The Uncanny Body of Early Sound Film

Abstract

he first synchronized sound films were widely hailed as a forward leap in cinematic realism. Many critics and other commentators noted that everything in the films and, most strikingly, the speaking human figures in them now appeared to be more lifelike, present, and three-dimensional. Today, silent films seem to viewers who are not accustomed to watching them to be remote, bound by conventions such as intertitles that are strange and unreal. The impression that sound brought the cinema closer to reality, therefore, seems to have been one that stuck. This was not the only impression that sound films made on their first audiences, however. Sound also brought to the foreground certain uncanny qualities that had always been present in the cinematic image. It complicated the general viewing sensation of the presence of the figures speaking and moving on the screen. Sound changed the visual appearance of these figures in ways that made them look to some viewers like ghosts. This widespread, sporadic, uncontrolled, and temporary film reception phenomenon possibly influenced Hollywood film production trends in ways that long outlived the three and a half years of the sound transition period.