The Evolution of Sound in Cinema
The evolution of sound in cinema
Jay Beck
General histories of the relationship between sound and image in cinema tend to perpetuate an ocular-centricity (emphasizing vision over the other senses) that dates back to the very earliest experiments in “moving pictures”—a term which itself serves to confuse historians. The vast majority of cinema histories tend to relegate the subject of sound in cinema to a subordinate position by studying the transition to the sound period in the late 1920s and early 1930s, only to drop the subject of sound and to emphasize the visual nature of film. Yet as long as cinema has existed, sound has been a part of it—both in its presence and in its absence.
A generation of new film historians has revealed that the interplay between sound and image in cinema is quite complex and a number of presiding assumptions about film sound need to be re-examined. For example, “detonating celluloid” was a popular slang term dating from a 1930 industry guidebook for “talking cinema,” and it encapsulated a crucial misconception in the history of early sound film (“Studio Slanguage,” 1930, p. 125). As an expression, it emphasized the radically transformative effect that sound was perceived to have had on the film industry in the late 1920s. However, the term obscured the fact that sound films had been produced in small numbers since the advent of cinema while it supported the popular myth that sound cinema emerged fully grown from the mouth of Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927) when he uttered the now-immortal expression, “You ain’t heard nuthin’ yet!” In fact, the transition to sound in cinema was quite orderly and not nearly as explosive as the term implies, and the history of film sound follows a winding path from the earliest experiments in sound and image synchronization to today’s digital cinema systems. The function of this chapter is to apply a corrective filter to film history and to amplify how film sound has aided the development of
Jay Beck
General histories of the relationship between sound and image in cinema tend to perpetuate an ocular-centricity (emphasizing vision over the other senses) that dates back to the very earliest experiments in “moving pictures”—a term which itself serves to confuse historians. The vast majority of cinema histories tend to relegate the subject of sound in cinema to a subordinate position by studying the transition to the sound period in the late 1920s and early 1930s, only to drop the subject of sound and to emphasize the visual nature of film. Yet as long as cinema has existed, sound has been a part of it—both in its presence and in its absence.
A generation of new film historians has revealed that the interplay between sound and image in cinema is quite complex and a number of presiding assumptions about film sound need to be re-examined. For example, “detonating celluloid” was a popular slang term dating from a 1930 industry guidebook for “talking cinema,” and it encapsulated a crucial misconception in the history of early sound film (“Studio Slanguage,” 1930, p. 125). As an expression, it emphasized the radically transformative effect that sound was perceived to have had on the film industry in the late 1920s. However, the term obscured the fact that sound films had been produced in small numbers since the advent of cinema while it supported the popular myth that sound cinema emerged fully grown from the mouth of Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927) when he uttered the now-immortal expression, “You ain’t heard nuthin’ yet!” In fact, the transition to sound in cinema was quite orderly and not nearly as explosive as the term implies, and the history of film sound follows a winding path from the earliest experiments in sound and image synchronization to today’s digital cinema systems. The function of this chapter is to apply a corrective filter to film history and to amplify how film sound has aided the development of