to adjust to the recording equipment, which
restricted their movements as well. Eventually,
technicians were able to free the camera for all
kinds of movement and to find ways of recording
sound that allowed the equipment and actors alike
more mobility.
As monumental as the conversion to sound
was—in economic, technological, stylistic, and
human terms—Hollywood found humor in it, mak-
ing it the subject of one of the most enjoyable of all
movie musicals: Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s
Singin’ in the Rain(1952), which vividly and satiri-
cally portrays the technical difficulties of using the
voice of one actor to replace the voice of another
who hasn’t been trained to speak, trying to move a
camera weighted down with soundproof housing,
and forcing actors to speak into microphones con-
cealed in flowerpots. As film scholar Donald Crafton
writes, “Many of the clichés of the early sound cin-
ema (including those in Singin’ in the Rain) apply to
films made during this period: long static takes,
badly written dialogue, voices not quite in control,
poor-quality recording, and a speaking style with
slow cadence and emphasis on ‘enunciated’ tones,
which the microphone was supposed to favor.”^9
How did the “talkies” influence actors and act-
ing? Although sound enabled screen actors to use
all their powers of human expression, it also created
a need not only for screenplays with dialogue but
also for dialogue coaches to help the actors “find”
their voices and other coaches to help them master
foreign accents. The more actors and the more
speaking that a film included, the more complex
the narrative could become. Directors had to make
changes too. Before sound, a director could call out
instructions to the actors during filming; once the
microphone could pick up every word uttered on
the set, directors were forced to rehearse more
extensively with their actors, thus adopting a tech-
nique from the stage to deal with screen technology.
Though many actors and directors could not make
the transition from silent to sound films, others
emerged from silent films ready to see the addition
of sound less as an obstacle than as the means to a
more complete screen verisimilitude.
An innovative production from this period is
Rouben Mamoulian’s Applause (1929; sound-
recording technician: Ernest Zatorsky). After sev-
eral years of directing theater productions in
London and New York, Mamoulian made his
screen-directing debut with Applause, which is
photographed in a style that mixes naturalism with
expressionism. From the opening scene, a montage
of activity that plunges us into the lively world of
burlesque, the film reveals Mamoulian’s mastery of
camera movement. But when the camera does not
move, as in the many two-shots full of dialogue, we
can almost feel the limited-range microphone boom
hovering over the actors, one step beyond the use
of flowerpots. In contrast to the vibrant shots with
the moving camera, these static shots are lifeless
and made even more confusing by the loud expres-
sionist sounds that overwhelm ordinary as well as
intimate conversations.
Obviously, such limitations have an impact on
how we perceive the acting, which is Applause’s
weak point throughout. In all likelihood because
Mamoulian knew that symphonies of city sounds
and noises would be the main impression of many
scenes, the actors have little to say or do. However,
the movie remains interesting because of a new
technique in sound recording that Mamoulian
introduced and that soon became common prac-
tice. Earlier, all sound in a particular shot had been
recorded and manipulated on a single sound track.
Mamoulian persuaded the sound technicians to
record overlapping dialogue in a single shot using
two separate microphones and then to mix them
together on the sound track. When April Darling
(Joan Peers), her head on a pillow, whispers a
prayer while her mother, Kitty (Helen Morgan), sits
next to her and sings a lullaby, the actors almost
seem to be singing a duet—naturally, intimately,
and convincingly.^10
The conversion to sound, a pivotal moment in film
history that simultaneously ruined many acting298 CHAPTER 7ACTING
(^9) Donald Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to
Sound, 1926–1931(New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 14.
(^10) In his next films, Mamoulian made other innovations in
sound, including the sound flashback in City Streets(1931) and
the lavish use of contrapuntal sound in the opening of Love Me
Tonight (1932).