Talkies

Imagine a film with no computer-generated visual effects, no prosthetic body pieces or creatures, no elaborate make-up, no big action scenes with exploding cars, no armies clashing or buildings collapsing, no bone-crunching bass, no special sound effects, no dialogue - not even any sound at all. This would probably be a lot like the movies of the 1920s.

Sound boring? Film-watching Australians of the 1920s didn't think so. Since they first hit Australia, the 'flicks' were a popular form of entertainment for the Australian public.

Film-making in Australia before the 1920s - Silent Films

So, how did a film make sense without sound?

Actors had to exaggerate their movements and facial expressions to convey meaning and emotion. Often during a scene or between scenes, screens giving short captions appeared which explained the action or quoted dialogue. There was also an organist or pianist accompanying the action with appropriate music - exciting and fast music for a chase scene, trembling music for suspense, happy, sad, romantic - all sorts of music for all sorts of situations. It may seem strange now but in the 1920s, this was cutting-edge cinema.

The movies were called the 'flicks' because of the flickering image that was produced when the film was projected onto a screen.

Australia was the place to make films in the early 1900s. Film-makers pioneered cutting-edge techniques. Famous Australian directors of the day included Ken Hall, Charles Chauvel, and Raymond Longford. Australia produced the world's first full-length feature film The Soldiers of the Cross in 1900 - a film made by the Salvation Army. It had 200 slides and 13 rolls of film, one minute of film per roll.

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In 1906, The Story of the Kelly Gang was made by the Tait brothers. It was one of the longest films ever made - 70 minutes. 10 prints were made for the film's release.

By 1911, Australia led the world in film production. Australian directors had produced 62 feature films. Hollywood had only produced one full-length silent film by the same year.

In 1919, Raymond Longford's famous film The Sentimental Bloke, based on a popular book of verse, was released and found great success. It told the story of a hard-working Australian 'bloke' who gave up drinking and gambling for the love of a good woman. As one of Australia's leading directors of the time, Longford followed the success of The Sentimental Bloke with his comedy smash On Our Selection.

The success of On Our Selection saw the emergence of one of Australia's most popular film stars, Bert Bailey. Originally a stage actor, Bailey found fame and fortune on the silver screen. His most famous role was in On Our Selection where he portrayed a stubborn old farmer frustrated with his half-wit son, Dave. With the advent of 'talkies' in the 1930s, Bailey starred in the sequels to On Our Selection. He played characters with whom the Australian public could identify.

The Kelly Gang and Robbery Under Arms, stories about bushrangers and bank robbers, were released in 1920. The censorship board was quick to rate the movies, banning them in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

In 1921 Silks and Saddles, a film about horse-racing, was released.

In 1928, For the Term of his Natural Life was released. This was a confronting story about Australian identity that followed an innocent man convicted and sent to an Australian penal colony. Based on Marcus Clarke's novel it was filmed at Port Arthur and starred Rufus Dawes.

The 1920s, however, brought trouble for the Australian film industry. When sound began to be used in films, the cost of production skyrocketed and although Australian film-makers continued to make films, they were outpaced by Hollywood and British production companies.

Film-making became simply too expensive for Australian producers because equipment and locations were in short supply. By the mid-1920s the majority of films screened in Australia were produced in America. Hollywood became the film capital of the world. One of the most popular silent film stars of the 1920s was Rudolph Valentino, an Italian-American who always played the romantic lead. His suave and sophisticated characters made women swoon and made men gel their hair back in an attempt to look like him.

Most of the films produced in Australia were about Australian subjects and explored Australian identity. The early films helped to define identity by providing Australian heroes such as Ned Kelly whose bush-ranger adventures sparked excitement in the hearts of many Australians. The film industry did not shrink from Australia's convict past but emphasised the Australian attitude of toughness and a fair-go which stemmed from convict roots. The visual nature of film confronted Australians and allowed them to contemplate what it meant to be Australian.

