside London. The production company had contracted with RCA Photophone and Britain then had the nearest facility with the system. The Braunberger-Richebé talkie '' La Route est belle'' (''The Road Is Fine''), also shot at Elstree, followed a few weeks later. Before the Paris studios were fully sound-equipped—a process that stretched well into 1930—a number of other early French talkies were shot in Germany. The first all-talking German feature, '' Atlantik'', had premiered in Berlin on October 28. Yet another Elstree-made movie, it was rather less German at heart than ''Les Trois masques'' and ''La Route est belle'' were French; a BIP production with a British scenarist and German director, it was also shot in English as ''
Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
''. The entirely German Aafa-Film production ''
It's You I Have Loved ''It's You I Have Loved'' (german: Dich hab ich geliebt) is a 1929 German drama film directed by Rudolf Walther-Fein and starring Mady Christians, Walter Jankuhn, and Hans Stüwe. It is considered the first full sound film to be made in Germa ...
'' (''Dich hab ich geliebt'') opened three-and-a-half weeks later. It was not "Germany's First Talking Film", as the marketing had it, but it was the first to be released in the United States. In 1930, the first Polish talkies premiered, using sound-on-disc systems: ''Moralność pani Dulskiej'' (''The Morality of Mrs. Dulska'') in March and the all-talking ''
Niebezpieczny romans ''Niebezpieczny romans'' is a 1930 Polish film directed by Michał Waszyński. Cast * Bogusław Samborski ... Hieronim Spiewankiewicz * Helena Stepowska ... Mrs. Spiewankiewiczowa * Józef Orski ... Hieronim's Son *Betty Amann ... Ada *Eug ...
'' (''Dangerous Love Affair'') in October. In Italy, whose once vibrant film industry had become moribund by the late 1920s, the first talkie, '' La Canzone dell'amore'' (''The Song of Love''), also came out in October; within two years, Italian cinema would be enjoying a revival. The first movie spoken in Czech debuted in 1930 as well, '' Tonka Šibenice'' (''Tonka of the Gallows''). Several European nations with minor positions in the field also produced their first talking pictures—Belgium (in French), Denmark, Greece, and Romania. The Soviet Union's robust film industry came out with its first sound features in December 1930:
Dziga Vertov Dziga Vertov (russian: Дзига Вертов, born David Abelevich Kaufman, russian: Дави́д А́белевич Ка́уфман, and also known as Denis Kaufman; – 12 February 1954) was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsre ...
's nonfiction ''
Enthusiasm In modern usage, enthusiasm refers to intense enjoyment, interest, or approval expressed by a person. The term is related to playfulness, inventiveness, optimism and high energy. The word was originally used to refer to a person possessed by G ...
'' had an experimental, dialogueless soundtrack;
Abram Room Abram Matveyevich Room (russian: Абрам Матвеевич Роом; 28 June 1894 in Wilno, Russian Empire (now Vilnius, Lithuania) – 26 July 1976 in Moscow) was a Russian film director. He was a People's Artist of the RSFSR and winner of the ...
's documentary ''Plan velikikh rabot'' (''The Plan of the Great Works'') had music and spoken voiceovers. Both were made with locally developed sound-on-film systems, two of the two hundred or so movie sound systems then available somewhere in the world. In June 1931, the Nikolai Ekk drama '' Putevka v zhizn'' (''The Road to Life'' or ''A Start in Life''), premiered as the Soviet Union's first true talking picture. Throughout much of Europe, conversion of exhibition venues lagged well behind production capacity, requiring talkies to be produced in parallel silent versions or simply shown without sound in many places. While the pace of conversion was relatively swift in Britain—with over 60 percent of theaters equipped for sound by the end of 1930, similar to the U.S. figure—in France, by contrast, more than half of theaters nationwide were still projecting in silence by late 1932. According to scholar Colin G. Crisp, "Anxiety about resuscitating the flow of silent films was frequently expressed in the
rench The Rench is a right-hand tributary of the Rhine in the Ortenau ( Central Baden, Germany). It rises on the southern edge of the Northern Black Forest at Kniebis near Bad Griesbach im Schwarzwald. The source farthest from the mouth is that of the ...
industrial press, and a large section of the industry still saw the silent as a viable artistic and commercial prospect till about 1935." The situation was particularly acute in the Soviet Union; as of May 1933, fewer than one out of every hundred film projectors in the country was as yet equipped for sound.


Transition: Asia

During the 1920s and 1930s, Japan was one of the world's two largest producers of motion pictures, along with the United States. Though the country's film industry was among the first to produce both sound and talking features, the full changeover to sound proceeded much more slowly than in the West. It appears that the first Japanese sound film, ''Reimai'' (''Dawn''), was made in 1926 with the De Forest Phonofilm system. Using the sound-on-disc Minatoki system, the leading
Nikkatsu is a Japanese entertainment company known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio, founded in 1912 during the silent film era. The name ''Nikkatsu'' amalgamates the words Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally ...
studio produced a pair of talkies in 1929: ''Taii no musume'' (''The Captain's Daughter'') and ''Furusato'' (''Hometown''), the latter directed by
Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed about one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include ''The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums'' (1939), '' The Life of Oharu'' (1952), ''Ugets ...
. The rival
Shochiku () is a Japanese film and kabuki production and distribution company. It also produces and distributes anime films, in particular those produced by Bandai Namco Filmworks (which has a long-time partnership—the company released most, if not ...
studio began the successful production of sound-on-film talkies in 1931 using a variable-density process called Tsuchibashi. Two years later, however, more than 80 percent of movies made in the country were still silents.Freiberg (1987), p. 76. Two of the country's leading directors,
Mikio Naruse was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 89 films spanning the period 1930 to 1967. Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily shomin-geki ("common people drama") films with female protagonists, ...
and
Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in t ...
, did not make their first sound films until 1935 and 1936, respectively. As late as 1938, over a third of all movies produced in Japan were shot without dialogue. The enduring popularity of the silent medium in Japanese cinema owed in great part to the tradition of the ''
benshi were Japanese performers who provided live narration for silent films (both Japanese films and Western films). ''Benshi'' are sometimes called or . Role The earliest films available for public display were produced by Western studios, portray ...
'', a live narrator who performed as accompaniment to a film screening. As director
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
later described, the benshi "not only recounted the plot of the films, they enhanced the emotional content by performing the voices and sound effects and providing evocative descriptions of events and images on the screen.... The most popular narrators were stars in their own right, solely responsible for the patronage of a particular theatre." Film historian Mariann Lewinsky argues,
The end of silent film in the West and in Japan was imposed by the industry and the market, not by any inner need or natural evolution.... Silent cinema was a highly pleasurable and fully mature form. It didn't lack anything, least in Japan, where there was always the human voice doing the dialogues and the commentary. Sound films were not better, just more economical. As a cinema owner you didn't have to pay the wages of musicians and benshi any more. And a good benshi was a star demanding star payment.
By the same token, the viability of the benshi system facilitated a gradual transition to sound—allowing the studios to spread out the capital costs of conversion and their directors and technical crews time to become familiar with the new technology. The Mandarin-language ''Gēnǚ hóng mǔdān'' (, ''Singsong Girl Red Peony''), starring Butterfly Wu, premiered as China's first feature talkie in 1930. By February of that year, production was apparently completed on a sound version of ''The Devil's Playground'', arguably qualifying it as the first Australian talking motion picture; however, the May press screening of Commonwealth Film Contest prizewinner ''Fellers'' is the first verifiable public exhibition of an Australian talkie. In September 1930, a song performed by Indian star Sulochana, excerpted from the silent feature ''Madhuri'' (1928), was released as a synchronized-sound short, the country's first. The following year,
Ardeshir Irani Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani (5 December 1886 – 14 October 1969) was a writer, director, producer, actor, film distributor, film showman and cinematographer in the silent and sound eras of early Indian cinema. He was the one of the greatest l ...
directed the first Indian talking feature, the Hindi-Urdu '' Alam Ara'', and produced '' Kalidas'', primarily in Tamil with some Telugu. Nineteen-thirty-one also saw the first Bengali-language film, ''Jamai Sasthi'', and the first movie fully spoken in Telugu, ''Bhakta Prahlada''. In 1932, ''
Ayodhyecha Raja ''Ayodhyecha Raja'', literally "The King of Ayodhya", was the first Marathi talkie, released in 1932, directed by Shantaram Rajaram Vankudre. It is based on the mythological story of Raja Harishchandra of Ayodhya and his test by sage Vishwamit ...
'' became the first movie in which Marathi was spoken to be released (though ''Sant Tukaram'' was the first to go through the official censorship process); the first Gujarati-language film, ''Narsimha Mehta'', and all-Tamil talkie, ''Kalava'', debuted as well. The next year, Ardeshir Irani produced the first Persian-language talkie, ''Dukhtar-e-loor''. Also in 1933, the first Cantonese-language films were produced in Hong Kong—''Sha zai dongfang'' (''The Idiot's Wedding Night'') and ''Liang xing'' (''Conscience''); within two years, the local film industry had fully converted to sound. Korea, where ''pyonsa'' (or ''byun-sa'') held a role and status similar to that of the Japanese benshi, in 1935 became the last country with a significant film industry to produce its first talking picture: ''Chunhyangjeon'' (/) is based on the seventeenth-century
pansori ' () is a Korean genre of musical storytelling performed by a singer and a drummer. The term ''pansori'' is derived from the Korean words ''pan'' (Hangul: 판) and ''sori'' (Hangul: 소리), the latter of which means "sound." However, ''pan ...
folktale "
Chunhyangga ''Chunhyangga'' is the most famous ''pansori'' (musical story telling) in Korea, having had considerable popularity in the country for the past century. ''Chunhyangga'' is considered to be the best ''pansori'' musically, and as a work of literature ...
", of which as many as fifteen film versions have been made through 2009.


