Silent to Sound

One of the most common questions I hear, as we share silent films with our friends is, "why, if these silent movies can have a musical track, could they not have dialog?" Its a great question. Part of what brings it to the front is that when we watch a silent film in the 2010s, we do so on dvds or online where music has been seamlessly integrated into the film.

But it wasn't that way a hundred years ago when the Silents were being made.

Music, back then, came in the form of live accompaniment with a piano, organ, or even an orchestra, and it was supplied at the time the movie was projected, not as an integrated part of the film strip. Silents weren't actually silent! The problem was not that we couldn't get noise to play in the background while the movie was rolling, but that there was no technology for integrating the sounds with the film as part of the production process, rather than the playback process. (This gives me an interesting thought though, that had anyone wanted to do it, they could have brought in live voice actors to read out dialog during the picture. . . hmmm). Anyway.

The point is that if sounds are not fully-integrated with the film, then the pictures and sounds run the risk of getting out of sync. For instance, imagine using a phonograph recording (which did exist at the time of the silent film era) to record the dialog (and film camera to record the pictures), then shipping both the record and the film to the theater. You could play both at the same time and have a talking picture! It sounds simple enough, but is fraught with problems. For instance, in those days, both phonographs and movie projectors were prone to skipping. If either did, there would be no way to get both back on track, and having dialog out of sync with mouths is not good viewing! Plus, if you start to think about the nightmare any editing of the film would entail, you can see why that type of system would be unduly burdensome.

However, starting with The Jazz Singer, the Warner Brothers did begin to use such a process (phonograph capturing the audio and standard film to capture the video). The key breakthrough was a system ("Vitaphone") that mechanically linked the two together so they would play back in sync. An even better process was quick in the making, and really helped sound pictures to take off: sound on film. The technology eludes me to be honest, but I'll just say that the sound waves are literally recorded onto a strip of the film running down the side next to the images. Truly and fully integrated sound.

Even with that huge advance, though, there were still many problems for early sound, including the very loud motion picture cameras that had to be closed off in a soundproof box so that the sound recording wouldn't be fouled, ... to the fact that many theaters weren't "wired for sound" and couldn't actually project it even if the film contained it, ... to logistic and technical production issues regarding 'wiring' actors for sound or locating them near large microphones that restricted their freedom of movement, ... to the fact that the bigger equipment and more involved set up tended to confine sound movies to the studio rather than on location.  These problems all led to reduced film quality and generally poorer movies in the short-term before the medium really took hold.

During a transition period between 1927 and the early 1930s, sound film was available and the public was ravenous for it, but it was (in my opinion anyway) often substandard work and not nearly as satisfying as the good silent pictures still being released. Yet studios seemed to be falling all over themselves scrambling to make sound pictures.

At this time, because it was easier to focus on sound in musical numbers than on dialog -- where precision and clarity were more important -- a lot of big musicals started getting made. Many of the films from this transition era still move and seem like silent pictures - often bad ones - done out loud. It took a while for film-makers to really sink in to the new freedoms of the new technology and learn to work with it, rather than struggle to make it work.

For my money, 1934's It Happened One Night represented a major leap forward in cinematic style. The film sweeps in with a total understanding of the beauties of dialog. It is extremely effective at telling a full story -- with sound -- silly, smart, well-acted, and seamlessly audible. It takes advantage of the full range of cinematic storytelling and probably had a huge effect on everything that came after.  From 1934 on, I no longer think it necessary to highlight the fact of sound in a film. Sound was now, not just totally entrenched as something that is here to stay, but also a well-functioning aspect of cinematic storytelling.