The Voice That Thrilled the World

This short traces the history of sound in the movies, beginning with French scientist Leon Scott's experiments in 1857. Featured are snippets from early sound pictures.

Cast

Art Gilmore

as Narrator (voice)

Sheldon Jett

as Audience Member (uncredited)

Harold Miller

as Audience Member (uncredited)

Edwin Tuttle

as Audience Member (uncredited)

Giovanni Martinelli

as Canio in 'Pagliacci' (segment 'Vesti la giubba') (archive footage)

George Arliss

as Self (segment 'Disraeli') (archive footage)

John Barrymore

as Self (segments 'Don Juan' & 'Richard III') (archive footage)

Eugenie Besserer

as Self (segment 'The Jazz Singer') (archive footage)

James Cagney

as Self (segment 'Yankee Doodle Dandy') (archive footage)

Jeanne Cagney

as Self (segment 'Yankee Doodle Dandy') (archive footage)

Reviews

Similar Movies

Okay for Sound

This short was released in connection with the 20th anniversary of Warner Brothers' first exhibition of the Vitaphone sound-on-film process on 6 August 1926. The film highlights Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell's efforts that contributed to sound movies and acknowledges the work of Lee De Forest. Brief excerpts from the August 1926 exhibition follow. Clips are then shown from a number of Warner Brothers features, four from the 1920s, the remainder from 1946/47.

⭐ 5.0

Melody of Noise

The film accompanies musicians who have devoted themselves to new, uncharted sounds with a great deal of passion. They build new instruments and work with quotidian noises. In the process, the ostensible noise often becomes sound. An adventurous journey of discovery into the realm of noises and sounds, rhythms and stillness. Together with people who listen closely and without reservation. A film that aims to engage viewers to listen with their eyes and see with their ears. Astonishingly sublime.

⭐ 8.0

Soundtracker

Pure sound unaltered by human hands is becoming increasingly difficult to find. Gordon Hempton is an Emmy Award-winning sound recordist who has spent the last 30 years trying to find and record the vanishing sounds of nature in an attempt to capture a disappearing sensory experience. Filmmaker Nick Sherman observes Hempton in the wilderness for 30 days and uncovers an obsessive artist on a quest for perfection in this obscure medium. Hempton’s natural ability to locate and articulate himself through sound has a contagious energy and gives his work a transportive quality. Soundtracker is a fascinating meditation on the world’s changing landscape and the things we may be leaving behind in the service of progress.

⭐ 0.0

Sonic Sea

The devastating impact of industrial and military ocean noise on whales and other marine life.

⭐ 7.0

Absence of Me

Hundreds of boxes left by the famous uruguayan musician and political activist Alfredo Zitarrosa (1936-1989) who run away the dictatorship in the 70s, have not been touched since his death 27 years ago. Now his wife and daughters are trying to save the memories, tapes, music and sound recordings that the boxes contain to the posterity.

⭐ 0.0

Actors of Sound

Since the 1930’s, sound gurus referred to as Foley artists have recreated the sounds that infuse a film with life. During a film’s post-production, Foley artists recreate sound that will match the moving image on-screen, using whatever objects are at their fingertips, from hundreds of pairs of old shoes to clunky old tools and squeaky mattresses. But how will Hollywood’s low-tech sound artists survive as digital technology consumes modern movie-making?

⭐ 6.0

Parc Central

"Central Park" is composed of 11 films that offer a visual, sound and poetic journey through 11 cities crossed by the artist. Fascinated by the city, space and urbanism, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has been developing the concept of "tropical modernity" for several years, starting from the cohabitation and the confrontation between architecture and vegetation. It is around this research that she designed "Central Park" 11 films : - Kyoto (1998) - Taipei (2000) - Buenos Aires (2003) - Los Glaciares (2003) - Hong Kong (2000) - Encore Tapei (2000) - White Sands (2003) - Brasilia (1998) - Paris (1999) - Shangai (2003) - Rio de Janeiro (2000)

⭐ 0.0

O Som, ou Tratado de Harmonia

film about the desire of listening. An intermingling of voices from childhood, dreams, history, sex and politics. A visual essay about the universe of sounds. What is sound? What is the sound experience? Sound placed and replaced as Energy. Nothing more should be said. The final conclusion, while the spectator flies over an infinite sea, talks about spreading fragility open. That is the Sound.

⭐ 5.0

Everybody's Cage

In “Everybody’s Cage”, German film artist Sandra Trostel turns John Cage and his approach to art into a tangible fascination, without giving in to explain just a single bit of it.

⭐ 0.0

Listen

Despite living in a doomed country that hangs by a thread, Joud, a handsome sound engineer meets and falls in love with strong and free-spirited Rana. The young lovers, from completely different social and religious backgrounds, are drawn closer to each other, but a drastic turn of events gets between them and Rana suddenly slips away. As her parents forbid Joud from seeing her, the young man determined to see her again, finds new means of communicating with her by convincing Marwa, her sister, to download his voice messages and secretly play them to Rana

⭐ 5.0

A Quiet Place

A family is forced to live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound.

⭐ 7.4

Plane Crazy

Referred as the actual first Mickey Mouse short. Inspired by Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris, Mickey builds a plane to take Minnie for a trip.

⭐ 6.3

The Shout

A traveller by the name of Crossley forces himself upon a musician and his wife in a lonely part of Devon, and uses the aboriginal magic he has learned to displace his host.

⭐ 6.0

A Quiet Place Part II

Following the events at home, the Abbott family now face the terrors of the outside world. Forced to venture into the unknown, they realize that the creatures that hunt by sound are not the only threats that lurk beyond the sand path.

⭐ 7.5

The Sound of Light

According to the director’s request, film sound engineer Mr. Jung and his staff set off on a journey to find sound of light flowing out of darkness. Their effort to find the sound within the flow of time gets more persistent and their passion for the movie becomes another movie in itself.

⭐ 0.0