Consequences


Technology

In the short term, the introduction of live sound recording caused major difficulties in production. Cameras were noisy, so a soundproofed cabinet was used in many of the earliest talkies to isolate the loud equipment from the actors, at the expense of a drastic reduction in the ability to move the camera. For a time, multiple-camera shooting was used to compensate for the loss of mobility and innovative studio technicians could often find ways to liberate the camera for particular shots. The necessity of staying within range of still microphones meant that actors also often had to limit their movements unnaturally. ''Show Girl in Hollywood'' (1930), from First National Pictures (which Warner Bros. had taken control of thanks to its profitable adventure into sound), gives a behind-the-scenes look at some of the techniques involved in shooting early talkies. Several of the fundamental problems caused by the transition to sound were soon solved with new camera casings, known as "
blimps A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is an airship (dirigible) without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid and rigid airships (e.g. Zeppelins), blimps rely on the pressure of the lifting gas (usually helium, rather than hyd ...
", designed to suppress noise and boom microphones that could be held just out of frame and moved with the actors. In 1931, a major improvement in playback fidelity was introduced: three-way speaker systems in which sound was separated into low, medium, and high frequencies and sent respectively to a large bass "woofer", a midrange driver, and a treble "tweeter." There were consequences, as well, for other technological aspects of the cinema. Proper recording and playback of sound required exact standardization of camera and projector speed. Before sound, 16
frames per second A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent. Frame and FRAME may also refer to: Physical objects In building construction *Framing (con ...
(fps) was the supposed norm, but practice varied widely. Cameras were often undercranked or overcranked to improve exposures or for dramatic effect. Projectors were commonly run too fast to shorten running time and squeeze in extra shows. Variable frame rate, however, made sound unlistenable, and a new, strict standard of 24 fps was soon established. Sound also forced the abandonment of the noisy arc lights used for filming in studio interiors. The switch to quiet
incandescent Incandescence is the emission of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light) from a hot body as a result of its high temperature. The term derives from the Latin verb ''incandescere,'' to glow white. A common use of incandescence is ...
illumination in turn required a switch to more expensive film stock. The sensitivity of the new
panchromatic film Panchromatic emulsion is a type of black-and-white photographic emulsion that is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light. Description A panchromatic emulsion renders a realistic reproduction of a scene as it appears to the human eye, alth ...
delivered superior image tonal quality and gave directors the freedom to shoot scenes at lower light levels than was previously practical. As David Bordwell describes, technological improvements continued at a swift pace: "Between 1932 and 1935, estern Electric and RCAcreated directional microphones, increased the frequency range of film recording, reduced ground noise ... and extended the volume range." These technical advances often meant new aesthetic opportunities: "Increasing the fidelity of recording ... heightened the dramatic possibilities of vocal timbre, pitch, and loudness." Another basic problem—famously spoofed in the 1952 film '' Singin' in the Rain''—was that some silent-era actors simply did not have attractive voices; though this issue was frequently overstated, there were related concerns about general vocal quality and the casting of performers for their dramatic skills in roles also requiring singing talent beyond their own. By 1935, rerecording of vocals by the original or different actors in postproduction, a process known as "looping", had become practical. The ultraviolet recording system introduced by RCA in 1936 improved the reproduction of sibilants and high notes. With Hollywood's wholesale adoption of the talkies, the competition between the two fundamental approaches to sound-film production was soon resolved. Over the course of 1930–31, the only major players using sound-on-disc, Warner Bros. and First National, changed over to sound-on-film recording. Vitaphone's dominating presence in sound-equipped theaters, however, meant that for years to come all of the Hollywood studios pressed and distributed sound-on-disc versions of their films alongside the sound-on-film prints. Fox Movietone soon followed Vitaphone into disuse as a recording and reproduction method, leaving two major American systems: the variable-area RCA Photophone and Western Electric's own variable-density process, a substantial improvement on the cross-licensed Movietone. Under RCA's instigation, the two parent companies made their projection equipment compatible, meaning films shot with one system could be screened in theaters equipped for the other. This left one big issue—the Tobis-Klangfilm challenge. In May 1930, Western Electric won an Austrian lawsuit that voided protection for certain Tri-Ergon patents, helping bring Tobis-Klangfilm to the negotiating table. The following month an accord was reached on patent cross-licensing, full playback compatibility, and the division of the world into three parts for the provision of equipment. As a contemporary report describes:
Tobis-Klangfilm has the exclusive rights to provide equipment for: Germany, Danzig, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, the Dutch Indies, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Finland. The Americans have the exclusive rights for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Russia. All other countries, among them Italy, France, and England, are open to both parties.
The agreement did not resolve all the patent disputes, and further negotiations were undertaken and concords signed over the course of the 1930s. During these years, as well, the American studios began abandoning the Western Electric system for RCA Photophone's variable-area approach—by the end of 1936, only Paramount, MGM, and United Artists still had contracts with ERPI.


