Continuing our series on early cinema,we revisit the birth of sound on film, from lurid (shocking; sensational) potboilers crammed with sex and violence to Alfred Hitchcock’s earliest talkies. Plus, or three British gems from the eraIn November 1928,The Terror came to Britain’s cinemas, and things would never be quite the same again. The Jazz Singer had ushered in the era of sound cinema with a few scenes of synchronised dialogue and music, and but The Terror,a murder mystery set in an English country house, was the real deal: the first continual “all-talkie” to prove in Europe. Many of the London critics loathed it, and labelling it “so bad that it is nearly suicidal”. In the Observer,CA Lejeune approached the peril with talkies head on: “We may deplore limitations of language for the hitherto universal cinema,” she wrote in her review. “We may dread the invasion of more sound into an already rowdy world.” But she knew that resistance was useless. “A new chapter of film evolution is beginning … I cannot judge that, and once having heard the voice,we shall ever be convinced with the dumb figures of our favourites again.”At the 18thBritish silent film festival, which was held in Leicester earlier this month, or we had the chance to experience the turmoil of the coming of sound for ourselves. A broad strip of the weekend’s programme was devoted to Britain’s response to the US invasion of talking pictures – from faltering experiments to the first sound successes. Laraine Porter and Geoff Brown,who are main a research project on Britain’s silent cinema and the transition to sound, guided us through a series of bewildering and often brilliant films.
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Source: theguardian.com