25 Greatest Inventions of the 20th Century: Talkies

Movies have been around since the mid-1890s, but at the start they were “silent” — actors moved their lips but you couldn’t hear their words. Audiences read dialogue on cards that interrupted the action. In cinemas, a pianist or orchestra played the soundtrack. This simple formula made Hollywood a cultural force. Silent film actors became stars. Then came Vitaphone. This new technology let audiences hear films with synchronized sound. The sound was played separately from the moving pictures, on phonograph records. Vitaphone could synchronize words with the actors’ lips as they spoke. The film that brought Vitaphone to everyone’s attention was The Jazz Singer in 1927. It starred Al Jolson as a young Jewish man who left his family to chase his dream of becoming a musical star. He performed many of the movie’s songs in blackface — something you could never get away with these days. “Talkies” became wildly popular and spelled doom for the silent era — they were just more rewarding to watch. Silent film stars adapted to the new world of talkies or were left behind. Talkies also helped spread English to all corners of the world. In the silent era, dialogue cards were written in the local language, but there were no on-screen cards in talkies. The films were either dubbed or subtitled. You can see how that helped people learn English in countries like Sweden, which embraced subtitles, compared to countries like Spain and France, which prefer dubbing. (T) This article was provided by The Japan Times Alpha.