Labor

While the introduction of sound led to a boom in the motion picture industry, it had an adverse effect on the employability of a host of Hollywood actors of the time. Suddenly those without stage experience were regarded as suspect by the studios; as suggested above, those whose heavy accents or otherwise discordant voices had previously been concealed were particularly at risk. The career of major silent star
Norma Talmadge Norma Marie Talmadge (May 2, 1894 – December 24, 1957) was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box-office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most pop ...
effectively came to an end in this way. The celebrated German actor
Emil Jannings Emil Jannings (born Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, 23 July 1884 – 2 January 1950) was a Swiss born German actor, popular in the 1920s in Hollywood. He was the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in '' The La ...
returned to Europe. Moviegoers found John Gilbert's voice an awkward match with his swashbuckling persona, and his star also faded. Audiences now seemed to perceive certain silent-era stars as old-fashioned, even those who had the talent to succeed in the sound era. The career of
Harold Lloyd Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American actor, comedian, and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films.Obituary '' Variety'', March 10, 1971, page 55. One of the most influential film c ...
, one of the top screen comedians of the 1920s, declined precipitously. Lillian Gish departed, back to the stage, and other leading figures soon left acting entirely: Colleen Moore,
Gloria Swanson Gloria May Josephine Swanson (March 27, 1899April 4, 1983) was an American actress and producer. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, most f ...
, and Hollywood's most famous performing couple,
Douglas Fairbanks Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman; May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films including '' The Thi ...
and
Mary Pickford Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founde ...
. After his acting career collapsed due to his Danish accent, Karl Dane committed suicide. However, the impact of sound on the careers of film actors should not be exaggerated. One statistical analysis of silent actress career length showed that the five-year ‘survival-rate’ of actresses active in 1922 was only 10% greater than those active after 1927. As actress
Louise Brooks Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) was an American film actress and dancer during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as an icon of the Jazz Age and flapper culture, in part due to the bob hairstyle that she helpe ...
suggested, there were other issues as well:
Studio heads, now forced into unprecedented decisions, decided to begin with the actors, the least palatable, the most vulnerable part of movie production. It was such a splendid opportunity, anyhow, for breaking contracts, cutting salaries, and taming the stars.... Me, they gave the salary treatment. I could stay on without the raise my contract called for, or quit, aramount studio chief B. P.Schulberg said, using the questionable dodge of whether I'd be good for the talkies. Questionable, I say, because I spoke decent English in a decent voice and came from the theater. So without hesitation I quit.
Buster Keaton was eager to explore the new medium, but when his studio, MGM, made the changeover to sound, he was quickly stripped of creative control. Though a number of Keaton's early talkies made impressive profits, they were artistically dismal. Several of the new medium's biggest attractions came from vaudeville and the musical theater, where performers such as
Al Jolson Al Jolson (born Eizer Yoelson; June 9, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Lithuanian-American Jewish singer, comedian, actor, and vaudevillian. He was one of the United States' most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1920s, and was self-billed ...
, Eddie Cantor,
Jeanette MacDonald Jeanette Anna MacDonald (June 18, 1903 – January 14, 1965) was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier (''The Love Parade'', '' Love Me Tonight'', ''The Merry Widow'' and '' On ...
, and the
Marx Brothers The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act that was successful in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in motion pictures from 1905 to 1949. Five of the Marx Brothers' thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute (AFI) ...
were accustomed to the demands of both dialogue and song. James Cagney and
Joan Blondell Joan Blondell (born Rose Joan Bluestein; August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress who performed in film and television for 50 years. Blondell began her career in vaudeville. After winning a beauty pageant, she embarked on ...
, who had teamed on Broadway, were brought west together by Warner Bros. in 1930. A few actors were major stars during both the silent and the sound eras:
John Barrymore John Barrymore (born John Sidney Blyth; February 14 or 15, 1882 – May 29, 1942) was an American actor on stage, screen and radio. A member of the Drew and Barrymore theatrical families, he initially tried to avoid the stage, and briefly att ...
, Ronald Colman,
Myrna Loy Myrna Loy (born Myrna Adele Williams; August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American film, television and stage actress. Trained as a dancer, Loy devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. ...
,
William Powell William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 – March 5, 1984) was an American actor. A major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the '' Thin Man'' series based on the Nick and Nora Charles characters cr ...
,
Norma Shearer Edith Norma Shearer (August 11, 1902June 12, 1983) was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated ingénues. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O'N ...
, the comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin, whose '' City Lights'' (1931) and '' Modern Times'' (1936) employed sound almost exclusively for music and effects. Janet Gaynor became a top star with the synch-sound but dialogueless ''Seventh Heaven'' and ''Sunrise'', as did
Joan Crawford Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway theatre, Broadway. Crawford was si ...
with the technologically similar '' Our Dancing Daughters'' (1928).
Greta Garbo Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her film portrayals of tragic ch ...
was the one non–native English speaker to retain Hollywood stardom on both sides of the great sound divide. Silent film
extra Extra or Xtra may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Film * ''The Extra'' (1962 film), a Mexican film * ''The Extra'' (2005 film), an Australian film Literature * ''Extra'' (newspaper), a Brazilian newspaper * ''Extra!'', an American me ...
Clark Gable William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901November 16, 1960) was an American film actor, often referred to as "The King of Hollywood". He had roles in more than 60 motion pictures in multiple genres during a career that lasted 37 years, three decades ...
, who had received extensive voice training during his earlier stage career, went on to dominate the new medium for decades; similarly, English actor
Boris Karloff William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), better known by his stage name Boris Karloff (), was an English actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film '' Frankenstein'' (1931) (his 82nd film) established ...
, having appeared in dozens of silent films since 1919, found his star ascend in the sound era (though, ironically, it was a non-speaking role in 1931's ''
Frankenstein ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific ...
'' that made this happen, but despite having a lisp, he found himself much in demand after). The new emphasis on speech also caused producers to hire many novelists, journalists, and playwrights with experience writing good dialogue. Among those who became Hollywood scriptwriters during the 1930s were
Nathanael West Nathanael West (born Nathan Weinstein; October 17, 1903 – December 22, 1940) was an American writer and screenwriter. He is remembered for two darkly satirical novels: ''Miss Lonelyhearts'' (1933) and ''The Day of the Locust'' (1939), set r ...
,
William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...
, Robert Sherwood,
Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxle ...
, and
Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhap ...
. As talking pictures emerged, with their prerecorded musical tracks, an increasing number of moviehouse orchestra musicians found themselves out of work. More than just their position as film accompanists was usurped; according to historian Preston J. Hubbard, "During the 1920s live musical performances at first-run theaters became an exceedingly important aspect of the American cinema." With the coming of the talkies, those featured performances—usually staged as preludes—were largely eliminated as well. The American Federation of Musicians took out newspaper advertisements protesting the replacement of live musicians with mechanical playing devices. One 1929 ad that appeared in the ''
Pittsburgh Press ''The Pittsburgh Press'' (formerly ''The Pittsburg Press'' and originally ''The Evening Penny Press'') was a major afternoon daily newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1884 to 1992. At one time, the ''Press'' was the second larg ...
'' features an image of a can labeled "Canned Music / Big Noise Brand / Guaranteed to Produce No Intellectual or Emotional Reaction Whatever" and reads in part:
Canned Music on Trial
This is the case of Art vs. Mechanical Music in theatres. The defendant stands accused in front of the American people of attempted corruption of musical appreciation and discouragement of musical education. Theatres in many cities are offering synchronised mechanical music as a substitute for Real Music. If the theatre-going public accepts this vitiation of its entertainment program a deplorable decline in the Art of Music is inevitable. Musical authorities know that the soul of the Art is lost in mechanization. It cannot be otherwise because the quality of music is dependent on the mood of the artist, upon the human contact, without which the essence of intellectual stimulation and emotional rapture is lost.
By the following year, a reported 22,000 U.S. moviehouse musicians had lost their jobs.


