The year is 1927. Prohibition is in full swing, yet hidden from the prying puritan eyes, champagne glasses clink to the sound of smooth jazz at speakeasies all around America. The timing is just perfect for the release of a new flick titled The Jazz Singer. Incredulous movie-goers gasp when the man on screen opens his mouth to tell them that they “ain’t heard nothin’ yet”.
The history of sound in early cinema is nothing short of fascinating, revealing many industry secrets and surprise developments once the “movies” became the “talkies”. In today’s article, we will take you on a trip back in time to explore the birth of the sound picture and the inventions which preceded it.
Sound Before Synchronisation
Cinema was originally seen to be an extension to the art of photography, and by all means, it initially was. After all, before the digital age, films were essentially a rapid succession of photographs spliced together, and before sound, they were just that – silent images.
However, that is not to say that attempts have not been made to marry image and sound before The Jazz Singer (1927). In 1893, Thomas Edison and William Dickson created the Kinetophone, a proto-sound-film device, placing a phonograph in a cabinet with a Kinetoscope for the purpose of watching film and hearing sound simultaneously, meant to be viewed by a single person at a time.
In 1964, the first known film using the technology was found. Now-titled The Dickson Experimental Sound Film (c.1894-1895), the sequence shows a man playing the violin while two other men are dancing. While the discovery was impressive, the Kinetophone didn’t synchronise sound and image. Only 45 Kinetophones were ever sold and Edison soon abandoned the device.
The First Synchronised Sound Films
Contrary to popular belief, the first film to have synchronised sound was not The Jazz Singer. D.W. Griffith directed Dream Street in 1921 which used the Photokinema technology of sound-on-disc. Griffith essentially made a silent film and later added music and matched it with the picture.
What’s more fascinating is that Griffith addressed the audience in the first sequence of the film, exemplifying the first time a human voice was heard in film. However, the Photokinema was quite primitive and the sound quality was terrible. Additionally, the film’s plot failed to capture audiences and Griffith’s impressive feat resulted in poor reviews.
In 1925, another sound system for film was invented by Lee de Forest and Theodore Case called the Phonofilm. Unlike previous similar inventions, the Phonofilm recorded sound directly onto film.
The Phonofilm worked by recording sound onto physical film with parallel lines. The lines would photographically record electrical waveforms using a microphone which would be turned back into sound waves as the movie was being projected.
One cannot underestimate the ingenuity of the device, and yet, it was only used for short films, vaudeville performances, operas and speeches because the technology was in its early stages and de Forest could not figure out how to change reels effectively, making his invention incompatible with the creation of motion pictures.
This major flaw, combined with the underwhelming sound quality and the inability to show his films in most American theatres due to Hollywood’s monopoly on them, forced De Forest into obscurity. Instead, Hollywood moved on to other sound systems, only for technology to eventually harken back to the Phonofilm as Dolby introduced their analogue sound-on-film recording system, or the stereo variable-area recording, in the 1970’s.
The Birth of Talkies
In 1925, Warner Bros. developed the Vitaphone, which used analogue sound-on-disc technology. The Vitaphone worked by attaching a turntable, playing a phonograph record of the film soundtrack, to a projector monitor, projecting the film. The technology was somewhat similar to that of the Photokinema but the sound was of much better quality.
The studio first tested the Vitaphone in their feature Don Juan (1926). Don Juan had a synchronised musical score and sound effects but no spoken lines. Still, the film became the highest-grossing feature of Warner Bros. to date.
Then, of course, came The Jazz Singer, the first motion picture to feature synchronised dialogue and synchronised singing.
Contemporary people could hardly imagine how a spectator used to silent features must have felt when actor Al Jolson spoke and sang to them on the silver screen. In the tearjerking dialogue scene between the jazz singer and his mother, audiences went hysterical.
Consequences to the Introduction of Sound
Contemporary critics writing about The Jazz Singer predicted the death of silent cinema and they were right. Warner Bros’ gamble proved to be successful and other studios were impatient to try the Vitaphone for their own features. Not everyone involved in the business was happy though.
Actors were affected the most by the switch from silent to sound cinema. Back in the day, an actor could do hundreds of films a year because film production took very little time before sound. Now, films had to be filmed almost exclusively in studios because the technology was still crude and any bit of noise could disturb the recording.
Additionally, actors in silent films were prone to theatricality since they had to express themselves in a way which didn’t require spoken language. As a result, they had to completely change the way they act, so their performances look more realistic.
Perhaps the most difficult thing for actors came from their accents. Foreign-born actors could play Americans in silent films, but their “foreignness” could not be concealed in the sound picture with many sadly losing their jobs. Even American actors like John Gilbert suffered from the same affliction; while his accent and delivery were fine, his voice didn’t match the persona he created for the silent screen.
The difficulty of the transition to sound was famously explored in the hit Singing in the Rain (1952), and more recently in Babylon (2022). We highly recommend these films as they dramatise the very real struggles of the silent film stars.