de UnA cienciA jURÍdicA inTeRPReTATivA*
4. cienciA jURÍdicA en SenTidO AMPLiO y eSTRicTO
While the transition to sound in the United States was rapid, the dissemination of the technology around the world was wildly uneven due to the large capital investments required and the financial uncertainty caused by the Great Depression. Because most theatres in Europe were wired for sound after 1929, the Depression created an economically chaotic situation as exhibition practices lagged behind production practices, and many sound films were initially shown silent at many theatres (Kreimeier 1996, 182). Furthermore, the change was, in many ways, controlled and dictated by American production and distribution companies. The United States had dominated world markets since the First World War, and American companies’ patents on sound synchronization technologies gave them a distinct advantage over the film industries of other countries, except perhaps in Germany, where the film industry took advantage of its control over key sound-film patents (Gomery 1976; Gomery 2005, 109–13). The reaction to synchronized sound in Europe provides a particularly rich story of competition, resistance and innovation in the aftermath of widespread technological change (Gomery 2005, 105–14).
Even as Hollywood adjusted to the changes brought on by synchronized sound, American companies sought to expand their reach (and their profits) through international distribution of sound films. They saw Europe in particular as an available market. The installation of sound equipment and distribution of sound films in countries that had not yet developed the technology to do this themselves promised to be lucrative. Engineers in Europe, however, had also made progress on sound-synchronization
technology: more than fifteen sound systems were competing in Europe during the transitional period and, by 1928, the primarily Dutch-owned Tobis was formed, controlling most of the important patents in Europe, including the Tri-Ergon system (Kreimeier 1996, 178–9). Ufa, AEG and Siemens and Halske then launched the company Klangfilm to organize the German industry’s response. In 1929, Tobis and Klangfilm came to an agreement, and they began jointly marketing their technology as Tobis-Klangfilm, aiming to corner the European market and shut out American companies. Tobis-Klangfilm sought to stall the American film industry’s impending control of the international market, disputing patents in the hope of obstructing what they saw as an inevitable ‘talkie invasion’ by the American companies (Gomery 1980, 85) – not just studios, but also the activity of firms like ERPI that posed a major threat to more basic industrial concerns. In the summer of 1930, representatives from Tobis-Klangfilm and members of the American film industry conferred on neutral ground in Paris. An international cartel resulted from this ‘Paris Agreement’, and the German and American companies agreed to split up much of the world for patent rights and charge films royalties for distribution within each territory. As German and American companies held the decisive patents, other national film industries were at the mercy of foreign firms for the technology to produce and exhibit sound films. Resistance to the change was particularly widespread in countries like France due to fear that national cinematic practices would diminish.
Because the European transition to commercial sound-film production came somewhat later than in the United States (initially running two to three years behind), and perhaps because they had the American model to react to or because they needed to play catch-up, Europeans developed a number of innovative sound films as they made the transition. In England, Blackmail (1929) was originally planned as a silent film, but the quick inroads sound film
was making in British theatres required that director Alfred Hitchcock re-conceive the film with dialogue sequences. As was commonly the case during the transition era, a silent version was also released for theatres not yet equipped with sound. The lead actress (Anny Ondra) had a heavy Czech accent, so Joan Barry was hired to speak the dialogue off-camera, essentially dubbing the film live because techniques of post-synchronization were not yet well developed (Belton 1999).
Walter Ruttmann devised an innovative audiovisual aesthetic in his first sound film, Melodie der Welt. Adapting the approach he took in his silent Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City; 1927), Ruttmann created an audiovisual ‘symphony’, a collage of recorded diegetic sounds corresponding to the montage of images from around the world. The soundtrack sounds almost like a prototype for musique concrète. Ruttmann also experimented with sound-only films. In 1931, Lang directed his first sound film, M, a wonderfully strange hybrid that combines silent-film technique (including fully silent sequences), a kind of voice-over narration to connect different locations, and off-screen sound to heighten suspense. Though Lang’s approach to sound in M might, like Hitchcock’s work on Blackmail, seem related to the technical challenges of synchronized sound film, it should be noted that by 1931 films coming out of the German film industry had achieved a high technical standard with respect to dialogue. Although shooting more dialogue without showing moving lips than American films from the time, deft handling of synchronized dialogue is nevertheless demonstrated in Die Drei von der Tankstelle (Three Good Friends or Three Men and Lilian; 1930), Erik Charell’s Der Kongreß tanzt (The Congress Dances; 1931) and Pabst’s Westfront 1918: Vier von der Infanterie (Comrades of 1918; 1930), Die 3 Groschen-Oper (The Threepenny Opera; 1931) and Kameradschaft (‘Comradeship’; 1931). If M was not an improvised solution to challenges
posed by inadequate technology, it seems instead an experiment to avoid the obviousness of sync sound without reverting wholly to silent-film technique.
While establishing close and convincing synchronization remained a continual concern, and American films generally began a shot with a sync point of flapping lips and dialogue before passing to reaction shots, European films were on the whole less obsessed with such close dialogue synchronization and frequently shot dialogue from behind, where synchronization could be much looser. In early cases, like Blackmail and Augusto Genina’s Prix de beauté (Miss Europe or Beauty Prize; 1930), this seems to have been an expedient to allow dialogue to be added during post-production to footage shot silent. But the practice continued in later films, most notably in René Clair’s three Parisian operettas. In general, Clair explored an approach to sound film that also downplayed dialogue in favour of other sound elements. Apparent especially in his 1931 film Le Million, his first sound films use minimal dialogue, instead utilizing audiovisual counterpoint and songs to propel the action forwards. Clair does not completely avoid dialogue, but he associates it with the negative forces of economic necessity and the law. He also frequently shoots dialogue with the principal characters facing away from the camera. This strategy of loose synchronization endows the voice with a certain lightness – as though it is only barely contained by the speaking body and might break free at any moment (Fischer 1977; Gorbman 1987, 140–50; Cooke 2008, 62–4). Clair’s world, inspired by vaudeville stage comedies, is comic and giddy, ruled by happenstance.
The experimental tradition of filmmaking in the Soviet Union continued for a time with sound. Dziga Vertov was the first Soviet director to make a sound film in the USSR: Enthusiasm, released in 1931. In the film, on-location sound and mechanical sound effects are woven together to create a collage, as was the case with Ruttmann. Vertov’s experimental approach to the soundtrack
combined with the subject of Soviet miners, thereby reflecting the broader values of Soviet filmmakers that had begun with silent films like his earlier Man With a Movie Camera (1929) and Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.