The Times (04/Aug/1956) - When the film began to talk
(c) The Times (04/Aug/1956)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Gainsborough Pictures, Gaumont British Picture Corporation Limited, London Film Society, Marlene Dietrich, New York City, New York, Paramount Pictures, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
WHEN THE FILM BEGAN TO TALK
EVENING THAT SAW THE CULMINATION OF 30 YEARS OF EXPERIMENT
At 8.30 on the night of August 6.1926, an audience of somewhat sceptical New Yorkers filled the seats of the Warners’ Theatre on Broadway, awaiting the advent of a new wonder. The scepticism of those New Yorkers was understandable. For the Vitaphone, as this new wonder was called, was rooted in the antiquated promise that the film which had been dumb from birth was now about to speak.
It was a promise that had bedevilled the cinema ever since the 1890s, when Edison had toyed with the notion of fusing the sounds from his phonograph with the sights seen through his kinetoscope. Edison had by no means been alone in toying with this notion. Leon Gaumont had yoked sight to sound in 1902, when he had evolved his Chronophone in France. At about the same time, Georges Melies had harnessed cylindrical phonograph-records to his film-projector, and had produced a screen-singer who was not only seen but heard.
Music-hall songs and sketches and excerpts from opera and stage plays now came on offer to French exhibitors at 120 francs for film and record. In due course, British exhibitors began to acquire Chronophone features at Is. a foot, with 10-inch phonograph-discs at 7s. 6d., and 12-inch discs at 10s. 6d. British exhibitors also had the choice, among other things, of the Hepworth Vivaphone and the Warwick Cinephone. And if they wanted to create a really good impression, they could buy Walturdaw’s Cinematophone—a most ambitious contraption consisting of projector, gramophone and synchronizer, and selling at £75, as against the modest five guineas asked for a Hepworth Vivaphone.
ON THE RIGHT TRACK
Most significant of all these early efforts to coax the film to speak was that of Eugene Lauste. Lauste’s method, as outlined in British Patent No. 18,057, effected the simultaneous fusion of sound and image by means of photography “upon a single recording—film, the sounds being reproduced photo—electrically.” There in all its essentials was sound—on—film, duly registered as early as August 11, 1906. Elsewhere, too, Lee De Forest was working independently on similar lines. But in spite of all these pioneering ingenuities, the film remained dumb. Why, then, should it break its 30 years of obstinate silence in 1926?
A pertinent answer to that question came from Benjamin Levinson, the Pacific Coast sales manager of the Western Electric Company, when he described to his film—making friend Sam Warner “the most wonderful thing I ever looked at in my life—a moving picture that talks!” Warner’s indulgent smile pooh—poohed this latest variation on an outworn theme. But Levinson was insistent. He knew all about the failures of the Kinetophones, the Chronophones and the Vivaphones. But this was something quite different. This was a talking picture that worked like radio—with vacuum tubes, microphones, monitors, amplifiers, loud speakers....
HOLLYWOOD INDIFFERENT
The talking—picture that worked like radio had, of course, been offered to screen—land’s dollar—billionaires. But those lordly personages were’ far too deeply immersed in their own ambitious plans to bother much about this latest version of the crack—brained notion that films might actually speak to really good effect Hollywood had just turned out The Big Parade, and was launching Douglas Fairbanks on his career as the Black Pirate of the studio—seas. Valentino was still strutting the brief remainder of his hour as The Son of the Sheik. Flaherty had just finished Moana from the South Seas. And Paramount was vying with Rothapfel in transforming mountains of dollars into sky—scraping movie—palaces.
But beneath the whirl of this surface prosperity there were tremors of anxiety. For Hollywood was by no means having everything its own way.
Across the Atlantic at Westminster, British M.P.s were wrestling with the problems posed by the unpredictable factor known as “quota,” while new studios were rearing their walls somewhere in the wilds of Boreham Wood. On the Gainsborough lot, a former scenarist named Hitchcock was directing the exquisite Novello through scenes of The Lodger. At the Plaza heart of Empire, Royalty was bestowing gracious patronage on Mr. Wilcox’s version of Nell Gwynn. Down the Strand, Richard Strauss (in person) conducted the orchestral score to a cinematic Rosenkavalier. And not a hundred miles from Regent Street Marcel L’Herbier was receiving the accolade of the London Film Society for The Late Matthew Pascal.
A CERTAIN M. CHOMETTE
In France itself, L’Herbier’s compatriot Abel Gance strove to conquer an intractable Napoleon, who imperiously demanded a screen—area thrice the normal size. And a certain M. Chomette, on the strength of his The Crazy Ray, was planning The Italian Straw Hat, which was to bring him pseudonymous fame as Rene” Clair. On the other side of the Rhine, Herren Fritz Lang and Fred Murnau were busy at Neu—Babels—burg with a futuristic Metropolis, and with a Faust—tempting Mephistopheles who bore a striking resemblance to Emil Jannings. Near by, Pabst was winning laurels with The Joyless Street, which gave tne Swedish Mile. Gustafsson her chance to become Greta Garbo. And among the “extras” who watched the glamorous Lya de Putti at work in Manon Lescaut stood a yet unglorified Marlene Dietrich. Across the Russian border, the experimental Kuleshov was juggling with strips of celluloid to illustrate his theory of montage. The scientific Pudovkin, fresh from probing The Mechanics of the Brain, was discussing with Gorki the scenario of Mother. And the mutinous Battleship Potemkin navigated its momentous course through hitherto uncharted deeps in the realm of cinema.
Absorbed in reviewing the events of a screen—world in ferment, the film—chroniclers of that day had little time or space to spare for the somewhat obscure affairs of the Warner Brothers. The Warners themselves had but vague notions of the power that was latent in the apparatus that cluttered up the dressing—rooms of the Manhattan Opera House, which they were using as a recording studio. For this new marvel, as the Warners saw it, was designed primarily to provide the musical accompaniment for cinemas that could not afford the orchestra that was so important in the days of the silent film. That was really why the theatre that had once been Hammerstein’s operatic pride and joy was now alive with carpenters, engineers, electricians and cameramen, hammering, wiring, bawling.... And then silence fell for the instruments of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra as these recorded and synchronised the score that had been specially written for John Barrymore’s Don Juan film.
TALK BY WILL H. HAYS
Whatever the posters might say, the real star of Don Juan would be the Vitaphone: This was the verdict expected from the Broadway audience on that August night 30 years ago. But the real star of that evening turned out to be Will H. Hays, the moralizing overlord of Hollywood, whose screened image stole the show with its perfectly synchronized talk.
Nobody realized then that with those recorded words the Vitaphone pronounced its own death—sentence. For its mechanism was rooted in sound—on—disc. Something still more fool—proof was wanted to satisfy the public clamour for talk on the screen. And the most convincing answer to that clamour was found with the perfection of sound—on—film.
