The early Talkies (1930 – 1935)
The very first motion picture considered a talkie is the Al Jolson musical the Jaz Singer from 1927. The film is in the book for the milestone that it was. The film itself however is actually a silent movie with short spurts of audio conversations and musical numbers. As a movie it is uninspiring and its showcase of a white performer painting his face black in order to portray a black person who was not allowed to perform to whites in those dark times is repugnant.
The real talking picture era started at the beginning of the next decade and these early films were to a large extent simplistic and static. Filmmakers in the day only had theatre plays to compare and as such their films were types of filmed plays to a large extent. There were however visionaries who understood the potential of sound and vision and their imagination allowed the beginning of the development of many genres. Horror, Gangster, War and sound comedy.
I will write a separate post for each of these categories and one Post on my favorite film from this period, (“All quiet on the Western Front”). On the first Post I will begin with the early Horror.
The Horror Classics
Once filmmakers understood the potential of sound, they learned to use it for mood and atmosphere. There is no film genre that makes use of mood and atmosphere more than Horror. It is no surprise then that during this period the classic Horror Monsters were created. Dracula (1930), Frankenstein (1931), Freaks (1932), King Kong (1933), The Black Cat (1934) and the more internal and subliminal horror that came from Europe during the pre-WW2 dark times (M (1931) & Vampyr (1932).
The classic Horror that came to light during these times gave us images that have been used and are part of our pop culture until this very day. Frankenstein combined the world of imaginary imagery with makeup and costume to create the ultimate human monster. Square headed giant and simple minded it used our fears of those who are different from us to great effect. Sound and image were put together to show us the creation scene with its lightening and power. Light and sound together to chill and enthrall. The tone of the voice of the Dr. (creator) and the crazy assistant mad man originally thought of in the previous decades. “Nosferatu”. The sequel came in 1935 and improved on the original with state of the art (at the time) effects and improved make up and lighting. This was “The bride of Frankenstein” Who can forget the Monster’s anguish call for “Friend” and his pitiful pain when his bride rejects him. Because he is not beautiful and is different. This movie has a look of a painting that you want to hang on your wall. It is beautiful more than shocking.
Dracula (1930) took Nosferatu from the deep horror that it truly was to a theatrical place that gave the vampire its true Hollywood identity. This is now the talkies, so we are not only told that the count is from Transylvania but we hear his deep slow foreign accent. The movie works on the American distrust of the European, especially after WW1 and just before WW2. They will suck our blood and they want to kill us. The film itself is pretty small and without a lot of large set pieces but it is the portrayal of Bela Lugosi with his sleazy charm and foreign accent that stays with the viewer and is used many years later in countless films.
Freaks (1932) is one of the most shocking and scary films ever made. Instead of using professional actors and special effects (probably since the effects in 1931 were not capable of creating the images required), the film uses real handicapped and deformed people. Legless and handless, dwarfs and all sorts of deformed bodies are our main protagonists in the film. The film starts with taking our sympathies with these different people. It shows the normal people as being bad and evil. However in the end it takes a twisted turn when our heroes thirst for vengeance. They are now not people. They become monsters. Seeing them crawl and slither together in the middle of the night in a murderous spree of violence is spine tingling even today. This move has aged well. Movie makers with their monsters killing people in the middle of the night have been trying to match this intensity ever since.
Early filmmakers wanted to make movies of fantasy and amazement and the beginning of sound gave them an additional tool. Animation started to become popular when put to music and sound and the producers of “King Kong”, searched for a way to make a giant Ape and Dinosaurs come to life. They used the animation technique of stop start filming and used cut up plaster models instead of drawn up pictures. The effect was so spectacular that this method was still being used in fantasy pictures up until the early 70s. The film itself is a glorious adventure rather than monster movie and is a beautiful rendition of the classic “Beauty and the Beast”. It had audiences watching in amazement and with all the great special effects of modern movies, it can still be seen with awe today.
The black cat is a trend setter film that would spawn what would be known as “the Poe Movie” It is based on an Edgar Allen Poe story and has a lonely mansion stuck in the middle of nowhere, isolated and inhabited by a crazed madman dabbling in the supernatural. Thousands of films have since used this premise to make the Mood Horror or the supernatural horror that became popular for example during the Corman B movie period of the 60s.
Horror from Europe also used the early sound together with creepy Black and White imagery to shock us and make us think. Fritz Lang was living in a very dangerous and scary world in 1931 when he created “M” in Germany. “M” does not have a deformed Monster as its base or supernatural designs as its driving force. It is about a sick ugly and disgusting child killer. A human monster who can’t help doing what he does and tries to raise our sympathy for him or our ability to repel gang justice. Vigilante justice is used here to stop the horror of the child killer, but it is done in such a way as to have us question its legitimacy. Since today we know that Nazi Germany was controlling Germany at the time it is easy to compare the gang justice shown here as the official justice being done in Germany at the time. We also ask ourselves, if the child killer can’t help himself, do we just try to change him, imprison him or kill him? Did society make him? When watching this film I could not help thinking of Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”. Surely Kubrick was inspired by this film. Lang would after this movie run away from the Nazis and go on to make many fine films in Hollywood, but this is his very best sound movie. It is a film that lingers in your mind hours and days after having seen it.
Another Foreign Horror movie that came during the very early talkies was another vampire movie titled “Vampyr” The story of a vampire as a sex predator and a charming monster has a sort of middle ground to the base horror of Nosfaratu and the idolized horror of Dracula. The move is strong on Mood and its French Director Dreyer was one of the geniuses of the silent period. This film has images that stay in one’s mind for a long time. For instance we see a supposed dead person taken to his burial through the eyes of the dead person himself. The undead comes alive as never before.
It did not take long for our early filmmakers to understand the potential of sound and vision and in no other Genre is this made as obvious as in Horror.
1001 Movies before you die 