Commerce

In September 1926, Jack L. Warner, head of Warner Bros., was quoted to the effect that talking pictures would never be viable: "They fail to take into account the international language of the silent pictures, and the unconscious share of each onlooker in creating the play, the action, the plot, and the imagined dialogue for himself." Much to his company's benefit, he would be proven very wrong—between the 1927–28 and 1928–29 fiscal years, Warners' profits surged from $2 million to $14 million. Sound film, in fact, was a clear boon to all the major players in the industry. During that same twelve-month span, Paramount's profits rose by $7 million, Fox's by $3.5 million, and Loew's/MGM's by $3 million. RKO, which did not even exist in September 1928 and whose parent production company, FBO, was in the Hollywood minor leagues, by the end of 1929 was established as one of America's leading entertainment businesses. Fueling the boom was the emergence of an important new cinematic genre made possible by sound: the musical. Over sixty Hollywood musicals were released in 1929, and more than eighty the following year. Even as the
Wall Street crash The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...
of October 1929 helped plunge the United States and ultimately the global economy into depression, the popularity of the talkies at first seemed to keep Hollywood immune. The 1929–30 exhibition season was even better for the motion picture industry than the previous, with ticket sales and overall profits hitting new highs. Reality finally struck later in 1930, but sound had clearly secured Hollywood's position as one of the most important industrial fields, both commercially and culturally, in the United States. In 1929, film box-office receipts comprised 16.6 percent of total spending by Americans on recreation; by 1931, the figure had reached 21.8 percent. The motion picture business would command similar figures for the next decade and a half. Hollywood ruled on the larger stage, as well. The American movie industry—already the world's most powerful—set an export record in 1929 that, by the applied measure of total feet of exposed film, was 27 percent higher than the year before. Concerns that language differences would hamper U.S. film exports turned out to be largely unfounded. In fact, the expense of sound conversion was a major obstacle to many overseas producers, relatively undercapitalized by Hollywood standards. The production of multiple versions of export-bound talkies in different languages (known as "
Foreign Language Version A multiple-language version film, often abbreviated to MLV, is a film, especially from the early talkie era, produced in several different languages for international markets. To offset the marketing restrictions of making sound films in only one ...
"), as well as the production of the cheaper " International Sound Version", a common approach at first, largely ceased by mid-1931, replaced by post-
dubbing Dubbing (re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and video production, often in concert with sound design, in which additional or supplementary recordings are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production sou ...
and subtitling. Despite trade restrictions imposed in most foreign markets, by 1937, American films commanded about 70 percent of screen time around the globe. Just as the leading Hollywood studios gained from sound in relation to their foreign competitors, they did the same at home. As historian Richard B. Jewell describes, "The sound revolution crushed many small film companies and producers who were unable to meet the financial demands of sound conversion." The combination of sound and the Great Depression led to a wholesale
shakeout Shakeout is a term used in business and economics to describe the consolidation of an industry or sector, in which businesses are eliminated or acquired through competition. It may also refer to a situation in which many investors exit their po ...
in the business, resulting in the hierarchy of the Big Five integrated companies (MGM, Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros., RKO) and the three smaller studios also called "majors" (Columbia, Universal, United Artists) that would predominate through the 1950s. Historian Thomas Schatz describes the ancillary effects:
Because the studios were forced to streamline operations and rely on their own resources, their individual house styles and corporate personalities came into much sharper focus. Thus the watershed period from the coming of sound into the early Depression saw the
studio system A studio system is a method of filmmaking wherein the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. It is most often used in reference to Hollywood motion picture studios during the Golden Age of Hol ...
finally coalesce, with the individual studios coming to terms with their own identities and their respective positions within the industry.
The other country in which sound cinema had an immediate major commercial impact was
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
. As one distributor of the period said, "With the coming of the talkies, the Indian motion picture came into its own as a definite and distinctive piece of creation. This was achieved by music." From its earliest days, Indian sound cinema has been defined by the musical—'' Alam Ara'' featured seven songs; a year later, ''
Indrasabha ''Inder Sabha'' (Urdu: اِندر سبها) is an Urdu play and opera written by Agha Hasan Amanat, and first staged in 1853. It is regarded as the first complete Urdu stage play ever written. The play was translated into German in the 1880s as a ...
'' would feature seventy. While the European film industries fought an endless battle against the popularity and economic muscle of Hollywood, ten years after the debut of ''Alam Ara'', over 90 percent of the films showing on Indian screens were made within the country. Most of India's early talkies were shot in
Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...
, which remains the leading production center, but sound filmmaking soon spread across the multilingual nation. Within just a few weeks of ''Alam Aras March 1931 premiere, the
Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
-based Madan Pictures had released both the Hindi ''Shirin Farhad'' and the Bengali ''Jamai Sasthi''. The Hindustani ''Heer Ranjha'' was produced in
Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city ...
,
Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
, the following year. In 1934, '' Sati Sulochana'', the first Kannada talking picture to be released, was shot in
Kolhapur Kolhapur () is a city on the banks of the Panchganga River in the southern part of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the administrative headquarter of the Kolhapur district. In, around 2 C.E. Kolapur's name was 'Kuntal'. Kolhapur is ...
, Maharashtra; ''Srinivasa Kalyanam'' became the first Tamil talkie actually shot in
Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...
. Once the first talkie features appeared, the conversion to full sound production happened as rapidly in India as it did in the United States. Already by 1932, the majority of feature productions were in sound; two years later, 164 of the 172 Indian feature films were talking pictures. Since 1934, with the sole exception of 1952, India has been among the top three movie-producing countries in the world every single year.


