Silent movies had a unique appeal to viewers in early cinema in that they forced the public to use their imaginations to fill in the gaps when the characters were speaking to one another. Silents didn't require extensive inter titles to get the jest of the actors' conversations. Consequently, the actors became larger than life because they weren't dragged down by imperfections in tonality and delivery most mortals possess.
So when the first 'talkies' starting dribbling out of Hollywood after October 1927's "The Jazz Singer" was released, the voices emitting from the screen must have been jarring to those not used to hearing their acting idols speak. One of the first feature films after "The Jazz Singer" to contain a bit of audible dialogue was June 1928's "Lonesome." The film was initially released as a silent, then in September edited with three sequences of actual talking. The first talking sequence is 30 minutes into the film when Mary (Barbara Kent) and Jim (Glenn Tryon), meeting for the first time at Coney Island's amusement park, are sitting on the beach saying how lucky they are meeting each other. As one modern-day critic describes it, "They suddenly seemed very childlike and embarrassing compared to their 'silent selves,' perhaps even silly and sappy. They seemed flawed and human once I heard their voices. It was an interesting way for me to think about silence versus sound in cinema, as this film allows one to essentially to see both types in the same film."
Film critic Andrew Saris claimed "Lonesome" was "a tender love story in its silent passages, but crude, clumsy and tediously tongue-tied in its talkie passages." There is one sequence in the dialogue portion that justifies the talkie addition. Jim gets hauled into the police station after a cop accused him of roughing him up after he tried break through the crowd to get to Mary, who had fainted. The police commander, debating whether to charge Jim, at first plays hardball. But when Jim pleads his case, you can hear the change of tone of the adjudicating official when he decides to let him go. An inter title could never convey such a friendlier timbre of the officer.
The appeal of "Lonesome" is that the Paul Fejos-directed movie addresses a universal problem focused on singles living a solitary life in the big city. Jim, a keypunch machine operator at a city factory, and Mary, a telephone operator, work long hours. Their opportunities to meet the opposite sex are few. Fejos, a former medic with the Austrian Army on the front lines of World War One front lines whose love for theater transformed into directing film, used a bag of special effects tricks early on to cleverly portray the pair, using double exposures to show their routine day. The two do link up at the park and have a magical time staring into each other's eyes. Fejos colors his celluloid with hand-tinted and stencil-color segments to illustrate their romantic state.
Once "Lonesome" was released in June, Universal Studio executives felt adding the talking sequences to the movie would add some pizzazz. The studio borrowed a Movietone News sound recording truck from Fox Pictures, owners of the audio system, on the pretext it was conducting sound tests when actually it was filming the three audible sequences. Fejos wasn't involved in those shoots, which didn't dampen critics' enthusiasm for the film, citing it as the highlight of his career. "Lonesome" was a great success for Universal, partly because of the revolutionary insertion of those "talking" segments.
So when the first 'talkies' starting dribbling out of Hollywood after October 1927's "The Jazz Singer" was released, the voices emitting from the screen must have been jarring to those not used to hearing their acting idols speak. One of the first feature films after "The Jazz Singer" to contain a bit of audible dialogue was June 1928's "Lonesome." The film was initially released as a silent, then in September edited with three sequences of actual talking. The first talking sequence is 30 minutes into the film when Mary (Barbara Kent) and Jim (Glenn Tryon), meeting for the first time at Coney Island's amusement park, are sitting on the beach saying how lucky they are meeting each other. As one modern-day critic describes it, "They suddenly seemed very childlike and embarrassing compared to their 'silent selves,' perhaps even silly and sappy. They seemed flawed and human once I heard their voices. It was an interesting way for me to think about silence versus sound in cinema, as this film allows one to essentially to see both types in the same film."
Film critic Andrew Saris claimed "Lonesome" was "a tender love story in its silent passages, but crude, clumsy and tediously tongue-tied in its talkie passages." There is one sequence in the dialogue portion that justifies the talkie addition. Jim gets hauled into the police station after a cop accused him of roughing him up after he tried break through the crowd to get to Mary, who had fainted. The police commander, debating whether to charge Jim, at first plays hardball. But when Jim pleads his case, you can hear the change of tone of the adjudicating official when he decides to let him go. An inter title could never convey such a friendlier timbre of the officer.
The appeal of "Lonesome" is that the Paul Fejos-directed movie addresses a universal problem focused on singles living a solitary life in the big city. Jim, a keypunch machine operator at a city factory, and Mary, a telephone operator, work long hours. Their opportunities to meet the opposite sex are few. Fejos, a former medic with the Austrian Army on the front lines of World War One front lines whose love for theater transformed into directing film, used a bag of special effects tricks early on to cleverly portray the pair, using double exposures to show their routine day. The two do link up at the park and have a magical time staring into each other's eyes. Fejos colors his celluloid with hand-tinted and stencil-color segments to illustrate their romantic state.
Once "Lonesome" was released in June, Universal Studio executives felt adding the talking sequences to the movie would add some pizzazz. The studio borrowed a Movietone News sound recording truck from Fox Pictures, owners of the audio system, on the pretext it was conducting sound tests when actually it was filming the three audible sequences. Fejos wasn't involved in those shoots, which didn't dampen critics' enthusiasm for the film, citing it as the highlight of his career. "Lonesome" was a great success for Universal, partly because of the revolutionary insertion of those "talking" segments.