Overview

The transition from silent to synchronized sound film was one of the most dramatic transformations in cinema's history, as it radically changed the technology, practices, and aesthetics of filmmaking within a few short years. In France, debates about sound cinema were fierce and widespread. In French Musical Culture and the Coming of Sound Cinema, author Hannah Lewis argues that the debates about sound film resonated deeply within French musical culture of the early 1930s, and conversely, that discourses surrounding a range of French musical styles and genres shaped audiovisual cinematic experiments during the transition to sound. Lewis' book focuses on many of the most prominent directors and screenwriters of the period, from Luis Bu�uel to Jean Vigo, as well as experiments found in lesser-known films. Additionally, Lewis examines how early sound film portrayed the diverse soundscape of early 1930s France, as filmmakers drew from the music hall, popular chanson, modernist composition, opera and operetta, and explored the importance of musical machines to depict and to shape French audiovisual culture. In this light, the author discusses the contributions of well-known composers for film alongside more popular music hall styles, all of which had a voice within the heterogeneous soundtrack of French sound cinema. By delving into this fascinating developmental period of French cinematic history, Lewis encourages readers to challenge commonly-held assumptions about how genres, media, and artistic forms relate to one another, and how these relationships are renegotiated during moments of technological change.

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9780190636012

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Reviews

Hannah Lewis has made a hugely important contribution towards our understanding of the exciting period in the early 1930s when French filmmakers and musicians began to grasp the manifold cultural and aesthetic implications of the new synchronized sound technology. --Mervyn Cooke, Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham and author of A History of Film Music Unlike Hollywood, the French greeted sound cinema with a profusion of radically distinct aesthetic positions. Sound should abet cinema s creation of oneiric shock, theater, anti-theater, operetta, class critique, realism, poetry. Hannah Lewis shows how music figured in those exciting debates, opening pathways for new audiovisual possibility. --Claudia Gorbman, Professor Emeritus of Film Studies, University of Washington Tacoma Lewis's compelling book captures the excitement and trepidation with which filmmakers, composer, and critics greeted the arrival of synchronized sound film in France, correcting the film music scholarship that conflates Hollywood's transition to synchronized sound film with Europe's. --Leslie Sprout, author of The Musical Legacy of Wartime France

Author Information

Hannah Lewis, Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Texas at Austin, is a historical musicologist who specializes in film music, music and visual media, early twentieth-century French music, and musical theater.

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