Stolen Sight

Dreams of “Film Europe” and the Rise of the Sound Film.

By Christian Buss

In the German promotional materials for the Warner Brothers film, “The Jazz Singer” one image dominates: a stylized caricature of Al Jolson, standing erect with his feet at the edges of a stage, his hands open, stretched in front, plaintively beckoning to the viewer. His head is tilted at a slight angle, a blackface-exaggerated smile gleefully invites the viewer to join in the production. Surrounding his figure are images of the supporting cast whose eyes and bodies are turned towards Al Jolson, waiting expectantly for the “jazz song” to begin. With this beckoning gesture German film viewers and production companies were ushered into the era of the sound film.

Or so traditional studies of the “birth” of sound develop their narratives, (try Douglas Thomas or Kristen Thompson for instance). The rise of the sound film is thus viewed as another step in the inevitable exertion of American cultural and industrial hegemony and the showing of the first sound film is thereby accompanied by a funereal ringing, a narrative of closure along the telos of Americanization. Countless studies have been devoted to an explanation of what has been categorically defined as the failure of the German film industry to adopt sound film. Some have focused on the industrial failures, explaining the break in terms of the great lawsuits around sound patents in Germany that led to the American “head start.” (Benninghaus 1999) Others have focused upon the German film industry’s unwillingness to build studios that could adequately accommodate sound recordings ( Josse 1984). Still others have viewed the failures along aesthetic lines, claiming that the resistance of German auteurs to the sound film along lines of its inadequacy as an art form doomed German film studios.

However, this story of the development of sound films does not match the development of this new technology in Germany. Not to assert the authority of statistical evidence to heavy-handedly, but production figures and retail numbers show that German-produced films dominated the box office and the cinema screens in Germany, not just in the early 1920’s but through the initial explosion of sound films in 1929,1930, and 1931. A couple of numbers to make this clear: in 1929, German films outnumbered foreign-made films 200-181, in 1931 germany produced 140 sound films, but imported only 64. The four of the top five films in 1929 were German, as they were in 1931 when sound dominated the theaters..

Year	Germany –Silent	Foreign-Silent	Germany -Sound	Foreign-Sound
1926	208	261
1927	261	238
1928	243	249
1929	193	155	7	26
1930	75	78	79	24
1931	9	49	140	64

(Source: Alexander Jason, Handbuch der FilmWirtschaft)

This paper investigates two issues. First, what was the status of the sound film as technology and product in Germany? Following from this question, I ask, what has allowed critics and researchers to view the coming of the sound film as the the death-knell of the german film industry so to speak? My apologies for withholding investigation of the more interesting, and more critically engaging, second question until after the stage has been set.. A quick diversion through the history of sound in Germany follows, beginning with the first presentation of a sound film in Germany, on September 17, 1922. On this day a film soundtrack built by Tri-Ergon of Berlin, the patent-holder for the first truly workable system for sound recording and reproduction presented its first film to curious audiences in Berlin. Not to bore with the details, but the Tri-Ergon process eliminated the distortion and synchronization problems that limited the sound reproduction attempts of Edison, Pomerade, and Stone. It achieved this by use of a flywheel with a gearing sprocket that allowed the advancing film to contain the sound information, whereas other systems tried to link a separate sound reel, or even phonograph with the advancing film. With adequate regulation of the speed of the film, sound was clear, relatively undistorted, and most importantly always synchronized with filmed content.

Upon its introduction, it was hailed as a revolution in film development, referred to by the largest-circulation film daily in Germany, the Film Kurier as “The living, speaking film--a German Invention.” In almost embarrassingly glowing praise the journalist present at the introduction claims “created on German ground, this invention appears suited to have revolutionary significance in areas of cinematography… the significance of which does not even need to be clarified in any more detail.” The initial public showing of the system was designed as a technical tour of its possibilities, showcasing, song, speech, Clarinet, Xylophone, Trumpet, Mandolin, Violin, Cello, flute, Organ music, pigs snorting, and dogs barking. The response was so positive and the industry response so great that a number of charlatans unassociated with the inventors attempted to sell the product to film studios. The inventor of the tri-ergon process even had to place a public announcement that “we have heard repeatedly that individuals in the film industry have been marketing the Tri-ergon process claiming that they have obtained such permissions from us. We herewith announce that until now no one is allowed to act as our reseller.” (22-09-23 Film Kurier)

This fawning over the potentials for sound film continued in German film industry press and newspapers unabated from 1922 until late 1928, with each development covered breathlessly in Film Kurier, Licht-Bild-Kunst and the daily Berlin press. I focus on the Berlin press as it was the production center for film in Germany during this period. Film Kurier even devoted a special weekly section to sound film starting in 1928, covering news from America, developments at Tri-Ergon while also reporting every presentation of the technology from local film halls in Berlin to showings at Conferences internationally. To be clear, despite this enthusiasm, the coverage was not, however, dominant in the press, questions of film costs and the debates on new entertainment taxes placed upon theater-owners dominated the headlines and editorial pages of Film Kurier and Licht-Bild-Kunst during this long period.

