8.2: Sound Film

Sound Film

There were four synchronized sound systems being developed in the United States during the 1920s. We've been talking about Edison's (and Warner Bros.') Vitaphone, but there were also: RCA's Photophone and Movietone.

Here's a short video using magazine pictures from the time period to illustrate the different systems:

The Movietone system is the one we're going to focus on. The technology was developed through the work of Theodore Case, who began experimenting with modulated light that could carry sound. (I don't really understand the science of this, but there's a link to an engineering site below that will help if you're interested in this idea.) Case and his assistant Earl I. Sponable teamed up with Lee de Forest, who was working (rather unsuccessfully) on a system called Phonofilm. Turns out de Forest was a bit of a jerk, and he tried to take credit for the science that Case had developed. So Case and Sponable called their system Movietone. "The Movietone system is an optical sound-on-film method of recording sound for motion pictures that guarantees synchronization between sound and picture. It achieves this by recording the sound as a variable-density optical track on the same strip of film that records the pictures." (Movietone Wikipedia page) If you're interested in the nuts and bolts of the technology and the major milestones in the timeline, check out this archived website from the Audio Engineering Society.

Here is what the film strip looks like with a sound track. The picture on the left is the "variable density" system developed by Case, and the one on the right is another form of optical soundtrack (called "variable area.") These two systems would compete for about twenty years, but both essentially do the same thing...which is create sound from light. Amazing!

Fox Studios was the exclusive home of the Moveitone system, and it created Fox Movietone News, which created and widely distributed sound film of newsworthy events.

Here is a typical newsreel from Movietone. The subject is very serious: World War II. I don't recommend watching the whole thing unless you really want to. Just listen to the opening music and watch the first 30 seconds or so:

The very first feature film to use an optical sound-on-film system was Sunrise, which was created by German filmmaker, F.W. Murnau. Want to know the weirdest thing about this film? It doesn't use the sound for dialogue! It's essentially a silent film with synchronized music. If you're interested in seeing it, it's available on YouTube for free. There are numerous examples of innovative camera work, made all the more impressive by being literally THE FIRST time some these things were ever done in service of a dramatic film. See the description box for this YouTube video:

As for the score, there were basically two different versions. One, created by our old friend Erno Rapée, was a list of music to be played live along with the film (if the movie house didn't have the technology to play the synchronized sound version). Hugo Riesenfeld created the musical score for the synchronized version. Sunrise shows that we were in a little bit of an "in-between" place with film music at this time. Riesenfeld's score--which is a combination of original music and nineteenth-century classical music--creates mood through key choices and tempos. There are some leitmotifs in the score, and Riesenfeld relied a lot on melodies to create tone. There are a lot of cool uses of sound and music in this film: there are multiple sound layered to create nuanced meanings (like different thoughts happening at once) or musical depictions of sounds instead of sound effects themselves.

Charlie Chaplin

Certainly you've heard of Charlie Chaplin, who was a huge star of silent film. The interesting thing is that Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character stayed without dialogue through 1936. In fact, City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) are considered "the last great silent films" (Hickman 103). Chaplin not only acted and directed these films, he also wrote the music, often with the help of a young composer named David Raksin. Links to an external site.One of his first jobs was working with Charlie Chaplin on Modern Times, helping to write out the music and flesh out ideas. After a successful career writing film scores, Raksin spent his 90s teaching film music at the University of Southern California. Chaplin's score used a borrowed melody as a leitmotif (José Padilla's "La violetera"), quoted funny/punny songs (like using "How Dry I Am" to accompany a scene where people fall in some water), and had some newly written music. Here is a classic scene from Modern Times:

Because it was a slapstick comedy, there are moments of "mickey-mousing," a practice wherein music accents actions or movements, as you would in a cartoon. The term has a negative connotation, but it's done very often in comedy.

Here's a quick guide to mickey-mousing:

While there is almost a century of film music after Chaplin, we'll stop here. It's a vibrant and interesting genre of music, and it's something that millions of people enjoy, sometimes without really understanding how it works.