Sound film

[5] 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.

[11] Beginning in 1914, The Photo-Drama of Creation, 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.

In 1900, as part of the research he was conducting on the photophone, the German physicist Ernst Ruhmer recorded the fluctuations of the transmitting arc-light as varying shades of light and dark bands onto a continuous roll of photographic film.

Two involved contrasting approaches to synchronized sound reproduction, or playback: In 1919, American inventor Lee De Forest was awarded several patents that would lead to the first optical sound-on-film technology with commercial application.

[29] 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.

President Calvin Coolidge, opera singer Abbie Mitchell, and vaudeville stars such as Phil Baker, Ben Bernie, Eddie Cantor and Oscar Levant appeared in the firm's pictures.

The third crucial set of innovations marked a major step forward in both the live recording of sound and its effective playback: In 1913, Western Electric, the manufacturing division of AT&T, acquired the rights to the de Forest audion, the forerunner of the triode vacuum tube.

[48] 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.

[54] In February 1927, an agreement was signed by five leading Hollywood movie companies: Famous Players–Lasky (soon to be part of Paramount), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal, First National, and Cecil B. DeMille's small but prestigious Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC).

In February 1929, sixteen months after The Jazz Singer's debut, Columbia Pictures 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.

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.

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.

In May, Black Waters, which British and Dominions Film Corporation 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.

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.

As director Akira Kurosawa 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....

[113][114] In 1932, Ayodhyecha Raja 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.

Several of the fundamental problems caused by the transition to sound were soon solved with new camera casings, known as "blimps", 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.

"[121] 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.

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.

[131] Lillian Gish departed, back to the stage, and other leading figures soon left acting entirely: Colleen Moore, Gloria Swanson, and Hollywood's most famous performing couple, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.

[135] Several of the new medium's biggest attractions came from vaudeville and the musical theater, where performers such as Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Jeanette MacDonald, and the Marx Brothers were accustomed to the demands of both dialogue and song.

"[153] The combination of sound and the Great Depression led to a wholesale shakeout 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.

[166] 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 studio.

"[164] Cultural historians consider the French L'Âge d'Or, directed by Luis Buñuel, which appeared late in 1930, to be of great aesthetic import; at the time, its erotic, blasphemous, anti-bourgeois content caused a scandal.

The following year, a group of Soviet filmmakers, including Sergei Eisenstein, 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.

As described by scholar William Moritz, the movie is "intricate, dynamic, fast-paced ... juxtapos[ing] similar cultural habits from countries around the world, with a superb orchestral score ... and many synchronized sound effects.

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.