Aesthetic quality

In the first, 1930 edition of his global survey ''The Film Till Now'', British cinema pundit
Paul Rotha Paul Rotha (3 June 1907 – 7 March 1984) was a British documentary film-maker, film historian and critic. Early life and education He was born Paul Thompson in London, and educated at Highgate School and at the Slade School of Fine Art. Career ...
declared, "A film in which the speech and sound effects are perfectly synchronised and coincide with their visual image on the screen is absolutely contrary to the aims of cinema. It is a degenerate and misguided attempt to destroy the real use of the film and cannot be accepted as coming within the true boundaries of the cinema." Such opinions were not rare among those who cared about cinema as an art form; Alfred Hitchcock, though he directed the first commercially successful talkie produced in Europe, held that "the silent pictures were the purest form of cinema" and scoffed at many early sound films as delivering little beside "photographs of people talking". In Germany,
Max Reinhardt Max Reinhardt (; born Maximilian Goldmann; 9 September 1873 – 30 October 1943) was an Austrian-born theatre and film director, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his innovative stage productions, he is regarded as one of the most pro ...
, stage producer and movie director, expressed the belief that the talkies, "bringing to the screen stage plays ... tend to make this independent art a subsidiary of the theater and really make it only a substitute for the theater instead of an art in itself ... like reproductions of paintings." In the opinion of many film historians and aficionados, both at the time and subsequently, silent film had reached an aesthetic peak by the late 1920s and the early years of sound cinema delivered little that was comparable to the best of the silents. For instance, despite fading into relative obscurity once its era had passed, silent cinema is represented by eleven films in '' Time Outs Centenary of Cinema Top One Hundred poll, held in 1995. The first year in which sound film production predominated over silent film—not only in the United States, but also in the West as a whole—was 1929; yet the years 1929 through 1933 are represented by three dialogueless pictures (''
Pandora's Box Pandora's box is an artifact in Greek mythology connected with the myth of Pandora in Hesiod's c. 700 B.C. poem ''Works and Days''. Hesiod reported that curiosity led her to open a container left in the care of her husband, thus releasing physi ...
'' 929 '' Zemlya'' 930 '' City Lights''
931 Year 931 ( CMXXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Spring – Hugh of Provence, king of Italy, cedes Lower Burgundy to Rudolph II, in re ...
and zero talkies in the ''Time Out'' poll. (''City Lights'', like ''Sunrise'', was released with a recorded score and sound effects, but is now customarily referred to by historians and industry professionals as a "silent"—spoken dialogue regarded as the crucial distinguishing factor between silent and sound dramatic cinema.) The earliest sound film to place is the French ''
L'Atalante ''L'Atalante'', also released as ''Le Chaland qui passe'' ("The Passing Barge"), is a 1934 French film written and directed by Jean Vigo, and starring Jean Dasté, Dita Parlo and Michel Simon. After the difficult release of his controversial ...
'' (1934), directed by Jean Vigo; the earliest Hollywood sound film to qualify is '' Bringing Up Baby'' (1938), directed by Howard Hawks. The first sound feature film to receive near-universal critical approbation was '' Der Blaue Engel'' (''The Blue Angel''); premiering on April 1, 1930, it was directed by Josef von Sternberg in both German and English versions for Berlin's
UFA Ufa ( ba, Өфө , Öfö; russian: Уфа́, r=Ufá, p=ʊˈfa) is the largest city and capital city, capital of Bashkortostan, Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Belaya River (Kama), Belaya and Ufa River, Ufa rivers, in the centre-n ...
studio. The first American talkie to be widely honored was '' All Quiet on the Western Front'', directed by
Lewis Milestone Lewis Milestone (born Leib Milstein (Russian: Лейб Мильштейн); September 30, 1895 – September 25, 1980) was a Moldovan-American film director. He is known for directing '' Two Arabian Knights'' (1927) and ''All Quiet on the Weste ...
, which premiered April 21. The other internationally acclaimed sound drama of the year was '' Westfront 1918'', directed by
G. W. Pabst Georg Wilhelm Pabst (25 August 1885 – 29 May 1967) was an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic. ...
for Nero-Film of Berlin. Historian Anton Kaes points to it as an example of "the new verisimilitude
hat A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
rendered silent cinema's former emphasis on the hypnotic gaze and the symbolism of light and shadow, as well as its preference for allegorical characters, anachronistic."Kaes (2009), p. 212. Cultural historians consider the French '' L'Âge d'Or'', directed by
Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and ...
, which appeared late in 1930, to be of great aesthetic import; at the time, its erotic, blasphemous, anti-bourgeois content caused a scandal. Swiftly banned by Paris police chief Jean Chiappe, it was unavailable for fifty years. The earliest sound movie now acknowledged by most film historians as a masterpiece is Nero-Film's '' M'', directed by
Fritz Lang Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...
, which premiered May 11, 1931. As described by Roger Ebert, "Many early talkies felt they had to talk all the time, but Lang allows his camera to prowl through the streets and dives, providing a rat's-eye view."


Cinematic form

"Talking film is as little needed as a singing book." Such was the blunt proclamation of critic
Viktor Shklovsky Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures ass ...
, one of the leaders of the Russian formalist movement, in 1927. While some regarded sound as irreconcilable with film art, others saw it as opening a new field of creative opportunity. The following year, a group of Soviet filmmakers, including
Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...
, proclaimed that the use of image and sound in juxtaposition, the so-called contrapuntal method, would raise the cinema to "...unprecedented power and cultural height. Such a method for constructing the sound-film will not confine it to a national market, as must happen with the photographing of plays, but will give a greater possibility than ever before for the circulation throughout the world of a filmically expressed idea." So far as one segment of the audience was concerned, however, the introduction of sound brought a virtual end to such circulation: Elizabeth C. Hamilton writes, "Silent films offered people who were deaf a rare opportunity to participate in a public discourse, cinema, on equal terms with hearing people. The emergence of sound film effectively separated deaf from hearing audience members once again." On March 12, 1929, the first feature-length talking picture made in Germany had its premiere. The inaugural Tobis Filmkunst production, it was not a drama, but a documentary sponsored by a shipping line: ''Melodie der Welt'' (''Melody of the World''), directed by
Walter Ruttmann Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German cinematographer and film director, an important German abstract experimental film maker, along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger. He is best known for dire ...
. This was also perhaps the first feature film anywhere to significantly explore the artistic possibilities of joining the motion picture with recorded sound. As described by scholar William Moritz, the movie is "intricate, dynamic, fast-paced ... juxtapos ngsimilar cultural habits from countries around the world, with a superb orchestral score ... and many synchronized sound effects." Composer Lou Lichtveld was among a number of contemporary artists struck by the film: "''Melodie der Welt'' became the first important sound documentary, the first in which musical and unmusical sounds were composed into a single unit and in which image and sound are controlled by one and the same impulse." ''Melodie der Welt'' was a direct influence on the
industrial film Sponsored film, or ephemeral film, as defined by film archivist Rick Prelinger, is a film made by a particular sponsor for a specific purpose other than as a work of art: the films were designed to serve a specific pragmatic purpose for a limited t ...
''Philips Radio'' (1931), directed by Dutch avant-garde filmmaker Joris Ivens and scored by Lichtveld, who described its audiovisual aims:
To render the half-musical impressions of factory sounds in a complex audio world that moved from absolute music to the purely documentary noises of nature. In this film every intermediate stage can be found: such as the movement of the machine interpreted by the music, the noises of the machine dominating the musical background, the music itself is the documentary, and those scenes where the pure sound of the machine goes solo.
Many similar experiments were pursued by Dziga Vertov in his 1931 ''Entuziazm'' and by Chaplin in ''Modern Times'', a half-decade later. A few innovative commercial directors immediately saw the ways in which sound could be employed as an integral part of cinematic storytelling, beyond the obvious function of recording speech. In ''Blackmail'', Hitchcock manipulated the reproduction of a character's monologue so the word "knife" would leap out from a blurry stream of sound, reflecting the subjective impression of the protagonist, who is desperate to conceal her involvement in a fatal stabbing. In his first film, the Paramount '' Applause'' (1929),
Rouben Mamoulian Rouben Zachary Mamoulian ( ; hy, Ռուբէն Մամուլեան; October 8, 1897 – December 4, 1987) was an American film and theatre director. Early life Mamoulian was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire, to a family of Armenian descent. ...
created the illusion of acoustic depth by varying the volume of ambient sound in proportion to the distance of shots. At a certain point, Mamoulian wanted the audience to hear one character singing at the same time as another prays; according to the director, "They said we couldn't record the two things—the song and the prayer—on one mike and one channel. So I said to the sound man, 'Why not use two mikes and two channels and combine the two tracks in printing?'" Such methods would eventually become standard procedure in popular filmmaking. One of the first commercial films to take full advantage of the new opportunities provided by recorded sound was '' Le Million'', directed by
René Clair René Clair (11 November 1898 – 15 March 1981), born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He wen ...
and produced by Tobis's French division. Premiering in Paris in April 1931 and New York a month later, the picture was both a critical and popular success. A musical comedy with a barebones plot, it is memorable for its formal accomplishments, in particular, its emphatically artificial treatment of sound. As described by scholar Donald Crafton,
''Le Million'' never lets us forget that the acoustic component is as much a construction as the whitewashed sets. treplaced dialogue with actors singing and talking in rhyming couplets. Clair created teasing confusions between on- and off-screen sound. He also experimented with asynchronous audio tricks, as in the famous scene in which a chase after a coat is synched to the cheers of an invisible football (or rugby) crowd.
These and similar techniques became part of the vocabulary of the sound comedy film, though as special effects and "color", not as the basis for the kind of comprehensive, non- naturalistic design achieved by Clair. Outside of the comedic field, the sort of bold play with sound exemplified by ''Melodie der Welt'' and ''Le Million'' would be pursued very rarely in commercial production. Hollywood, in particular, incorporated sound into a reliable system of
genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
-based moviemaking, in which the formal possibilities of the new medium were subordinated to the traditional goals of star affirmation and straightforward storytelling. As accurately predicted in 1928 by Frank Woods, secretary of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...
, "The talking pictures of the future will follow the general line of treatment heretofore developed by the silent drama.... The talking scenes will require different handling, but the general construction of the story will be much the same."Quoted in Bordwell (1985), p. 298. See also Bordwell and Thompson (1995), p. 125.


