This edited collection is one of the outputs from a project funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council's ‘Beyond Text’ initiative. The main remit of said programme was to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and engagement with non-academic practitioners around the issue of non-textual communication and its record. The book brings together musicologists, historians and cinema scholars, having as a touchstone the question of sound practice in the UK up to the 1930s when the technology and aesthetics of synchronised sound were still experimental and unstable. The topic proves to be well-chosen, since a historical approach to sound practice in silent cinema is in itself an interdisciplinary endeavour and one that depends on the decentring of the film text. In fact, it was Rick Altman, one of the foremost theorists of film sound, who insisted on the need to understand ‘cinema as event’, a situated experience of which the film itself is only a constituting part. This is a central tenet of most current work in cinema history, where it takes the form of an interest in exhibition and reception practices. These essays are mainly concerned with the former, foregrounding the performance element of early film shows and examining the tensions between liveness and mechanical reproduction.
The first thing that most people learn when they first encounter silent film in an academic context is that it was never silent. However, the growing popularity of silent film screenings and the use of restored nitrate footage in TV productions have contributed to spread a different misconception: that it was always accompanied, usually by an extemporising pianist. Like the comically sped-up movement that a misunderstanding of projection techniques has turned into a hallmark of early film for many audiences, the sprightly rag-time medley has become the default soundtrack for archive DVDs and revivals. But, as Altman has also argued, sometimes the film show was in fact silent, or at least unaccompanied (audience noise is a different matter); and, when it was not, the diversity of approaches to sound reflected a rich network of intermedial influences and continuities, from the oratory tradition associated with lantern lectures to community singalongs and dance fads. Although film is what brings these strands together, it was not necessarily the main attraction in the show; as Jon Burrows shows in his contribution to this volume, the subordination of music to the pace of film narrative was only one of many options, while recorded or orchestral music was often showcased with little regard for synchronism. On the other hand, there were many attempts to couple sound and image by mechanical means. An intriguing alternative is presented here by Stephen Bottomore's article on Selsior dance films, which featured an orchestra conductor at work on a corner of the frame, so that the live orchestra in the cinema could keep time with the dancers on screen.
Covering a surprising array of practices, the case studies in this book are engaging, and often entertaining, eye-openers for any reader interested in the bizarre mutations and negotiations that shaped the development of mass-mediated popular forms. In line with current trends in cinema historiography, many of the essays draw on previously unexplored archive sources and a careful reading ‘against the grain’ of trade journals and other contemporary sources, grappling with their aspirational rhetoric and self-promotion. A particular gem, even if not of British origin, is the reportage of a German popular cinema lecture quoted (and translated into vernacular) by Judith Buchanan in her perceptive article about the gap between ideal and actual lecturing practice. Another revelation is Julie Brown's fascinating chapter on ‘atmospheric film prologues’, an elaborate stage practice that thrived modestly in the 1920s, as part of the rise of blockbuster features. This little-known, seemingly strange presentation strategy has much to say about the emergence of an institutional aesthetics drawing on escapism and immersion. Other chapters cover a varied terrain, from sentimental ‘Bioscope recitals’ to the London Film Society's avant-garde programmes, drawing from a range of primary sources such as the journal and archive of the Musician's Union, examined by Annette Davison, or the local press as used by Trevor Griffiths and Joe Kember.
Given the variety of topics and perspectives, it is a remarkable achievement of the editors that the book reads as an integrated effort, with substantial cross-referencing and little unnecessary repetition. This signals the success of the other aspects of the project, namely a series of events where the authors had already initiated a conversation. I remember attending a workshop in Edinburgh, which included a film ‘describer’ and a sound-effects demonstration, as well as a screening at the Cameo cinema, spotlighting the many performative skills that were deployed in British picture theatres in the 1910s. This attempt to understand the experience of early cinema audiences required attention to the few illustrations (often cartoons) depicting effects workers, and a mining of satirical stories and complaints in letters pages about the shortcomings of elocutionists and musicians. The live, often improvisatory and changing nature of sound practice means that it was poorly documented. Ultimately, if only a tiny fraction of the films made during the nitrate era have survived, the live event of which they were part is gone forever, glimpsed only through tenuous material traces. The inventive, rigorous scholarship displayed by this project is then a necessary contribution to a history of popular culture that recognises its transient and combinatory character.