In April 1928, however, this undercurrent erupted onto the front pages. The talking film was to be the grand development of the coming film season, with Fox, Vitaphon, and Tri-Ergon all expected to release their talking films to the press. Why the excitement in 1928? First was news from America of the economic successes of the sound film, from Movie-tone newsreels to short films of Broadway productions and the like, whetting the appetite for theater owners and production companies. Second, a major conglomerate of competing sound-production companies merged to form Tobis Klangfilm , what was to be the single standard for sound recording, reproduction and presentation in Germany.

When the Jazz singer was released in September of 1928 it was not seen as a film signifying the birth of a new era in the Americanization of film, it was decidedly a non-event, an inevitable development that showed what was to be the potential for sound film in Germany. Reception of the film was to put it mildly, blasé, meriting a short review in Film Kurier, and an even shorter byline in the Berliner Illustrierte. One reviewer of the film gives the following commentary: “What remains is the cliché story of a Ghetto-Jew who would rather sing songs with double-meanings than synagogical song---from the Haller-Revue to the Orangeborgian street—this step interests only a limited sphere.” (Hans Feld September 18, 1928).

The fact that America was behind the film, and was already producing 125 sound films was of little consequence, meriting only a four line notice buried in announcements of new films in licht-bild-Kunst. Even news of the immense popularity of the Jazz singer in Paris, its purported 300,000 showings, and its ubiquity in the theaters was little commented upon. What was worth reporting was the role that Germany would have in the coming sound wave. Previews for the coming season asserted this claim boldly: “We see that the sound film and thereby the whole industry will show entirely new ways for the German cinema going forwards (Film Kurier, 16 June 1928). And further, “the moves that have been made to standardize the sound technology in Germany guarantee that international competition will not reach in and disturb the development of the sound film in Germany” (Film Kurier June 30, 1928). By September of 1928, Willi Forst’s experiences visiting a sound film were explained: “A “yes” with my heart pounding” for the power of this German invention (Forst September 01, 1928).

However, by July of 1929 this euphoria had changed into nothing short of paranoia. Wile asserting the inevitability of the sound films rise, claiming with Exclamation points “No silent films in five years!” and “Paris shows no more silent films!” (Film Kurier February 4, 1929) German film syndicates lobbied for import restrictions, delegations were sent to New York to try to find a way to minimize the effects of the sound film on the German industry. Even Theater owners were involved. They attempted to prevent the authorities from collecting the entertainment tax on German-produced sound films. Week after week, the headlines showed how the film industry rallied against the oncoming sound film:

“Today, the visitors to films who had been lost to us are looking to return to the cinema. These audiences will be completely lost to us if they see the filmic attempts of these so-called “sound films.” (Film Kurier, April 3, 1929).

“Demands of the international sound-film theater: no taxes on German sound films!” (Film Kurier April 6, 1929.)

German production companies began to advertise their films against the wave of sound films that were to come. Advertisements for the Alfred Abel film Narcotic “Silent or Sound? The decision was made at the Capitol theater for art and quality.”

This of course begs the question, what happened to turn the hopes of sound Film into xenophobic paranoia between the fall of 1928 and the Spring of 1929? A shift in the debate around sound film provides clues. With the potentials of sound film moving away from marginal experimentation into mainstream production, what were seen as the potentials of sound film changed dramatically. In 1922 it was believed that the sound film would return the German audience to German-produced films simply because of the language-barrier posed by sound film: “By the way, Internationality is not granted to the talking film. It is relegated to that language-area from which it is created” (07-12-1922). However, in the summer of 1928, bold claims were made that sound film was going to be the very mechanism by which Germany and Europe could achieve a new dominance in film. New technology, especially a technology already established as fundamentally German, was going to be the means by which Germany became the center of a pan-european conglomerate of film, the true international “Babelsberg”.

