A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film
by Richard Barrios
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard BarriosEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-07-13
ISBN: 0195088107
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film
Book Review: Interesting and encyclopedic work on the early talkie musical
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't know of any other book that does such a thorough job covering the history of the American musical film from the years 1926-1934 as this book does. It starts out shattering the myth that Warner Brothers invested in the Vitaphone sound system because it was near bankruptcy. Instead, Sam Warner saw the potential for sound in films and literally dragged his brothers kicking and screaming to the sound revolution. The book talks about Warners' first experiments that led up to the first hit picture with sound - "The Jazz Singer", and the untimely death of Sam Warner one day before the film's New York City premiere. The surviving Warners saw the potential after the money started rolling in, but they didn't have Sam's vision of how to make a success out of talking pictures. Thus, Warner Bros. was literally a Vitaphone train without a conductor.
This starts the reader through a three year journey of all the major studios groping to see what does and doesn't work, their many flops, and their few artistic triumphs. What got the studios through the early days was the novelty of sound attracting audiences regardless of the quality of the film, and the author does a good job of being thorough without being dry. His descriptions of some of the early sound musicals, some of the strange decisions that were made, and the early technical obstacles and their solutions are outright hilarious. The author describes how all of the bad products and bad decisions eventually cause audiences to have had their fill of musicals by 1931. Then he describes how "42nd Street" revives the genre, the lessons that were learned, and how the musical was ultimately reborn as a popular artform.
You can read this book all the way through, but more than likely you'll have to read it more than once to get everything out of it since it is densely packed with information about individual films as well as overall trends. I highly recommend it if you are interested in the early talkie musical and its history.
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A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Filmby Richard Barrios
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