When the Stars Began to Speak

“Did you ever hear a dream talking?”  (line from an old song)

What was lost and what gained, crossing the great techno-divide between movie pantomime sometimes as stylized as ballet, and an initially stagey yackety yak? Film had been visual, fluid and rhythmic, with live music helping to transport audiences into The Bigger Than Life Beyond. The big deadweight soundproof box, containing both camera and asphyxiating operator, then fell on this dancing medium… flooring it. What would survive? What replace? And what become of the beloved genii of body language, the clowns, drooping tragediennes, aging sweethearts? And – even more crucially – of highly developed camerawork and editing. The Depression was on, Prohibition a corruptive disaster, and the movie temples needed to quickly distract their idolator congregations from seeking economic/political solutions to their predicaments. Raunchy was still possible; the “Code” had yet to institute twin beds throughout moviedom; Mae West became box office queen, and everyone bandied her lines. Distinctive talkers were in: Cagney, Robinson, Boop, Popeye. Tapdancers were in! The Marx Brothers stormed in with their deliciously clutzy first feature, The Cocoanuts. Black shoestringer Oscar Micheaux ingeniously stuck sound onto his unintentionally surreal Ten Minutes To Live. Talk, yes, but how? (I address those in particular who are interested in WORDS.) The movies weren’t life, or stage-theater, or novel. (The Frankenstein monster, opening his mouth to speak, says, “Smoke… good. Friend… good.”) The Muse of Cinema, caught between styles, exerts a special charm, with so much actuality showing through. Less avant-garde than off-guard, the movies were never more “dated” (transparent, that is, to the time and circumstance of their making), more vulnerable or touching.

by Ken Jacobs