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    Sound in Film - The Change from Silent Film to the Talkies
    Sound in Film - The Change from Silent Film to the Talkies
    Sound in Film - The Change from Silent Film to the Talkies
    Ebook49 pages55 minutes

    Sound in Film - The Change from Silent Film to the Talkies

    By Allardyce Nicoll

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    About this ebook

    Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateSep 6, 2016
    ISBN9781473358348
    Sound in Film - The Change from Silent Film to the Talkies

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      Sound in Film - The Change from Silent Film to the Talkies - Allardyce Nicoll

      FILM

      THE SOUND FILM

      WHEN sound was first added to the silent forms presented in the cinema, a great outcry arose from those intellectuals who had up to then sponsored and supported the new art, as well as from a number of directors who, aiming more highly than others, felt that they were rapidly mastering the secrets of this medium. Pudovkin at first stoutly opposed the introduction of sound on aesthetic grounds. Writing in 1930 Paul Rotha, likewise condemning reproduction of the human voice, declared that he was

      certain that these new forms will never destroy the original and highest form of cinema, the silent, flat film with synchronised or orchestra accompaniment, which is indisputably the most effective medium for the conveyance of the dramatic content of a theme to the mind of an audience.

      This judgment he repeated in his next book (1931), where he averred that, although sound can help the cinema as a means of expression, speech is proving detrimental to it; Chaplin he praised because from the time when the recorded voice was first employed in conjunction with screen images that actor had observed the futility of the attempt.

      J. G. Fletcher in 1929 categorically dismissed the possibilities which might reside in the combination of visual and audible elements:

      A complete boycott of talking films should be the first duty of anyone who has ever achieved a moment’s pleasure from the contemplation of any film expressed clearly his point of view. In the same year Katharine Gerould declared that, if the talkies prevailed, then the art of the motion-picture, with its immense possibilities, will be in our own generation as ‘lost’ as the Egyptian art of embalming.

      These judgments were written only a few years ago; but Time has many revenges. Time, even the short time that has elapsed between 1926 and the present, has demonstrated the falsity at least of such prognostications as are embodied in Rotha’s words and seems to have gone further towards a disproving of the aesthetic standards implied in Fletcher’s appeal. The sound film has fully established itself in the esteem of the public; by no possible imagining can we credit the return to favour of the silent film; and recent years have shown such a marked advance in the former’s artistic excellence that we believe it to contain potentialities far in advance of anything achieved or even imagined ten years ago.

      That popular success in itself does not imply, of course, the most artistic choice needs no special emphasis. The public has shown itself at fault in the past, and indeed there are many still who deplore the loss of good old days, haloed with the light of fond recollection, when no voice proceeded from the silent expanse of the screen. Of necessity, we must consider the validity of their position, and, in order to accomplish this task impartially, we are compelled to make several admissions.

      EFFECTS OF SOUND

      When Al Jolson came forward with The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool a monkey wrench unquestionably was firmly flung into the cinematic machinery. From 1914 to 1926 there had been steady progress, and in the films of 1922-1925 some remarkable things were being accomplished. Charlie Chaplin produced The Pilgrim in 1923, The Gold Rush in 1925 and The Circus in 1927. Robert Wiene’s inventive and suggestive The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was a film of 1919, James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon of 1923; F. W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh and Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin both were released in 1925. Out of these was developing a very pretty piece of critical theory, and it certainly looked as though the cinema, which for so long had dealt with impossible melodramatics and stupidly farcical situations, were coming to its

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