The Soundman

IT IS LIKE a breath of fresh air for coming out of the Hollywood glad-handing, self congratulatory mill. Rather than a lot of "wow, ain't we good", of which the Oscars have become, really get an inside look at the technical aspects of movie-making. In particular, it is of the "Talkies" all important demigod, the sound gut.

ECONOMY OF PRODUCTION is the obvious credo here, as the director sews together some footage apparently culled from MGM, Warner Brothers, Fox and other studios. Added to those archival bits of footage are some done as "behind the scenes" sequences, designed to show the camera filming the action while it too is being filmed.

WE THEN ARE shown the expertise displayed by these learned men of science, as the masterfully add and blend the right sounds in the proper volume in just the correct lengths to render otherwise "silence" into a living, 'breathing' scene.

PRODUCED BY THE Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (officially), this short was the distributed by Columbia Pictures. Well, Schultz, the big shot moguls must have thought this to be below their dignity. So, the threw it as a bone to former Poverty Row operator, Harry Cohn of Columbia.

NOW SCHULTZ, AIN'T that sweet?

Soundman, The (1950)

*** (out of 4)

Nice documentary short talks about the history of sound in film and the new techniques being used today (or 1950). This is a pretty good short as it does a nice job at showing exactly what a sound mixer and designer do. I'm sure everyone has heard of these terms or people when they watch the Oscars but these are probably the awards people go to the bathroom during or just simply tune out. We get some clips of early silent movies and the advances that Edison tries to make in order to get sound on film. We then flash forward to LIGHTS OF NEW YORK and IN OLD ARIZONA, which I just watched a few weeks ago. The short even points out a few of the scenes where the microphone was hidden. We also get to go inside a sound vault to see where they keep all the sound effects and how they are labeled and stored.

THE SOUNDMAN plods along with a mercifully brief look at the origin of sound in the movies with some actual scenes of early talkies and how a few of them were made. Funniest bit shows the actors (playing criminals)gathered around a table where the mike is hidden inside a telephone. Lines are delivered very slowly and actors react in dumb fashion to the plans. Then the first western to use sound, IN OLD ARIZONA with Warner Baxter and a slew of other films like THE JAZZ SINGER and LIGHTS OF NEW YORK.

Technicians are shown playing with the various controls and knobs that separate the sounds for individual control before being aligned on one strip of film.

Summing up: A clumsy attempt to show how sound is produced on film and not particularly engaging.