Introduction

Abstract

The introduction presents the book’s scope, approach, and organization. It recounts the history of the transition to synchronized sound film, which has largely been examined from the perspective of American cinema. However, because of aspects of French cinematic and musical culture that were unique to France, the transition unfolded in very different ways, becoming a hotly debated topic and resulting in divergent artistic responses. The introduction lays out the competing conceptions of sound film in France—for instance, its aesthetic proximity to either live theater or silent film, and its potential as a realist medium or a source of abstract fantasy—and the ways these conceptions played out in practitioners’ writings and films of the period. The films created during this “transitional” moment in filmmaking encourage us to reconsider long-held assumptions about the relationship between music and the moving image.