Further reading

*Cameron, E.W. (1980). ''Sound and Cinema: The Coming of Sound to American Film''. New York and Uxon, UK: Routledge. *Lastra, James (2000). ''Sound Technology and the American Cinema''. New York: Columbia University Press. *Walker, Alexander (1979). ''The Shattered Silents: How the Talkies Came to Stay''. New York: William Morrow and Company.


See also

* :Film sound production for articles concerning the development of cinematic sound recording *
Dubbing (filmmaking) Dubbing (re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and video production, often in concert with sound design, in which additional or supplementary recordings are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production so ...
*
Foley (filmmaking) In filmmaking, Foley is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to films, videos, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality. These reproduced sounds, named after sound-effects artist Jack Foley, can be anythi ...
*
History of film The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art form created using film technologies that began in the late 19th century. The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. However, the commercial, public scree ...
*
List of film sound systems The following is a list of sound film, film sound systems. Explanation *The year shown may represent a patent or other developmental milestone rather than the first use in public. *Technologically identical systems may have been promoted under di ...
* Musical film *
Sound stage A sound stage (also written soundstage) is a soundproof, large structure, building, or room with large doors and high ceilings, used for the production of theatrical film-making and television productions, usually located on a secured movie or ...
* The American Fotoplayer


Notes


Sources

* Altman, Rick (1995). "The Sound of Sound", ''Cineaste'', vol. 21, January 1 (archive
online
. * Altman, Rick (2005). ''Silent Film Sound'', New York: Columbia University Press. * Anderson, Joseph L., and Donald Richie (1982). ''The Japanese Film: Art and Industry'', expanded ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. * Barnier, Martin (2002). ''En route vers le parlant: histoire d'une évolution technologique, économique et esthétique du cinéma (1926–1934)''. Liège: Editions du Céfal. * Bazin, André (1967 958–65. "Cinema and Exploration", in his ''What Is Cinema?'', trans. and ed. Hugh Gray, pp. 154–163. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. * Bernds, Edward (1999). ''Mr. Bernds Goes to Hollywood: My Early Life and Career in Sound Recording at Columbia With Frank Capra and Others''. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press (excerpte
online
. * Bhuyan, Avantika (2006). "Going, Going, Gone...", ''Screen Weekly'', March 31 (availabl
online
. * Block, Alex Ben, and Lucy Autrey Wilson, eds. (2010). ''George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success''. New York: HarperCollins. * Bognár, Desi Kégl (2000). ''International Dictionary of Broadcasting and Film'', 2d ed. Burlington, Massachusetts: Focal Press. * Bordwell, David (1985). "The Introduction of Sound", chap. in Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, ''The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960'', pp. 298–308. New York: Columbia University Press. * Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson (1995 993. "Technological Change and Classical Film Style", chap. in Balio, Tino, ''Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939'', pp. 109–41. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. * Bradley, Edwin M. (1996). ''The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 Through 1932''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * Bradley, Edwin M. (2005). ''The First Hollywood Sound Shorts, 1926–1931''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * Brooks, Louise (1956). "Mr. Pabst", ''Image'', no. 5, September 7. * Brownlow, Kevin (1968). ''The Parade's Gone By ...'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. * Burch, Noël (1979).
To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema
'. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. * Carey, Frances (1999). ''The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. * Carné, Marcel (1932). "Cinema and the World", trans. Claudia Gorbman, in ''French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology, 1907–1939. Volume 2: 1929–1939'', ed. Richard Abel, pp. 102–5. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. * Chapman, James (2003). ''Cinemas of the World: Film and Society from 1895 to the Present''. London: Reaktion Books. * Chatterji, Shoma A. (1999). "The Culture-specific Use of Sound in Indian Cinema", paper presented at International Symposium on Sound in Cinema, London, April 15–18 (availabl
online
. * Cosandey, Roland (1996). "François (or Franz) Dussaud (1870–1953)", in ''Who's Who of Victorian Cinema: A Worldwide Survey'', ed. Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan. London: BFI Publishing (availabl

