Abstract
An early episode in the history of globalization took place in the fall of 1927 with the premiere of what was commonly referred to at the time as ‘the most important picture in the history of the movies.’1 The picture in question was F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise, and one source of its contemporary prestige was the fact that it could be billed as the ‘first international’ film production.2 It’s a little hard at this remove to see what right Sunrise had to such a claim, for though it was Murnau’s first American film, other German directors had been working in Hollywood for some time. But Murnau brought to Hollywood a film technique that was so conspicuously different from that of most American studios that it was received as if it were another language.3 Low-key lighting, ‘free’ camera movement, and a complete avoidance of inter-tides had made Murnau’s final German production, Der letze Mann (1924), a sensation, not just in Hollywood but also among amateur film makers and the aesthetic avant-garde.4 By bringing German expressionism to Hollywood, therefore, Murnau was also bringing one of the most conspicuous of avant-garde film techniques to a big-budget, mass market production. One of the borders crossed by Sunrise on its way to becoming the ‘first international’ film was that between the avant-garde and modern mass culture.5
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Notes
Scott Eyman, The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926–1930 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 150.
James Morrison, Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, Eumpean Directors (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 31.
For a definition and a discussion of the ‘German influence’ on Hollywood film production, see David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 73.
The film without inter-tides was an important ideal for much of the European film avant-garde. See P. Adams Sitney, Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 21.
Donald Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926–1931 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 94.
Bela Balazs, Theory of the Film trans., Edith Bone (1952; New York: Arno Press, 1972), p. 45. Chapter 5 of this volume is a series of quotations from Balázs’ Der sichtbare Mensch, published in 1923.
Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (New York: Viking, 1971), p. 147. It has become something of a credo among scholars of early film that ‘the silents were not silent,’ since there were so many different ways in which audio accompaniment could be added during the showing of a film. For a number of relevant discussions, see The Sounds of Early Cinema, ed. Richard Abel and Rick Altman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).
Crafton, pp. 424–30; Natasa Durovicova, ‘Translating America: The Hollywood Multilinguals 1929–1933,’ in Sound Theory Sound Practrce, ed. Rick Altman (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 138–53.
O. B. [Oswell Blakeston], ‘Anthology,’ Close Up 7.1 (July 1930): 76.
Rudolf Arnheim, Film trans., L. M Sieveking and Ian F. D. Morrow (1930; London: Faber & Faber, 1933), p. 280.
Patricia R. Zimmermann, ‘Startling Angles: Amateur Film and the Early Avant-Garde,’ in Lovers of Cinema: The First Amerecan Film Avant-Garde 1919–1945, ed. Jan-Christopher Horak (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), p. 146.
Alan Williams, ‘Historical and Theoretical Issues in the Coming of Recorded Sound to the Cinema,’ in Sound Theory Sound Practtce, p. 136.
Francis Ambrière, ‘Variations sur le Cinéma,’ PMLA 115: 1024. See also Crafton, p. 448.
John Gould Fletcher, The Crisis of the Film (np: University of Washington, 1929), p. 28.
Gilbert Seldes, An Hour with the Movies and the Talkies (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, 1929), p. 124.
See, for example, Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 1.6 (December 1927): 14 and ‘As Is,’ Close Up 2.1 (January 1928): 11.
Ernest Betts, Heraclitus or The Future of the Films (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1928), erratum slip at p, 88. This slip was inserted to signify that Betts’ hopes during the composition of his book that sound could be stopped had been frustrated.
Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 1.5 (November 1927): 5.
Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 7.6: 367–68.
Wilbur Needham, ‘The Photography of Sound,’ Close Up 3.2 (August 1928): 31.
C. H. [Clifford Howard], ‘Hollywood Notes,’ Close Up 6.6 (June 1930): 529.
Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 5.1 (July 1929): 6.
Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 7.6 (December 1930): 369.
Biyher, ‘The Hollywood Code,’ Close Up 8.4 (December 1931): 281.
AW., ‘All Talkiel,’ Close Up 5.1 (July 1929): 58.
See the discussion in Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, tr. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1999), p. 172.
Dorothy Richardson, ‘Dialogue in Dixie,’ Close Up 5.3 (September 1929): 215.
Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 1.5 (November 1927): 8.
Dorothy Richardson, ‘Films for Children,’ Close Up 3.2 (August 1928): 24.
Rudolf Schwartzkopf, ‘Volksverband fur Fihnkunst,’ Close Up 2.5 (May 1928): 28.
Laura Marcus, ‘Introduction to Part 3,’ in Close Up 1927–1933: Cinema and Modernism ed., James Donald, Anne Friedberg, and Laura Marcus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 96–104.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology trans.,Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1967; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 76.
Allan Sekula, Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973–1983 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984), p. 82.
James Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 28–31.
Vachel Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (1915; New York: Modern Library, 2000), pp. 10, 110.
Miriam Hansen, Babel to Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 184–85.
Edward S. Van Zile, That Marvel-The Movie: A Glance at its Reckless Past, Its Promising Present, and Its Significant Future (New York: Putnam’s, 1923), p. 198.
Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 2.2 (February 1928): 13.
W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 37.
Jean Epstein, ‘Magnification,’ in French Film theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology 1907–1939, ed. Richard Abel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 235. Quoted in Close Up 1927–1933, p. 1.
Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 5.1 (July 1929): 10.
Jean Prevost, ‘Andre Gide and Marc Allegret’s Voyage to the Congo,’ Close Up 1.1 (July 1927): 40.
Lary May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 82.
Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 7.2 (August 1930): 89.
H.D., ‘Conrad Veidt: The Student of Prague,’ Close Up 1.3 (September 1927): 44.
Kenneth Macpherson, ‘As Is,’ Close Up 5.6 (December 1929): 449.
Zygmunt Tonecky, ‘The Preliminary of Film-Art,’ Close Up 8.3 (September 1931): 193.
Dorothy Richardson, ‘Continuous Performance: Captions,’ Close Up 1.3 (September 1927): 55.
Dorothy Richardson, ‘Continuous Performance: This Spoon-Fed Generation?,’ Close Up 8.4 (December 1931): 307.
Laura U. Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 94.
Dorothy Richardson, ‘Continuous Performance: The Cinema in Arcady,’ Close Up 3.1 (July 1928): 55–56.
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North, M. (2003). International Media, International Modernism, and the Struggle with Sound. In: Murphet, J., Rainford, L. (eds) Literature and Visual Technologies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230389991_4
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