This idea of what has been called “Film Europe” was not new though. It had been in circulation for almost a decade, sometimes rising up when German film production figures and revenues exceeded expectations, sometimes used as a call to arms against successful foreign production companies. On the whole, as Thomas Saunders has argued Film Europe developed in Germany “under an optimistic environment…exchange between European countries represented a norm to be re-established and an opportunity to be exploited by an industry which had risen to become the European leader” (Thomas 1999, 161). This language of internationalization with Berlin as the center became the guiding principle argued by industry for the investment in sound technologies, and served as the drum upon which the Film Kurier and film monoliths like Tobis now beat. Articles were written positing the new work:

“Film Europa-no longer a theory, finally practical work is being done. For years there has been talk: In impassioned articles, in pretty-sounding conferences, and talks at the dinner table. And outside in the the real battleground of film, where the pretty phrase brings in no penny and no rent money, the Americans have, with untiring work won ground day by day. But suddenly Mr Le Brun in Paris, Mr. Brown in London, and Herr Braun in Berlin have discovered that they can calculate much better together.” (Film Kurier 7 August 1928).

At the center of this new, to-be-realized Film Europe was Berlin, called now the Metropolis of Sound film. The general secretary of Berlin claimed:

“Already today there are two cities that one can see as the central burning points of the international film-being : Hollywood and Berlin. I believe that the metropolis Berlin is also called upon to maintain its dominant place when-upon which I do not doubt- Sound has become even more of a guiding principle of the film image.” (Film Kurier 18 August 1928).

Tobis’ work standardizing the mechanisms of sound production were seen as the means by which Germany would have the leg up on America. Their lead would bring Europe together and allow Europe to dominate film like it never had before. These panglossian hopes were not limited to the German film industry, the editor of Kines the largest circulation Italian film magazine had the following to say:

“I am fully convinved that that at the next international film conference (to which American delegates were not invited), that the theater owners of all countries will finally find the international formula whose consequence will be the unification of all European film powers.” (Film Kurier August 8, 1928).

As such, success with sound in the German film industry was no longer dependent upon the creation of successful sound films, but instead the scope of success was dependent upon the realization of “Film Europe.” Only when France, Italy, Germany and England were working under a unified system of sound production ruled over by the Berlin-based syndicate Tobis would the German film industry have realized its goals for sound film.

This shift occurred in the summer and fall of 1928, and with this shift, the stakes were raised . And as in previous debates on Film Europe, America was the central competitor to this new Film world. Where Sound debate before 1929 was dominated by news from the German front: of the Tobis syndicate, of experiments in sound production by Ruttman, of the demonstrations of the technology in new cities. American experiments and productions merited only a byline. But with the shift to a Film Europe led by sound film, no article on sound films was mentioned without reference to America.

But success appeared inevitable to the German press. In an article on the 21^st of February 1929 on the presentation of commercial sound films in Germany, a competitive back-and forth surfaces, the winner of which is clear:

“Paramount showed the first sound film “Wings”, then Tobis showed the first German film, and now Warner Brothers is going to show their Vitaphone film…However, in the end we must expect that the German theater owners will install systems for the presentation of German sound films without taking into account the American apparatuses. This appears to indicate an even greater obstacle for the rise of American films in Germany, and perhaps also in neighboring countries.”

The article goes on to advise the American film companies that they should develop partnerships with the leading German sound syndicates, in order to “avoid heavy losses.” (Film Kurier 02-21-1929). The patronizing tone is unmistakable, and by July 1929, Film Kurier was advocating to the American film industry that they must come to an understanding with the German production companies to keep those employed by the German-American rental companies from having to suffer all too much.

However, concurrent with the successful rise of German sound films, an unwelcome development was acknowledged, the rising success of the American sound films and their apparati in Paris. What began as a mere side-bar on the popularity of the Jazz Singer in Paris soon developed into panic. America’s success in Paris was referred to on the 30th of August 1929 as “Americas Parisian Politics of Violence”. When the two German sound-film companies sued each other for the sole rights to distribute their technologies, binding them both for several months in a bitter battle of attrition, the potential slipped further from the German film industry’s grasp. In the fall on 1928, it became clear that Germany was not going to be at the very center of sound-film in Europe. Framed as it was in the already loaded debate of pan-Europeanization, when Rene Clair wrote in late 1929 that in London: “Today there is no individual, no company, no financial coalition capable of stopping the triumphant march of the talking film” it was clear that this was coming not from German-produced films, this inevitability signaled but the fall of the potential for a German-centered Film Europe. And the jazz singer finally made headlines: but it was the jazz singer in Paris, not the jazz singer in Berlin that was on the front pages.

