-from
the movie ‘Singing in the Rain(1952)’
Lee,
Jungwon
Pusan
National University
Dept.
of Global Studies
We
love watching movies, especially those from Hollywood. Every year, Hollywood
brings us pleasure by making movies of various topics like science fiction,
romance, horror, etc. However, Hollywood was not successful from the very
start. It has gained fame and success through many trials and errors, and now,
it is regarded as one of the biggest and grandest movie making industries in
the world.
In
the early 1900s, film makers began moving to Los Angeles to start their
business. They moved there because they wanted to get away from the strict
rules imposed by Thomas Edison’s motion picture patent
company in New Jersey. Also, the nice weather of Hollywood was an ideal place
to make various films.
In
the movie ‘Singing in the Rain’,
we can see a minute depiction of Hollywood‘s
turbulence in the late 1920s. This era was called ‘the
silent film era’, due to the lack of recording technology. In
the film, Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont were the best leading actor and actress
of that time. However, the audience couldn’t
hear their voices but only look at their lines as subtitles after each scene.
In addition, the orchestra was below the stage and played instruments for the
film’s background music. There were people who were
critical about silent films, saying, “Movies
are entertaining enough for the masses but the personalities on the screen just
don’t impress me. I mean they don’t
talk or act; they just make a lot of dumb show.”[1]
Still, the majority of the audience always took this “dumb
show” for granted whenever they watched films in
theaters. But one day, a revolution took place.
The
head of Don’s studio, R. F. Simpson, showed a short
demonstration of a ‘vitaphone’
to introduce ‘talking pictures.’
People were astonished to see that the voices were actually coming right out of
the actors and actress’ mouths. People instantly
assumed that there must be someone talking behind the movie screen. This was a
huge turning point for everyone working in film industries. So, following suit,
Monumental Pictures started to make a new film ‘Dueling
Cavalier’ with actually talking actors and actresses,
but it became a disaster.
This story will be continued in the next webzine of mine. I will talk about
what were the disasters when people attempted to make talking pictures, and how
those disasters were fixed and developed.
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