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The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk

Sep 2, 2007

1h 25m

★ 7.0

Overview

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

Genres

Documentary

History

Production Companies

Warner Bros. Entertainment

Sparkhill

Turner Entertainment Co.

The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk Trailers

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Cast

Self

Scott Eyman

Self

Rudy Behlmer

Self

Robert Gitt

Self

Jonathan Kuntz

Self

A.C. Lyles

Self

Ben Burtt

Self

Leonard Maltin

Self

Vince Giordano

Self

Rose Marie

Self

Dane A. Davis

Self

Sanford Green

Self

Mickey Rooney

In the 1968 movement in Paris, Jean-Luc Godard made a 16mm, 3-minute long film, Film-tract No.1968, Le Rouge, in collaboration with French artist Gérard Fromanger. Starting with the shot identifying its title written in red paint on the Le Monde for 31 July 1968, the film shows the process of making Fromanger’s poster image, which is thick red paint flows over a tri-color French flag. —Hye Young Min

7.5

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

Sep 23, 1927

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

7.2

Cabiria

Jun 1, 1914

Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, and Fulvius sent away to fight for Rome, is there any hope of our heroes reuniting?

7.6

Battleship Potemkin

Dec 24, 1925

A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre.

7.1

Nanook of the North

Jun 11, 1922

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

6.0

The Birth of a Nation

Mar 8, 1915

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

6.9

October (Ten Days that Shook the World)

May 11, 1928

Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.

7.9

A Trip to the Moon

Jun 15, 1902

Professor Barbenfouillis and five of his colleagues from the Academy of Astronomy travel to the Moon aboard a rocket propelled by a giant cannon. Once on the lunar surface, the bold explorers face the many perils hidden in the caves of the mysterious planet.

8.5

An Unforgettable Grudge

Nov 20, 1926

Set in the Edo period, the film deals with two brothers falling in love with the same girl. Sadly, only 12 minutes of footage survive.

8.0

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Apr 21, 1928

A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.

7.4

Visions of Lourdes

Jan 1, 1932

Charles Dekeukeleire, then a questioning Catholic, was spurred into making this documentary on a pilgrimage with the Catholic Young Workers’ Movement. The director’s approach is one of critical reflection; A film emotional and fervent, even acerbic.

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0.0

The Wheat Industry

Invalid Date

Tells the life story of a grain of wheat In Casselton, North Dakota.

0.0

Photographic Studies in Hypnosis: Abnormal Psychology

Jan 1, 1938

Silent film showcasing hypnosis and its effects.

5.2

The Story of the Kelly Gang

Dec 26, 1906

Just as Galeen and Wegener's Der Golem (1915) can be seen as a testament to early German film artistry, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) symbolizes both the birth of the Australian film industry and the emergence of an Australian cinema identity. Even more significantly, it heralds the emergence of the feature film format. However, only fragments of the original production of more than one hour are known to exist, preserved at the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra; Efforts at reconstruction have made the film available to modern audiences.

5.2

Carmencita

Mar 14, 1894

The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.

6.1

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge

Oct 15, 1888

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.

5.1

The Sealed Room

Sep 2, 1909

The Count sets out to make a private room for him and his Countess, built in such a way no one can see, hear, and most importantly, disturb them. But unbeknownst to the Count, his wife has set her eyes on the court minstrel. Based on Edgar Allan Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” and Honoré de Balzac's “La Grande Breteche”.

6.0

Bicycle

Jan 1, 1965

Rhythmic composition of moving photographs of cyclists in Amsterdam, ‘set’ to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

0.0

Amazon: Longest River in the World

Jan 1, 1918

Documentary by Portuguese Silvino Santos, about the Amazon, its flora, fauna, its inhabitants and among other wonderful images from the beginning of the 20th century with alternating close-up shots of caimans, jaguars and tropical flora with footage of Indigenous rituals--including some of the earliest known moving images of the Indigenous Witoto people--and longer sequences showcasing the region’s extractive industries: rubber, the Brazil nut, timber, fishing, even the egret feathers that were a staple of women’s fashion at the time.