Illustration of a theater from the rear of the stage. At the front of the stage, a screen hangs. In the foreground is a gramophone with two horns. In the background, a large audience is seated at orchestra level and on several balconies. The words "Chronomégaphone" and "Gaumont" appear at both the bottom of the illustration and, in reverse, at the top of the projection screen.
1908 poster advertising Gaumont 's sound films. The Chronomégaphone , designed for large halls, employed compressed air to amplify the recorded sound. [ 1 ]
On the left is a large acoustical horn, suspended from a cord that rises out of the frame. A man plays a violin in front of it. To the right, two men dance together.
Image from The Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894 or 1895), produced by W.K.L. Dickson as a test of the early version of the Edison Kinetophone , combining the Kinetoscope and phonograph .
Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was one of the pioneers of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915.
Illustration of a red-haired woman wearing a large hat, an ankle-length yellow dress, and high heels. She is holding a long baton or swagger stick and leaning against a film projector. A gramophone sits at her feet. The top of the illustration reads "Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre". Text to the left of the woman reads "Visions Animées des Artistes Celèbres", followed by a list of performers.
Poster featuring Sarah Bernhardt and giving the names of eighteen other "famous artists" shown in "living visions" at the 1900 Paris Exposition using the Gratioulet-Lioret system.
All-text advertisement from the Strand Theater, giving dates, times, and performers' names. At the top, a tagline reads, "$10,000 reward paid to any person who finds a phonograph or similar device used in the phonofilms." The accompanying promotional text describes the slate of sound pictures as "the sensation of the century ... Amazing! Astounding! Unbelievable".
Newspaper ad for a 1925 presentation of Phonofilm shorts, touting their technological distinction: no phonograph.
The Voice From the Screen (1926), a film demonstrating the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process
Don Juan
Illustration of a man dressed in an orange-and-purple Elizabethan costume with puffy shoulders and sheer leggings. Accompanying text provides film credits, dominated by the name of star John Barrymore.
Poster for Warner Bros. ' Don Juan (1926), the first major motion picture to premiere with a full-length synchronized soundtrack . Audio recording engineer George Groves , the first in Hollywood to hold the job, would supervise sound on Woodstock , 44 years later.
Two suited men stand in a studio with a large film projector and other electrical equipment. The man on the left is holding a large phonograph record.
Western Electric engineer E. B. Craft, at left, demonstrating the Vitaphone projection system. A Vitaphone disc had a running time of about 11 minutes, enough to match that of a 1,000-foot (300 m) reel of 35 mm film.
The Jazz Singer (1927)
Advertisement from the Blue Mouse Theater announcing the Pacific Coast premiere of The Jazz Singer, billed as "The greatest story ever told". A photo of stars Al Jolson and May McAvoy accompanies extensive promotional text, including the catchphrase "You'll see and hear him on Vitaphone as you've never seen or heard before". At the bottom is an announcement of an accompanying newsreel.
Newspaper ad from a fully equipped theater in Tacoma, Washington, showing The Jazz Singer , on Vitaphone, and a Fox newsreel, on Movietone , together on the same bill.
A middle-aged man wearing a plaid jacket and boldly striped tie grabs a younger woman wearing a sweater vest by the arm. Her hand tugs at his as they gaze into each other's eyes, he fiercely, she with surprise or concern.
Dorothy Mackaill and Milton Sills in The Barker , First National 's inaugural talkie. The film was released in December 1928, two months after Warner Bros. acquired a controlling interest in the studio.
An advertisement for the movie Blackmail featuring a young woman in lingerie holding a garment over one arm looks toward camera. Surrounding text describes the film as "A Romance of Scotland Yard" and "The Powerful Talking Picture"
The Prague-raised star of Blackmail (1929), Anny Ondra , was an industry favorite, but her accent became an issue when the film was reshot with sound. Without post- dubbing capacity, her dialogue was simultaneously recorded offscreen by actress Joan Barry. Ondra's British film career was over. [ 83 ]
A movie poster with text in Cyrillic. A red band spirals through the center of the image, over a green background. Around the spiral are arrayed five black-and-white photographs of male faces at various angles. Three, in a cluster at the top left, are smiling; two, at the top left and at bottom right (a young boy) look pensive.
The first Soviet talkie, Putevka v zhizn ( The Road to Life ; 1931), concerns the issue of homeless youth. As Marcel Carné put it, "in the unforgettable images of this spare and pure story we can discern the effort of an entire nation." [ 91 ]
A young girl, man, and woman standing outside of a house, all looking up in the sky. The girl, on the left, is smiling and pointing skyward. The man wears a bowler hat and holds a short broom over his shoulder; the woman wears a kerchief around her head. They are surrounded by domestic objects as if just moving into or out of the house.
Director Heinosuke Gosho 's Madamu to nyobo ( The Neighbor's Wife and Mine ; 1931), a production of the Shochiku studio, was the first major commercial and critical success of Japanese sound cinema. [ 102 ]
A young woman with long dark hair walks outside of a tent, looking down at one of two men asleep on the ground. She wears only a shawl and a knee length dress, leaving her arms, lower legs, and feet exposed.
Alam Ara premiered March 14, 1931, in Bombay. The first Indian talkie was so popular that "police aid had to be summoned to control the crowds." [ 110 ] It was shot with the Tanar single-system camera, which recorded sound directly onto the film.
Movie poster featuring a large illustration of a young woman wearing a short orange-red dance outfit, high heels, and headdress. Her head is surrounded by shooting stars and sparkles. At her feet, much smaller-scaled, are two men—one is shouting through a megaphone, the other is operating a movie camera. The accompanying text is dominated by the name of star Alice White.
Show Girl in Hollywood (1930), one of the first sound films about sound filmmaking, depicts microphones dangling from the rafters and multiple cameras shooting simultaneously from soundproofed booths. The poster shows a camera unboothed and unblimped, as it might be when shooting a musical number with a prerecorded soundtrack.
Vertical section of filmstrip, showing four-and-a-half frames, each of which reads, "Sea Power for Security. The End." Alongside the frames runs a continuous vertical white band of continuously fluctuating width.
Example of a variable-area sound track—the width of the white area is proportional to the amplitude of the audio signal at each instant.
Magazine cover with illustration of a young woman wearing a form-fitting red hat staring up at a suspended microphone. Accompanying text reads, "The Microphone—The Terror of the Studios", and, in larger type, "You Can't Get Away With It in Hollywood".
The unkind cover of Photoplay , December 1929, featuring Norma Talmadge . As movie historian David Thomson puts it, "sound proved the incongruity of [her] salon prettiness and tenement voice." [ 129 ]
Movie poster featuring fifteen young women in dance outfits. The first appears to hold the word "The" in large letters. The other fourteen hold up the individual letters that spell out "Broadway Melody". Accompanying text reads, "All Talking, All Dancing, All Singing! Dramatic Sensation."
Premiering February 1, 1929, MGM 's The Broadway Melody was the first smash-hit talkie from a studio other than Warner Bros. and the first sound film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture .
Movie poster featuring an illustration of a goateed man wearing a straw hat, plaid shirt, short polka-dotted tie, short pants, and boots. The accompanying text is in Portuguese.
Poster for Acabaram-se os otários (1929), performed in Portuguese. The first Brazilian talkie was also the first anywhere in an Iberian language .
Black-and-white movie poster featuring a stylized illustration of the profiled head of a helmeted man on the right, facing left. Behind him, and progressively to the left, are the front parts of three more such profiles, with nearly identical helmet tips, noses, lips, and chins. The title below is followed by the line "Vier von der Infanterie".
Westfront 1918 (1930) was celebrated for its expressive re-creation of battlefield sounds, like the doomful whine of an unseen grenade in flight. [ 164 ]
Two sumo wrestlers confront each other on a platform, their heads touching and their fists on the ground. To the side, a third man, also in a wrestling outfit, looks on. In the background, a crowd watches.
Image of sumo wrestlers from Melodie der Welt (1929), "one of the initial successes of a new art form", in André Bazin 's description. "It flung the whole earth onto the screen in a jigsaw of visual images and sounds." [ 175 ]