. * Crafton, Donald (1997). ''The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926–1931''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. * Crawford, Merritt (1931). "Pioneer Experiments of Eugene Lauste in Recording Sound", ''Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers'', vol. 17, no. 4, October 1931, pp. 632–644.
available online
. * Crisp, Colin G. (1997). ''The Classic French Cinema, 1930–1960''. Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press/I. B. Tauris. * Dardis, Tom (1980
979 Year 979 ( CMLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * March 24 – Second Battle of Pankaleia: An Ibero-Byzantine expeditionary ...
. ''Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down''. Middlesex, England, and New York: Penguin. * Dibbets, Karel (1999). "High-tech Avant-garde: ''Philips Radio,''" in ''Joris Ivens and the Documentary Context'', ed. Kees Bakker, pp. 72–86. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. * Eames, John Douglas (1985). ''The Paramount Story''. New York: Crown. 0-517-55348-1 * Ebert, Roger (2002). ''The Great Movies''. New York: Broadway Books. * Eckes, Alfred E. and Thomas W. Zeiler (2003). ''Globalization and the American Century''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Eisenstein, Sergei et al. (1928). "A Statement", in his ''Film Form: Essays in Film Theory'' (1957 949, trans. Jay Leyda, pp. 257–60. New York: Meridian (availabl
online
. * Eyman, Scott (1997). ''The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926–1930''. New York: Simon & Schuster. * Finler, Joel W. (2003). ''The Hollywood Story'', 3d ed. London and New York: Wallflower. * Freiberg, Freda (1987). "The Transition to Sound in Japan", in ''History on/and/in Film'', ed. Tom O'Regan and Brian Shoesmith, pp. 76–80. Perth: History & Film Association of Australia (availabl

). * Freiberg, Freda (2000). "Comprehensive Connections: The Film Industry, the Theatre and the State in the Early Japanese Cinema", ''Screening the Past'', no. 11, November 1 (availabl
online
. * Geduld, Harry M. (1975). ''The Birth of the Talkies: From Edison to Jolson''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. * Glancy, H. Mark (1995). "Warner Bros. Film Grosses, 1921–51: The William Schaefer Ledger", ''Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television'', March. * Gomery, Douglas (1980). "Economic Struggle and Hollywood Imperialism: Europe Converts to Sound", in ''Film Sound: Theory and Practice'' (1985), ed. Elisabeth Weis and John Belton, pp. 25–36. New York: Columbia University Press. * Gomery, Douglas (1985). "The Coming of Sound: Technological Change in the American Film Industry", in ''Technology and Culture—The Film Reader'' (2005), ed. Andrew Utterson, pp. 53–67. Oxford and New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. * Gomery, Douglas (2005). ''The Coming of Sound: A History''. New York and Oxon, UK: Routledge. * Guy, Randor (2004). "First Film to Talk in Kannada", ''The Hindu'', December 31 (available ). * Hall, Mordaunt (1930). "''Because I Loved You''—Germany's First Talking Film", ''The New York Times'', January 25 (availabl

. * Haltof, Marek (2002). ''Polish National Cinema''. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. * Hamilton, Elizabeth C. (2004). "Deafening Sound and Troubling Silence in Volker Schlöndorff's ''Die Blechtrommel''", in ''Sound Matters: Essays on the Acoustics of German Culture'' (2004), ed. Nora M. Alter and Lutz Koepnick, pp. 130–41. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. * Hijiya, James A. (1992). ''Lee De Forest and the Fatherhood of Radio''. Cranbury, N.J., and London: Associated University Presses. * Hirschhorn, Clive (1979). ''The Warner Bros. Story''. New York: Crown. * Hubbard, Preston J. (1985). "Synchronized Sound and Movie-House Musicians, 1926–29", ''American Music'', vol. 3, no. 4, Winter. * Jelavich, Peter (2006). ''Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture''. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. * Jewell, Richard B., with Vernon Harbin (1982). ''The RKO Story''. New York: Arlington House/Crown. * Joshi, Lalit Mohan (2003). ''Bollywood: Popular Indian Cinema''. London: Dakini. * Kaes, Anton (2009). ''Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War''. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. * Kemp, Philip (1987). "Josef Von Sternberg", in ''World Film Directors, Volume I: 1890–1945'', ed. John Wakeman, pp. 1041–51. New York: H. W. Wilson. * Kenez, Peter (2001). ''Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin''. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. * Koerber, Martin (1996). "Oskar Messter, Film Pioneer: Early Cinema Between Science, Spectacle, and Commerce", in ''A Second Life: German Cinema's First Decades'', ed. Thomas Elsaesser, pp. 51–61. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. * Lai, Linda (2000). "Hong Kong Cinema in the 1930s: Docility, Social Hygiene, Pleasure-Seeking & the Consolidation of the Film Industry", ''Screening the Past'', no. 11, November 1 (availabl
online
. * Lasky, Betty (1989). ''RKO: The Biggest Little Major of Them All''. Santa Monica, California: Roundtable. * Lee, Hyangjin (2000). ''Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, and Politics''. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. * Liebman, Roy (2003). ''Vitaphone Films: A Catalogue of the Features and Shorts''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * Lindvall, Terry (2007). ''Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christian Film Industry''. New York: New York University Press. * Lloyd, Ann, and David Robinson (1986). ''The Illustrated History of the Cinema''. London: Orbis. * Łotysz, Sławomir (2006). "Contributions of Polish Jews: Joseph Tykociński–Tykociner (1877–1969), Pioneer of Sound on Film", ''Gazeta'', vol. 13, no. 3, winter–spring (availabl
online
. * Low, Rachael (1997a 971. ''The History of the British Film 1918–1929 (The History of British Film, Volume IV)''. Oxford and New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. * Low, Rachael (1997b
985 Year 985 ( CMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – Henry II (the Wrangler) is restored as duke of Bavaria by Empress Theoph ...
. ''The History of the British Film 1929–1939: Film Making in 1930s Britain (The History of British Film, Volume VII)''. Oxford and New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. * Millard, Andre J. (2005). ''America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound'', 2d ed. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press. * Milne, Tom (1980). "Rouben Mamoulian", in ''Cinema: A Critical Dictionary'', ed. Richard Roud, pp. 658–663. New York: Viking. * Moone, Tom (2004). "Joseph Tykociner: Pioneer of Sound on Film", ''Ingenuity'', vol. 9, no. 1, March (archive
online
. * Moritz, William (2003). ''Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger''. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. * Morton, David (2006). ''Sound Recording: The Life Story of a Technology''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . * Narasimham, M. L. (2006). "A Leader and a Visionary", ''The Hindu'', September 8 (available ). * Nichols, Nina Da Vinci, and Jana O'Keefe Bazzoni (1995). ''Pirandello and Film''. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. * Nolletti, Arthur (2005). ''The Cinema of Gosho Heinosuke: Laughter through Tears''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. * Oderman, Stuart (2000). ''Lillian Gish: A Life on Stage and Screen''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * "Outcome of Paris: Accord Signed/Total Interchangeability—Globe Divided into Three Patent Zones—Patent Exchange" (1930), ''Film-Kurier'', July 22 (availabl