On the left edge of the screen, in an ancient, ornately carved rocking chair sits an old woman, arms at her sides, a short smile on her face, her eyes turned to the right, looking up at her smiling son. The now adult son, wearing a dapper suit, sits at the family piano, banging away at the keys with a smirk on his face, singing “Never saw the sun shining so bright, never saw the day going so right.” Unbeknownst to the mother and her son, at the rear center of the screen, a door has opened, and a man, the father, wearing Cantor’s robes, holding his scriptures, is entering the home. The son smilingly plays on as the camera cuts to a close-up of the father, his mouth opening in shock before spitting out the only words he is to say in this film: “Stop.” With this “stop”, the only un-sung dialogue of The Jazz Singer is cut off, the film returns to the familiar intertitles and background song.

More than anything else, the jazz singer is a story about the presence of sound in two houses: the synagogue and the theater. Jakie Rabinowitz is caught between these two worlds, the synagogue as site of tradition, expectation, and the past, and the theater, the site of progress, excitement and life. Should Jakie retain family traditions and sing only for the synagogue, sing only for his God, or should he follow “his heart” as the intertitles so often remind us, and become a Jazz Singer? While Hans Feld declared that “this interests only a limited sphere”, the Jazz singer became one of the most successful American films of 1928 in Paris, clearly interesting more than just a select few. While this film’s injection into debates on sound is no great leap, given its status as one of the first sound films presented in large numbers to European audiences, I argue that there is more at stake than mere excitement over sound in a European theater. Rather, this film acts as a calling out to European theater-goers and owners, that the American sound film has a vital role in the future of cinema and is not, as the Germans emphasized in their dreams of “Film Europe” to be viewed as a threat to the vitality of the film industry.

While it would be facile to view this film simply as a call towards sound film, stating merely that sound belongs in the theaters, the film operates on a more nuanced level. As shown above, sound film was not viewed as a merely possible technological development in the United States and in Europe in 1928 and 1929, it was seen as an inevitable development. As such, the film is not a story of “does sound belong” but rather one of “where does sound belong?” This placing of sound is not devoid of political implications, it is framed within the film as a question of sound belonging in the site of tradition, in this case the synagogue, or does sound belong with progress and development with the jazz song. this duality of Religious tradition versus the Jazz song is one that is framed not only aesthetically but also nationalistically. Jazz, all the rage in Europe during the late 1920’s was an art form deeply coded as the American art form, an art form that America could call its own.

Heinrichs, Jurgen Wilhelm Walter (1998). "Blackness in Weimar: 1920s German art practice and Anerican jazz and dance. Dissertation Abstracts Online, vol. 59/04-A, p.985.

Quote here

Not only was it the first truly American art form, it was an art form that symbolized all America: newness, movement, change etc.

Quote Brecth from Jungle of the Cities.

Quote Gokturk

Similarly, Europe had been coded as the site of tradition and history, of retrograde reactionary movements, and as such, was inscribed in the Jazz singer.

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At first the film stages the tension between these two symbolized groups in terms of a bipolar opposition, you must choose one, or the other, and the panicked “Stop” of the father at the moment of the son’s return home marks the extreme divisiveness of the split between these two worlds. In their subsequent argument the intertitles suggest the impossibility of bridging these two worlds:

Father: “You dare to sing your jazz songs in my house.”
Son: “Tradition is all right, but this is a new day! You taught
me that music is the voice of God! It is as honorable to sing in
the theater as in the synagogue””

However, in its climax, the film brings into question the very divisiveness of this break. The mother’s support for her son while also maintaining her traditions serves as the ultimate manifestation of this reconciliation, and when she goes to the theater to try to convince him that he must return home and not sing on Broadway, she instead comes to the realization that “he’s not my boy, he belongs to the world now.” As such, reconciliation for her is possible without forcing a choice between her son and tradition, but recognizing that there remains the possibility that both can be lived. When the son does finally return home, he does so not to give up his stage career but rather simply to visit his father. As the nurse explains to him, he must be silent during this visit, and it is in this established silence that the reconciliation between father and son occurs. for the relationship between father and son, read Europe and America, there is the possibility for mutual understanding, sound belongs in both the Synagogue (Europe) and the Jazz Club (America). Ultimately Jake as the symbol of an American entertainment form is able to maintain these European traditions while also progressing forward in this American art form, the sound film. The Jazz Singer then functions not as a call to sound, but rather a call to put down the divisive debate on Film Europe vs. Film America. Its ultimately overwhelming success in Paris and London symbolizes the very success of the ideology called for in the film, an ideology deeply at odds with the dreams and hopes of the German film industry.

With this success then, the fact that in 1930 75% of all sound films shown in Germany were produced by German production companies was irrelevant. What mattered was the knowledge that “Film Europe” was not to be. This was the failure of sound film in Germany and it is this language of failure that has slipped through in the critical research and has allowed researchers to claim that Germany failed to take advantage of the potentials of sound film. But this was merely a failure of heightened expectations and not that of an industry caught off guard.