Brief Sound History in Film

Before going into my analysis, a brief exploration through the timeline of audio within the film medium should be addressed. Japanese filmmakers and Hollywood took their own pace with adopting sound into their moving pictures, which can further aid our understanding of each country’s film culture respectively.

Looking at the timeline (click here!), we can see that film and sound technologies were introduced to both countries around the same time. Albeit, Japan received foreign films with sound after they were produced in their respective countries, but the technology was still known and accessible beforehand.

American filmmakers added sound in cinema with great strides, but they were not without fear of the unknown of the technology. Henry Carr, Hollywood Journalist and Screenwriter stated in 1926 that “...the present style of filmmaking will never become a talkative. Instead of making the movies more real, it makes them less real."

"The question is not, what are we going to do with it; but what is it going to do to us?" 10

Having sound in film would go on to evolve the style of filmmaking from that time forward through today. This is likely because of how American audiences eagerly accepted the synchronized sound with moving picture. The 1926 Warner Brothers sound-on-disc film, Don Juan, made over a million in the box office overall, introducing audiences to a fuller sound and picture experience. The more well-known film, The Jazz Singer in the following year continued the success of this new kind of film production.

Meanwhile in Japan, filmmakers were split into two groups. One embraced sound within their pictures, while others continued with their traditional style of silent films accompanied by narrators and/or live musical groups.

To go into the amazing history of theatrical and musical performance of Japan would be a paper in itself, yet it is worth noting (and will be touched further upon later) that Japanese cinema has elements of early theatre like Kabuki. As silent films, both foreign and domestic, were shown in Japan, narrators called benshi were famous for explaining and/or narrating the film. These narrators came from the theatrical world into the film business for the audiences’ benefit and entertainment.

According to Freda Freiberg, in 1930’s Japan four types of film coexisted. 11

Silent films with live benshi narration and musical performance accompaniment
Silent films with recorded music and sound effects played alongside, with written title cards for dialogue
Sound films with post-synchronized music, sound effects, and narration
Full “talkie” films, with actors speaking synced dialogue, along with music and sounds within the film produced

Some directors were not very keen to adapt to the changing style of film. Directors like Yasujiro Ozu, who was regarded as “the most Japanese of all filmmakers”, did not embrace sound elements in film until the late 1930’s. 26 Sound films were not fully recognized in Japan by filmmakers and audiences alike until 1937- when benshi left the cinema. 4 At this time, up-and-coming directors such as Akira Kurosawa utilized sound elements to heighten their films’ visual and emotional impact. Kurosawa admitted that:

“The most exciting moment is the moment when I add the sound. At this moment, I tremble”.23

With Kurosawa and other famous directors’ use of sound, from the 40’s on, sound became commonplace in Japanese film alongside Hollywood.

While each country had (and continues to have) differing viewpoints and uses of sound within cinema culture, both eventually used audio and visual elements fully in film production.