The Era of the Talkies

Abstract

Between 1927 and 1940 the motion picture business worldwide underwent a dramatic transformation. As urban populations continued to boom, cinema became a fixture of city life, and continued to extend its influence to provincial towns and villages. By the beginning of the Second World War the movies had become woven into the fabric of public leisure in small towns and villages across the globe. The experience of seeing moving pictures for these audiences was changing as well, as the development of a practical application for adding sound to film revolutionized the medium. As sound proved instantly popular with European and American audiences, movie theaters all over the world began to invest in new audio equipment and leaving the silent films behind. The shift happened in fits and starts, and long after audiences in America had become nostalgic for the silent era, the old movies were still playing in some of the less-traveled corners of the world. But by 1932 the vast majority of moving picture consumers had been won over by the ‘talkies’.

‘The Zulu and the Burman could alike take zest in the antics of a Chaplin or of a Lloyd. The silent film was an entertainment that drew remote peoples with no other bond to a common enjoyment. The impact of talk has been as disruptive of this as was the building of the Tower of Babel. … The nations, knowing that speech is possible on the screen, demand to hear their own.’

‘The March of the Screen’, Manchester Guardian, 17 July 1933