. * Pradeep, K. (2006). "When the Stars Talked", ''The Hindu'', March 17 (available ). * Rajadhyaksha, Ashish, and Paul Willemen (2002
999 999 or triple nine most often refers to: * 999 (emergency telephone number), a telephone number for the emergency services in several countries * 999 (number), an integer * AD 999, a year * 999 BC, a year Books * ''999'' (anthology) or ''999: T ...
. ''BFI Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema'', rev. ed. Oxford and New York: BFI/Oxford University Press. * Ranade, Ashok Da. (2006). ''Hindi Film Song: Music Beyond Boundaries''. New Delhi: Promilla/Bibliophile South Asia. * Reade, Eric (1981
979 Year 979 ( CMLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * March 24 – Second Battle of Pankaleia: An Ibero-Byzantine expeditionary ...
. ''History and Heartburn: The Saga of Australian Film, 1896–1978''. East Brunswick, N.J.: Associated University Presses. * "Representative Kinematograph Shows: Singing Pictures at the Hippodrome" (1907), ''Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly'', September 5. * Richie, Donald (1977). ''Ozu''. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. * Richie, Donald (2005). ''A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History'', 2d ed. Tokyo: Kodansha. * Ris, Peter Harry (2004). "''Jayu Manse/Hurrah! for Freedom''", in ''The Cinema of Japan & Korea'', ed. Justin Bowyer, pp. 33–40. London: Wallflower Press. * Robertson, Patrick (2001). ''Film Facts''. New York: Billboard Books. * Robinson, David (1997). ''From Peepshow to Palace: The Birth of American Film''. New York: Columbia University Press. * Rollberg, Peter (2008). ''Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema''. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. * Rosen, Miriam (1987). "Luis Buñuel", in ''World Film Directors, Volume I: 1890–1945'', ed. John Wakeman, pp. 71–92. New York: H. W. Wilson. * Ruhmer, Ernst (1901). "The Photographophone", ''Scientific American'', July 20, 1901, vol. 85, no. 3, p. 36.
available online
. * Ruhmer, Ernst (1908). ''Wireless Telephony In Theory and Practice'' (translated from the German by James Erskine-Murray), New York: C. Van Nostrand Company.
available online
. * Russell, Catherine (2008). ''The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity''. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. * Saunders, Thomas J. (1994). ''Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar Germany''. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. * Schatz, Thomas (1998). ''The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era''. London: Faber and Faber. * Segrave, Kerry (1997). ''American Films Abroad: Hollywood's Domination of the World's Movie Screens from the 1890s to the Present''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * Sponable, E. I. (1947). "Historical Development of Sound Films", ''Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers'', vol. 48, nos. 4–5, April/May (availabl

). * Spoto, Donald (1984
983 Year 983 ( CMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – Diet of Verona: Emperor Otto II (the Red) declares war against the Byza ...
. ''The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock''. New York: Ballantine. * Stojanova, Christina (2006). "Post-Communist Cinema", in ''Traditions in World Cinema'', ed. Linda Badley, R. Barton Palmer, and Steven Jay Schneider, pp. 95–114. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. * "Talking Movies: They'll Never Take, Asserts Film Company's Head" (1926), Associated Press, September 3 (availabl
online
. * Thomson, David (1998). '' A Biographical Dictionary of Film'', 3d ed. New York: Knopf. * ''Time Out Film Guide'' (2000). Eighth ed., ed. John Pym. London and New York: Penguin. * Truffaut, François (1984
983 Year 983 ( CMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – Diet of Verona: Emperor Otto II (the Red) declares war against the Byza ...
. ''Hitchcock'', rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster. * Wagenleitner, Reinhold (1994). ''Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War'', trans. Diana M. Wolf. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press. * Wierzbicki, James (2009). ''Film Music: A History''. New York and Oxon, UK: Routledge. * Wlaschin, Ken (1979). ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World's Greatest Movie Stars and Their Films''. New York and London: Salamander/Harmony. {{ https://libguides.brown.edu/MES/arts_culture/film https://arabfilminstitute.org/learning-about-arab-film-and-cinema/


External links


Film Sound History
well-organized bibliography of online articles and resources; part of the FilmSound website

charts showing transition to sound production by Hollywood studios, 1928–1929; part of the Terra Media website

comprehensive and detailed listing of first generation of sound films from around the world; part of the Silent Era website

extensive chronology of developments, including subsites, by Steven E. Schoenherr; see, in particular



compiled by Miguel Mera, Royal College of Music, London; part of the School of Sound website
The Silent Film Bookshelf
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110125043406/http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf/ , date=January 25, 2011 links to crucial primary and secondary source documents, a number of which cover the era of transition to sound

informative illustrated survey; part of the American WideScreen Museum website * J. Domańsk
"Mathematical synchronization of image and sound in an animated film"
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160612160738/http://en.synesthesia.domanski.pro/theory/synchronization/ , date=June 12, 2016
1913 add for Vivaphone


Historical writings



1934 essay by filmmaker and theorist
Vsevolod Pudovkin Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin ( rus, Всеволод Илларионович Пудовкин, p=ˈfsʲevələt ɪlərʲɪˈonəvʲɪtɕ pʊˈdofkʲɪn; 16 February 1893 – 30 June 1953) was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwrite ...

"Dialogue and Sound"
essay by film historian and critic
Siegfried Kracauer Siegfried Kracauer (; ; February 8, 1889 – November 26, 1966) was a German writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist. He has sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. He is notable for a ...
; first published in his book ''Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality'' (1960)
"The Film to Come"
essay by producer and composer Guido Bagier; first published in ''Film-Kurier'', January 7, 1928

technical manual covering all major U.S. systems; issued by RCA Photophone, 1930

{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091222075347/http://members.optushome.com.au/picturepalace/FilmHistory.html , date=December 22, 2009 chronology by sound-film pioneer E. I. Sponable; first published in ''Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers'', April/May 1947

article on the history of Bell Laboratories' early research into sound film, by Stanley Watkins, Western Electric engineer; first published in ''Bell Laboratories Record'', August 1946

corporate manifesto first published in ''Film-Kurier'', July 20, 1928

article first published in ''Film-Kurier'', July 23, 1930

technical manual for Western Electric theatrical sound projector system; issued by ERPI, December 1928

article first published in ''Film-Kurier'', July 22, 1930

review by film theorist and critic
Rudolf Arnheim Rudolf Arnheim (July 15, 1904 – June 9, 2007) was a German-born writer, art and film theorist, and perceptual psychologist. He learned Gestalt psychology from studying under Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler at the University of Berlin and ap ...
, ca. 1929
"Sound-Film Confusion"
1929 essay by Rudolf Arnheim

essay by composer Paul Dessau; first published in ''Der Film'', August 1, 1929
"Sound in Films"
essay by director
Alberto Cavalcanti Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti (February 6, 1897 – August 23, 1982) was a Brazilian-born film director and producer. He was often credited under the single name "Cavalcanti". Early life Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a ...
; first published in ''Films'', November 1939
"Theory of the Film: Sound"
1945 essay by film theorist and critic
Béla Balázs Béla Balázs (; 4 August 1884 in Szeged – 17 May 1949 in Budapest), born Herbert Béla Bauer, was a Hungarian film critic, aesthetician, writer and poet of Jewish heritage. He was a proponent of formalist film theory. Career Balázs was th ...

"What Radio Has Meant to Talking Movies"
prescient essay by Universal sound engineer Charles Feldstead; first published in ''Radio News'', April 1931


Historical films



excerpts from ca. 1924 Phonofilm sound film; on The Red Hot Jazz Archive website
''A Few Minutes with Eddie Cantor''
1924 Phonofilm sound film; on Archive.org
''Gus Visser and His Singing Duck''
1925 Theodore Case sound film; on YouTube
''President Coolidge, Taken on the White House Lawn''
1924 Phonofilm sound film; on Archive.org {{Film genres {{Authority control Audiovisual introductions in 1900 Exposition Universelle (1900) History of film Film and video technology Film sound production Finnish inventions