The World Gets an Earful

...Comes Signor Pirandello with the pronouncement that the foreign markets of the motion picture are doomed by dialogue...

...So much for the facts...

...The Movietone Follies ran for more than thirteen weeks in Stockholm...

...The Jazz Singer had the Scots going to see it twice in Edinburgh and Glasgow, which no one will deny is some kind of world's record...

...All other countries rank far behind the English and the Spanish from a commercially cinematic standpoint...

...The American talkies have, so far, fared extremely well in England and Australasia, and the value of this achievement is best gauged by the knowledge that these territories account for by far the greater proportion of the gross foreign revenue and an even higher amount of the net due to low operating costs...

...If any human being is successful in making such a picture, how many other human beings will go to see and hear it and, what is much more to the point, pay for the privilege...

...There are many more companies in the field, and to add to the confusion there are systems invented and perfected in Germany, France, England and other countries which are, for the time being at least, largely because they are cheap, real commercial rivals of the American products...

...From their operations in England and Australasia, American motion-picture companies are unquestionably obtaining much more revenue than they ever received before, and are keeping that business fully in proportion to the advances in the United States and Canada which recent financial reports show to be truly phenomenal...

...It seemed for a time that the American producers, in their craze for sound, were going to ignore entirely this dual aspect of the market overseas...

...Consequently the whole foreign market, for an indeterminate period, will be neither fish nor fowl...

...Other companies are content merely to insert explanatory written titles from time to time in the English prints, or to provide the foreign audiences with synopses of the picture similar to opera librettos...

...Makeshift expedients...

...Perhaps for that reason such pictures are not a true test, and while American producers derive some measure of satisfaction from their success they anticipate plenty of headaches before dialogue pictures become anything like as popular abroad-if they ever do...

...They have multiplied like mosquitoes and, simile modo, it seems impossible to get beyond the sphere of their influence...

...In fact Mr...

...Signor, the world begins only when our train passes the city limits of New York, Paris, London, Berlin and the other capitals of the world...

...It now seems that this portentous message to the press really meant nothing so cataclysmic as the plain words indicated...

...Possibly 40 percent of the total gross yearly business of the larger companies is derived from other countries...

...It has recently been explained that the actual intent was that, instead of silent production being the primary work of the studios, sound would reign as king...

...In some countries exhibitors simply have not the money to pay for the present expensive sound installations (depending upon size, prices range from $2,500 to $25,000...

...We can talk back...

...Not more than 60 percent of these would be worth wiring and, conservatively, 10 to 15 percent are already wired or contracted...

...But the results have been amazing...

...Signor Pirandello and his confreres in the critical realm look at the subject only through the narrow lens of the ultra-sophisticated cosmopolite...

...Theatres must be properly equipped...

...The matter has even been brought up in the august halls of Parliament, but so far the momentous resolutions have been allowed to slumber peacefully on the table...

...It will be noted that these are all revues, and this type enjoys a special favor because music is the universal language, understood as readily in the jungles of the Congo as in the salons of Paris...

...They still have a quaint preference for the language they can use best, to wit, their own...

...They think they are dissecting an organism while in reality they are but poking at a molecule...

...This permits the best and largest of the foreign theatres to play sound pictures, but many thousands remain in a less fortunate position...

...Of course we are not entirely defenseless...

...and, most withering of all, "Why are you here...

...OVER three years ago the amazing talkies, Topsy-like, sprang full-grown from the Hollywood tree making strange hopeful noises...

...plenty of them...

...The installing of sound-reproducing apparatus abroad is careening along at a geometrically progressive pace...

...The paper also reviews the international position of the talkie, and shows what kind of influence it is bringing to the United States...

...They are going after it tooth and nail...

...It is, of course, needless to add that Mr...

...Are you serious or a toy...

...One of the largest American electrical companies at the date of this writing had completed installations or had orders on its books aggregating more than seven hundred in over thirty countries...

...On the other side, the remaining nations of the world fling forth their challenge in every tongue bequeathed by the sons of Adam...

...For example, II Duce Mussolini has issued a decree that no sound pictures employing anything but Italian, either in dialogue or song, may be shown in Italy...

...The market for American motion pictures abroad is tremendously important...

...It goes without saying that the profits from sound pictures depend upon the mechanical facilities for exhibiting them...

...But all those yearning millions know what entertains them, just as they know that they must eat and sleep...

...The Jazz Singer is in its eleventh month on the boulevards of Paris...

...There will be more cases aiming toward the same end...

...Thanks to the existence of England and Australasia, and the enormous popularity of song-and-dance pictures in non-English-speaking countries, the revenues of the American companies from the foreign market are considerably greater than they ever were before, even with only a small percentage of the theatres of the world wired for sound...

...He states further that sound pictures are unreal and will never displace the stage...

...One American company has announced that it will provide prologues and interpolatory titles in the language of each country in which its pictures are shown...

...At this early stage of the game, our producers have not suffered from problems arising abroad out of the transition from silence to sound...

...These will be integral parts of the prints, and a staff of masters of ceremonies is already at work...

...It sounds simple when you say it quick, but actually it would be extremely difficult, almost prohibitively costly and not at all feasible from a business standpoint...

...George Canty, American trade commissioner, who has made a special study of motion-picture conditions and markets abroad says that only Spanish, French and German would be at all practical as mediums for dialogue pictures...