The Sound Revolution

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The sound revolution occurred in the late 1920s and the early 1930s. Projectors were converted to play films with sound - 'talkies'. In October 1927 the first film with sound was released. The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson had three songs and included dialogue. The film's release marked a new era in cinematic history. It took only two years for the technology to spread to production studios around the world. Full-length films were being produced.

Cinesound Studios was established in Sydney in 1932. The first productions were spin-offs from the successful On Our Selection. The popular series of films was based on Steele Rudd's stories about the characters 'Dad' and 'Dave' and included Grandad Rudd in 1935, Dad and Dave Come To Town in 1938, and Dad Rudd, M.P in 1940. The films broke box office records. Bert Bailey was Australia's first 'talkie' film star.

As Australian studios took the plunge into talkies, American and British studios stayed one step ahead. Popular American and European film stars in the late 1920s and early 1930s included George Wallace and Charlie Chaplin.

Unfortunately, the adoption of new technology brought problems for the industry. Equipment was expensive and sound stages now had to be sound-proofed. Then cameras caused noise problems. They eventually had to be placed in insulated booths with sound-proof covers to avoid picking up extra camera noises. Microphones caused another problem as they had to remain stationary and close to actors. If they were placed on the actors, this stopped the actors from moving around. Like the cameras, microphones had to be attached to sound-proof 'dollies' and hung from booms.

Then the actors themselves proved to be a problem. The English language restricted markets. A new type of actor was needed, one with a good voice and stage experience. Often silent actors had heavy accents or irritating voices. The 'talkie' film star needed to be an actor with talent and a pleasant voice. Hollywood turned to Broadway for new actors.

By 1930, the silent film disappeared. Sound films revolutionised the transmission of news and current events across Australia. Short newsreels and documentaries were shown each week before the film was screened. Fox Movietone made the first talkie newsreels.

Talkie culture

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Cinema became a popular form of mass entertainment in the 1920s and 1930s.

Admission was cheap and attendance high. Everyone could afford a ticket. The whole family could attend the cinema for less than £1. By 1927, 1 in 3 Australians attended at least one film a week.

Silent films were popular. American Westerns were particularly popular among children at the Saturday afternoon matinee. Characters such as Hopalong Cassidy and the Cisco Kid were idols.

Adults attended the Saturday night flicks and enjoyed watching films starring legendary American film stars such as Shirley Temple, Clarke Gable, and Fred Astaire.

Every town and city had a permanent cinema. In rural towns it was often simply a shed with galvanised roofing.

In the cities, elaborate and lavish theatres were constructed on a grand scale. In 1929, the State Theatre opened in Sydney. The Theatre had ornate ceilings, a large entry foyer, curtains and a full orchestra. There were also huge lighting displays and uniformed attendants. The total cost of construction and decorating was £1 million. Other cinemas in Australian cities were called exciting and sophisticated names such as The Strand, Odeon, Regent, and The Palace.

The 1930s saw the spread of cinemas into the suburbs. By 1933, there were 22 cinemas in the city and 155 in the suburbs of Sydney.

The effect of cinema-going on the public was profound, particularly among the youth. Teenagers idolised their favourite actors and religiously watched all their films. But obsession with movie stars was just as serious as today as one woman explained in an interview about life in the 1920s:

'My sister and I were great followers of Valentino. They didn't call us fans then; we weren't organised. Mary, my sister, was overweight and she went on a starvation diet for Rudolph. He was so real to us on the screen; we were all mad about him and Mary had this idea that she couldn't marry him if she was too fat... When Valentino died of appendicitis in 1926, Mary went through another crisis. Scores of girls in the USA committed suicide and Mary was nearly a statistic here too.'

Cinema, and the invention of 'talkies', in the 1920s changed Australian popular entertainment forever. On any given day, in any of the vast numbers of cinemas in Australia's cities and towns, people still go to the cinema. Although the prices may have changed, the joy of disappearing into a story and seeing characters far removed from our own lives remains the same.

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