SPECTRUM OF OPINION, 1928-29

Talkies, squeakies, moanies, songies, squawkies. . . . But whatever you call them, I’m absolutely serious in what I have to say about them. Just give them ten years to develop and you’re going to see the greatest artistic medium the world has known. Just think: you can get all the movement, the swing, the rhythm and the drive of the best of the old silent pictures into them. There you have your appeal to the eye. And added to this you have the human voice. And music, the one perfect art. You can combine the features of the picture, the opera, the legitimate theatre. As for the picture part of it, it will be superior to the painter’s art, for it will be alive. . . .

D. W. GRIFFITH, film director

To wish the movies to be articulate is about as sensible as wishing the drama to be silent. The movies are designed for pantomime, nothing more. . . . If the Vitaphone were to stick to words of one syllable, the movies might use it to some advantage. . . . But the moment it went in for words of two or, on gala occasions, three, Mr. Adolph Zukor would have to sell his twelve Rolls-Royces and 82-carat diamond suspender buckles, learn English, and go back to work.

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN, drama critic and editor

As rapidly as theatres throughout the country are being fitted for the audible films, it is preposterous to suppose that the time will ever come when all houses, the length and breadth of the United States, will be so equipped. . . . An occasional audible picture will suffice for some audiences whose steady and uninterrupted patronage will continue to be accorded to the silent picture.

ALBERT WARNER of Warner Bros.

I believe in the future of talking films because the day of the director is over and that of the author and playwright arrived. . . . I believe that through the help of audible pictures, English will become the universal language.

SAMUEL GOLDWYN, film producer

The nicest thing about film so far was that it kept its mouth shut. It would have been terrible if one had accompanied with words the stupidities which were played. That was the only reason I did not permit the filming of my plays, because their greatest strength was their dialogue. . . . The mere fact that the importance of words in the film is recognized will pave the way for writers because ultimately one will be able to distinguish between the good and the bad text. That will secure for the films gifted playwrights the same as it does the stage, although both are different in character.

BERNARD SHAW, dramatist

With the word mechanically engraved on the film, the cinema—which is the dumb expression of images and the language of appearances—achieves the result of destroying itself in order to become a mechanical copy of the theatre—a copy which can only be bad. . . .

LUIGI PIRANDELLO, dramatist

The talking picture will . . . in its perfection accomplish the making of the audience a party to the dramatic conflict. . . . In the audible picture . . . there is no line of demarcation between the characters and the audiences such as is inevitably formed by the footlights of the stage, nor is there the spectre of unreality, or uninterrupted action, such as the titles of a silent picture. . . . It is the enormous dynamics of the screen, as compared with the confines of the stage, which should . . . enable audiences to participate in the doings of the characters. Nor is the achievement of this objective a lowly goal for which to strive. For an hour where dreams come true is worth years of strife in the present mad scramble for wealth; nothing could be closer to the pursuit of happiness than the fantasy produced by a few thousand feet of realistic bits of photography.

PAUL FEJOS, film director

There have been enough sound and talking pictures to give every fan the opportunity of judging for himself. They are a distinct advance over the silent picture and have created a new class of theatre-goers, whose interest in the play interpreted by flesh-and-blood actors has been revived.

J. J. SHURERT, theatre manager and producer

I am still Max Reinhardt, but if I signed a talkie contract I should no more be myself. I admit that at Hollywood I enjoyed the talkies, but for me they miss the greatest sensation of the legitimate theatre: . . . the mystic link between the audience and the people on the stage. . . .

MAX REINHARDT, stage director and producer

Personally, I am convinced that films should be seen and not heard. The business of the film is to depict action, not to reproduce sound. It is not that one is opposed to something which is new, for the film itself is new and we would not be without it. But the spoken word, mechanically introduced, is not proper to the film medium, and tends to destroy the illusion which the film is trying to build up. . . . There is something monstrous about a speaking film. . . .

ERNEST BETTS, film critic

The future of the talkie is one of the most entertaining speculations; roughly there are three paths:

1 The talkie may develop as a separate medium, having hardly anything to do with the movie except that it uses the same mechanism for entirely different purposes;

2 It may create a sort of hybrid with itself and the movie as the components in variable proportions;

3 The movie may incorporate the talkie, or vice versa, creating an entirely new form—cinephonics, perhaps—in which the principles of the movie will not be abandoned.

GILBERT SELDES, critic of popular culture

The future certainly belongs to the talking films and Germans, who are the best actors in the world, will and must take the leadership in this respect.

EMIL JANNINGS, film actor

INTERVIEWER: What do you think about the future of talking pictures?

EDISON: Without great improvements people will tire of them. Talking is no substitute for [the] good acting that we have had in the silent pictures.

THOMAS ALVA EDISON, inventor

The life of the theatre is a matter of centuries; that of the talkie a few months. The former has been the struggle of an art to assert itself, in spite of poverty, persecution and contumely, until it has won worthy acceptance in the world. The latter has been the sudden revelation of a scientific discovery emerging from a glut of gold which attempts to do the same thing.

SACHA GUITRY, actor and dramatist

The latest and most frightful creation-saving device for the production of standardized amusement. . . .

ALDOUS HUXLEY, novelist

Only a contrapuntal use of sound in relation to the visual montage piece will afford a new potentiality of montage development and perfection. . . . Such a method for constructing the sound-film will not confine it to a national market, as must happen with the photographing of plays, but will give a greater possibility than ever before for the circulation throughout the world of a filmically expressed idea.

S. M. EISENSTEIN, V. I. PUDOVKIN, G. V. ALEXANDROV, film directors

Scientifically the invention is fascinating. It belongs with the other mechanical marvels of the age, with the aeroplane, the automobile, and the telephone. But artistically it is about as exciting as a vacuum cleaner. It makes no contribution to beauty.

F. T. PATTERSON, screenwriter

The talking picture is apparently doomed to grope blindly for several years before it reaches anything that may properly be described as an original form of drama. That it will reach this goal eventually does not seem to me in the least doubtful. . . . So far its greatest successes have been scored in a field which does not quite come under the definition of “talking.” Pictures like The Singing Fool or My Man are really “song pictures.” The fact, however, that they succeed in conveying their appeal to the audience is vastly significant. Lacking as they are in color and depth, they still capture something of the personality of the artist.

ALEXANDER BAKSHY, critic

To realize the greatest possibilities of characterization of sound in talkies, a loud sound shaking the talkie theatre to its foundation and a trifling sound as of dripping water are both necessary.

YASUSHI OGINO, critic

To the director, the most interesting possibility of the talking, or synchronized, picture is that of presenting a complex situation, such as that of hearing the voice of one actor and seeing the face of another. The reaction of the person addressed is frequently of more importance than the person speaking. Take this one very simple illustration. A man goes to the telephone and picks up the receiver. A voice on the other end says, “I’m sorry, but your wife and child have just been killed.” We hear the voice without seeing the speaker. What we do see is the husband to whom this tragic news has been brought. That, to the director, would be something worth while. It has real dramatic interest. You can feel the grip of it; and out of this simple little illustration may come a thousand variations.

MONTA BELL, film director

As I see it, the talking picture is much more than a violent temporary rival of the theatre. It is a wealthy cousin that intends to rule the roost, however urbanely.

BASIL DEAN, theatre producer

Talkies may internationalize motion pictures if American and European actors become linguists. Otherwise the film industry will become more strictly nationalized than it has ever been.

ADOLPHE MENJ OU, actor