...Ahern speaks for himself and not for The Commonweal.-The Editors...

...Twice he is right and twice does he beg the question, for not even a nitwit would claim more than a semblance of reality for them, and certainly producers are too busy making them in response to popular demand to waste valuable moments in dire and unprofitable plotting against the drama...

...This territory includes Spain, the Philippines, Cuba, Mexico, all of Central America, the Argentine, Chile and all of South America except Brazil, and even there Spanish would be far preferable to any other language if the coffee planters could not have their Portuguese...

...American producers are pretty shrewd...

...Certainly...

...and if anyone doubts that it is an achievement for any strictly American product to get such a rise out of the jolly old British public, then he has a lot to learn about the psychology of our cousins in the tight little isle...

...It must have sound pictures yet it cannot get along without silent ones...

...To him the future of the sound picture abroad lies in the interpretation of great music...

...That is our inalienable right and custom enabling us with a sneer in our hearts to fling at this newest scourge such devastating queries as, "How long do you think you'll last...

...They may be substitutes for reality, but nine-tenths of the people of this world live their whole lives in dreams whose fires are fed only by substitutes...

...Several months ago the heads of some of the largest companies announced that in future they would make only sound pictures...

...The most that its most enthusiastic partizans ever could claim for the talking picture is that it is a very acceptable substitute for the spoken drama of the?'stage, a substitute not bound by the limitations which the stage imposes on the unities of time and place and action...

...Future pictures would be made first in dialogue form and, if feasible and necessary, silent versions of them would follow...

...American producers are going to hear a lot from them yet, and the hearing won't do their exchequers any good...

...Ahem writes as a man who knows the motion-picture industry and likes it...

...If you will just keep riding for days at a time, and at an expense that puts such trips far beyond the reach of most men, you will finally begin to meet people who probably never will be able to see a show on Broadway or the boulevards or in Piccadilly, but who have read about Will Rogers or John McCormack or Al Jolson or Raquel Meller or Gertrude Lawrence and all the other inspired ones who make the world so nice...

...It provided an opportunity to start from scratch in a new race with the envied Americans who had already won the silent-picture contest by a mile...

...One is England, Australia and New Zealand, where our own language is spoken...

...Foreign producers are exultant over the dialogue situation...

...Obviously the simplest solution would be to make talkies in the respective vernaculars...

...But who can dodge the lances of the prophets...

...In addition to these huge advantages of similarity of language and size of yearly business, these countries also have an overwhelming lead over the rest of the field in the matter of installing sound apparatus in theatres...

...They present no real dialect complications, though, to be sure, an organization has been formed in London to protect the Oxonian purity of British speech from threatened defilements by "Americanese," as exemplified in our talking pictures...

...The Argentines, the Portuguese, the Armenians and the Greeks et al, are extremely odd that way...

...It is the income that pays the dividends, but for the purpose of analyzing the talking-picture situation, it must be divided into two very distinct parts...

...The single possible exception is Spanish...

...They are making sound pictures and they are making silent pictures, and they will make foreign-language pictures just as soon as overwhelming demand and competition from foreign producers force them to follow suit...

...Under such a verbal barrage the talkies have stood their ground remarkably well as long as the questions referred only to domestic problems, but when the cross-examination turned, as is the post-war habit, to foreign affairs, Old General Public felt that he had the talkies just a little bit groggy...

...This planet of ours, however, contains a suprising number of other cinema-loving nations, and it should not be considered as tweaking the tail of the British lion or pulling out the tail-feathers of the American eagle to say that these others do not understand and are not particularly interested in learning the English language...

...Sound has been more of a blessing to Hollywood than a threat...

...The Broadway Melody was the sensation of Buenos Aires...

...and of these three, Spanish is the only one that is universal enough to be of any immediate import...

...Although they may have seemed for a while to be neglecting it, they realize too keenly its tremendous importance ever to let the foreign market get away from them...

...What to do with these recalcitrants...

...He asks: "How will American picture markets overseas be affected by the coming of sound...

...It seems quite possible that some dialogue pictures will soon be made in Spanish, but in the interim various subterfuges must be resorted to so that English dialogue may be at least partially understandable to alien minds...

...Excluding the United States and Canada, there are throughout the world some 25,000 motion-picture theatres...

...In others, because of their racial characteristics, the people are naturally slow to adopt anything new...

...They take no notice of toy balloons set drifting by intelligentsia far above the common earth where men and women love and laugh...

...It is strongly to be doubted if even the Signor's musical countrymen could rise to such sublime heights...

...Where can these ordinary and multitudinous citizens see and hear their favorites ? In the talkies...

...The coming of sound was like manna in the desert to them...

...To critics like Signor Pirandello he speaks in realistic language, basing his case upon the needs and preferences of the world at large...

...On with the Show is the talk of Berlin...

...which means that they are in a better position than any competitor nations to profit from the known fact that sound pictures, based on the experience of more than three years, bring in a box-office revenue 30 to 40 percent greater than silent ones ever did...

...Let us unwind the answer of the talkies, reel by reel...

...As sound installations multiply so will our revenue, until it is safe to say that, in the not far distant future it will be further ahead than our fondest dreams had ever pictured it...

...In Old Arizona, The Broadway Melody, Behind That Curtain, Rio Rita, The Trespasser, The Black Watch, and Movietone Follies stopped traffic in Piccadilly for weeks at a time...