Naissance du Parlant (1928-1930) Pt. 01

Part 1 of a 13 part series on the history of French cinema. By 1927, it’s official: the cinema speaks! The premiere of the ‘Jazz Singer’ in New York catches the French studios unprepared and the filmmakers unwilling to accept with this technical revolution. While the studios rush to re-equip and sound-proof their facilities, filmmakers embark on a local polemic regarding the artistic set back represented by sound. Their arguements are simple: prisonner of the linguistic barriers, ‘talkies’ will loose their universality ; the camera, which the ‘Avant-Garde’ had tamed and made mobile, is now static and enslaved to the demands of sound recording. Furthermore, the only sound recording systems are foreign: Tobis-Klang Film in Berlin or Western Electric and RCA in the USA. French filmmakers make, at first, a rather gimmicky use of the sound process, (the first sound heard in a French film is that of bath being emptied) until a little mouse convince them that sound can be used intelligently to serve the dramaturgy. Yes! Mickey Mouse imposes the ‘talkies’ in France. Ironically, it was Rene Clair, one of the most vociferous opponents of sound, who directed the first great French sound film, ‘Sous les toits de Paris’, at the Epinay studios in 1930. Although the film did manifest an adventurous use of sound - privileging songs while reducing dialogue to a minimum, and including some counterpoint experiments, in which sound and image were not synchronised - it was most notable for Lazare Meerson’s set design, which evoked a realistic yet lyrical picture of working-class Paris.” Reference: Guy Austin. ‘Contemporary French cinema’. Manchester University Press, 1996. Further viewing: ‘Le silence est d’or’ (Rene Clair, 1947). Further reading: Richard Abel. “French cinema: the first wave, 1915-1929’. Princeton University Press, 1984. *=Held in our collection.

Credits: Director, Armand Panigel ; photography, Claude Cassard.
Includes interviews with Rene Clair, Marcel L’Herbier, Abel Gance, Marcel Pagnol, Jean-Paul Le Chanois, Marcel Carne.