Page 46 - summer 22

CINEMA

The birth of film: “the arts in motion”
Film was the most radical and most romantic of the new mass media. However, it did
not reach full maturity until sound and colour were added. Russian novelist Maxim
Gorky wrote in 1896,

“Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows. If you only knew how strange is it to be
there. It is a world without sound, without colour. Everything there – the earth, the

trees, the people, the water and the air – is dipped in monotonous grey. It is no life
but its shadow. And all this in a strange silence where no, rumble of wheels is heard,
no sound of footsteps or speech. Not a single note of the infinite symphony that
always accompanies the movements of people.” (from Robert Stam Film Theory,
2000).

Later the silence was filled by a live music, from a pianist or even an orchestra.

Talkies began with The Jazz Singer (1927), but Al Jolson but he only sang on thanks to
a new system using records which were not always perfectly synchronised with the
film (see “Vitaphone” on the poster below).

Sound by Vitaphone