A lot has changed about the world of cinema since it emerged. However, among the revolutions that have changed the game in the movie industry is the silent-film-to-sound film transition. This major revolution of film history, now more commonly referred to as the birth of sound films, changed movies to be made and enjoyed on the big screen differently forever. Silent cinema, a norm with which the viewers had been used, communicated through the use of visuals, body language, and intertitles but with synchronized sound, gave better stories while offering possibilities to artists as well. Therefore, sound cinema developed afterwards. From a list of some transitional landmarks, the film stands out, that is, The Jazz Singer.
The Jazz Singer, in 1927, was sometimes titled the first serious "talkie" in cinema history. Certainly it wasn't the first film to make use of synchronized sound but, sure, it was the first film to actually break into the mainstream, thus securing the future for cinema in sound. Milestone film, this would hence forward go on to establish the fact that the sound as well as the music that comes into a film does not risk the cinema itself rather instead become a part of cinema. How did this occur? What was special about The Jazz Singer in being a movie at the inception of the end of silent movies and the birth of talking movies? Continue reading for how the talkies first started, the part that was played by The Jazz Singer, and how it shaped movie history.
Before the discovery of sound, films were visual based. Silent films, although great, had their limitations as well. These films employed incredible gestures and facial expressions in addition to intertitles to bring in dialogue or narration into the film. These could work, but they lacked richness in sound that could add more depth to their storytelling.
The silent film era had already produced some of the most iconic and influential works in film history. D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Fritz Lang, among others, innovatively fashioned the medium. And there is, for example, Chaplin's City Lights (1931) and Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), which remain iconic expressions of this era. Silent cinema was beautiful in itself, but when this experience had reached such a peak, adding sound was sure to help complete it, just as any other form of art.
Sound in cinema was not a new fad. In the 1910s experiments on synchronized sound began. Companies and inventors such as Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner experimented on putting together sound with the images, but technology has then only been limited at that point in time and was expensive on the production of the film to the point where it rarely appeared and proved nonfruitful result of such.
Motion pictures were the first true explorations into the realm of sync sound during the 1920s. The earliest experiments began to show the huge possibilities that this represented for sound film. This technology was created by Warner Bros in 1923 when it unveiled the Vitaphone system that allowed sound synchronization with a film using a phonograph record. It also employed the equipment for short films and music presentations. In fact, one of the first talking shorts is Don Juan (1926), a synchronized sound picture which contains a musical score and sound effects.
But while Don Juan demonstrated what sound could be used for in a film, it was still basically a silent film, albeit one to which some sound effects and music had been added. The real revolution came in The Jazz Singer, the film that demonstrated how dialogue and musical numbers could be coordinated with the action on the screen.
The Jazz Singer was an Alan Crosland movie directed by Warner Bros. The movie was a great display for Al Jolson, the popular stage performer whose charismatic presence on stage was much needed to bring some fame to this film. It was the story of a young man called Jakie Rabinowitz, who wanted to be a jazz singer much to the dismay of his Jewish father, who wanted him to become a cantor like his brothers. The Jazz Singer, a film hybrid of silent and talk sequences, did have its most poignant element in synchronized dialogue and musicals.
The most famous scene in The Jazz Singer is when Al Jolson speaks the now-famous line: "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!" This line amongst many others was the first time that audiences had ever witnessed synchronized speech in a feature film. The movie also incorporated musical numbers in which Jolson sang several songs, including "My Mammy," synchronized with action on the screen.
This was at a time when sound was used in film and how much more emotive and dramatic the impact of a movie can be.
While not the first silent talkie, The Jazz Singer was the first major picture where sound is successfully integrated as part of a coherent believable plot line. It has been a huge commercial hit and shows how the presence of sound can be involved in the production of motion pictures. The way has therefore been paved for the eventual fall of the silent cinema years.
Even though The Jazz Singer was a success, transition from silent to sound films was no phenomenon that occurred overnight without teething pains. There were many problems to be faced by the film industry to make sound cinema a phenomenon that lasted longer. Recording and synchronizing of sound was in the earliest stage of technology. Early systems of sound were cumbersome, employing very complicated equipment, thus filming and editing being much more cumbersome.
Another major challenge was to acclimatize actors and filmmakers to this new medium. Actors in silent films, who were known for overacted facial expressions and hyperbolic body language, went limp when speaking. Acting style had to change because the actors had to be trained to speak clearly and performances needed to be adapted to accommodate the new technology.
More, however, silent film directors and studios feared the new medium. They feared that the 'addition of 'sound'' would detract from the 'picture' as a work of art. To that, the actual shot scenes of the film were altered because of other necessities, such as the microphones among others. With this kind of new limitation, however, the possibility of having 'sound' in the movie-making business became just too attractive not to have considered it; therefore eventually accepted.
The success of the film The Jazz Singer created that sensation of sound films which immediately captured the psyche of the viewers within a short span. Soon, in a short span of years, more major studios started using that technology; and the silent era entered the sands of oblivion. Here lies the improvement of the medium above sound-based storytelling and creativity in musical scores or sound effects or the full breadth of voice acting possibilities.
Early talkies like The Singing Fool (1928), Broadway Nights (1927), and Lights of New York (1928) were very popular, and the use of sound in a film was mere exaggeration of drama, comedies, and musicals. This was the period when the production of films in musicals was at its peak; from them, 42nd Street (1933) and The Broadway Melody (1929) were quite a hit.
It actually changed the very fabric of story-telling for filmmakers. Dialogue now was the center of a story, and it was in tandem with using sound effects for atmosphere and to help build up the tension. There were so many techniques experimented on by directors and sound engineers, which actually led to innovations in terms of synchronized soundtracks, Foley sound effects to make films look more realistic.
It was by the early 1930s when Hollywood started to embrace sound, and silent movies began to fade out fast. Success through The Jazz Singer proved that it was no gimmick but a major ingredient in the cinematic experience; therefore paving a way for the future of cinema.
The silent to sound films transition influenced the film industry and the entertainment world at large. The advent of sound cinema changed the way people saw movies and filmmaking as a whole. With sound, films became more evocative and emotionally charged, opening up new storytelling avenues for filmmakers to get creative.
This also helped Hollywood films reach the entire world. The technology related to sound was also improved so much that a Hollywood film could be dubbed in multiple languages, thus opening its gates to audiences around the world. Here, Hollywood established itself as a hegemonic force in the world of cinema-a position it occupies at present.
The type of careers also made within the industry differed between the sound films. With increased demand came more work opportunities in the film world for sound engineers, voice artists, and musicians.
The birth of sound films is considered to be a turning point in the history of cinema. The film was Jazz Singer and it marked the new era in films to forever alter the medium. It was not easy, but this silent-to-sound transition opened new artistic possibilities for the film industry for decades. Today we use sound in films as an unchallenged standard, but it was the one that proved its potential and set the stage for the sound cinema we know and love today. The influence of sound in cinema is just unparallel, and its after-effect is still there in filmmaking across the globe.
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