British Silent Cinema and the Transition to Sound

In recent years the advent of digital, CGI and 3D technologies have been heralded as revolutionising our experience of cinema, but these are nothing compared to the impact of new sound technologies in the late 1920s when silent cinema as an art form was subjugated to the spoken and sung word. In Britain the films produced in this transitional period, with the exception of Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929), produced in both silent and sound versions, have been largely overlooked. Early British sound films have suffered from critical denigration due to their supposedly clumsy attempts to deal with the spoken word. However, their reappraisal is now long overdue, particularly in the wider contexts proposed by this study which will look comprehensively, for the first time, at the ways in which British cinema responded to the coming of sound across all aspects of production, exhibition, distribution and reception - from the frenzied international competition to patent and install new sound equipment in studios and cinemas, to the impact on film stars and the thousands of cinema musicians who played to silent films, to the kinds of films that were produced and the critical and popular responses to them.

The economic burden of equipping studios and cinemas for sound required massive domestic and foreign investment and coincided with global recession, the Wall Street Crash and the need for fundamental changes to financial investment in cinema. This project will examine British cinema's response to these conditions alongside the various positive and negative drivers for and against sound cinema; from the increasing influence of popular radio and audiences' desire to hear the sung and spoken word and the various equipment manufacturers competing to dominate global markets, to victims such as the musicians and composers who relied on the cinema for their livelihood, the silent stars whose voices did not respond to the microphone, and the scenarists who wrote intertitles for silent films.

In order to carefully periodise this transition, the study will be divided into three key periods corresponding to the project's workplan:

1927-1928 - the period immediately before the arrival of The Jazz Singer in the UK
1929-1930 - the transition between silent and sound when films were made in both formats and the industry experimented with different technologies and methods
1931-1933 - the early sound period when silent cinema technologies and personnel were adapting to the new medium

Using this historical framework, the research will investigate and draw together, the following three areas:

1. The British cinema industry and infrastructure in terms of producers, studios and production companies and the changes caused by new sound technologies including the development of studio recording and cinema exhibition technologies, the rush to patent new systems and those who succeeded or failed. The overall effects on businesses and industrial organisations associated with cinema; the winners and losers including impacts on:
i. personnel with the rapid need for new skills and the loss of those associated with silent cinema and related changes in the organisation of labour.
ii. audiences, cinema-going and the response of press and critics.
iii. the source material for new sound cinema.
iv. international relations in the spheres of co-production and distribution

2. a critical reappraisal of the films themselves in the light of the above including how film techniques and aesthetics changed and developed over these three periods.

3. historical evidence explaining how 'the talkies' changed British cinema forever and the significance of their legacy.

This study will build upon and extend impacts achieved by the work of the PI in organising the British Silent Film Festival since 1998, and her experience in bringing new research on the first 30 years of British cinema history to wider academic, media and public attention. Participants and audiences range from international academics and public figures to family audiences and children. The Festival has an international profile and an associated multi-disciplinary research community including public academics, music and cinema historians such as Mark Kermode, Neil Brand and Matthew Sweet and a history of engaging with the media including BBC TV and radio, regional and national press; all of which will be approached to maximise the profile and impact of this project. In 2011 the Festival created a precedent for this project in presenting 'The Great British Talking Picture Show' at the Barbican, (Brown and Murphy, 2011) which sparked significant public interest in this period of cinema history. Two four-day public conferences and screenings (2015 and 2017) and a two-day colloquium (2016) will use a similar format in presenting rare films, new research and discoveries and making them accessible to a wide audience spectrum.

Through knowledge-exchange and partnership working, this project will benefit:

i. Independent cinemas, including those involved directly in delivering this project - Phoenix Square, MacRobert Cinema, The Cinema Museum and BFI Southbank - and those involved in hosting aspects of the project's findings such as screening educational materials and packages. 35 independent cinemas across the UK will be targeted using the BFI Film Hubs to disseminate information about the project.
ii. Voluntary sector organisations such as The Cinema Museum will benefit from research into its archive and collections which will be disseminated through events staged there as part of the project including screenings and presentations.
iii. Voluntary sector collections and datasets including BECTU History Project, the CTA and CEA rely on researcher-led contributions and these will benefit from having their datasets referenced, catalogued and promoted.
iv. Teachers of cinema studies in schools will have access to teaching materials produced and disseminated from this project in collaboration with Film Nation and Film Club.
v. independent and private archives benefit from their having their collections and materials promoted.
vi.The BFI National and Scottish Screen Archives will benefit from qualitative and quantitative research into their collections and subsequent cataloguing and disseminating of their films.
v. Future cinema and social historians will inherit more coherent and accessible datasets.
vi. Local cinema historians and study groups will benefit from the value attached to their work from this project.

Members of the project's research team have experience in presenting cinema history research to libraries, special interest groups, adult and University of the Third Age learners, and as part of local cinema education and screening programmes. The project will promote its findings among such groups, offering bespoke talks and presentations.

This study will also re-appraise and re-evaluate the significant output of early British sound films, largely held by the BFI, which have had only rare public screenings, and bring them back to public and critical attention, not only in terms of their qualities as films, but for their significance in working with the new sound technologies and what they reveal about the choices made and the avenues explored by the British industry during this period. A direct beneficiary of this will be the international community of interested public and film historians for whom access to this material is limited, and the 250 or so films in the BFI National Collection covering this period which merit a higher profile and fuller integration into future studies of British cinema.