La polka des trottins (1905) User Reviews

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[boblipton · 6/10 · 24 February 2020]

Felix Mayol enters the stage and sings his music hall song.

Edison had announced his plans to combine his gramophone with movies even before his labs had a finished movie. In 1896, the company produced a film in which Blackton played a violin while his assistants danced. Some early sound films came out in 1900, and in 1905, Gaumont began a series of three-minute shorts, usually of music hall acts like this one.

Exhibition was plagued by lack of appropriate venues, synchronization problems, and technology that could not produce sound loud enough for an audience. Those problems would not be solved for two decades.

Wow.

[planktonrules · 10/10 · 5 February 2010]

I love films--particularly the older ones. I have seen hundreds, no perhaps thousands of silent films--including many of the really early ones by Edison, the Lumière Brothers and Georges Méliès--yet several shorts directed by Alice Guy absolutely blew me away tonight. I thought I knew a lot about the history of film--when suddenly several of Guy's films from 1905 and 1906 featured sound. Real, honest to goodness sound. The sound, of course, was not recorded on the film like later sound films but had the sound on an accompanying record that they tried to play in sync with the images. It was a primitive process, but the fact that they were working on it as early as 1905 shocked me. Yes, I knew about an experimental film Edison made with a guy and his violin at about 1897, but this was soon abandoned as impractical. I didn't know anyone was working on this in 1905--I thought the process was not picked up again until about 1920. What a shock.

Félix Mayol sings a song on stage in this film. However, if you'd like a real kick in the pants, try to find "Questions Indescretes" where Mayol sings as well...and it's in color!!! Wow, it blew me away---who'd have thought?!