Since 1900, Léon Gaumont had been interesting in the talkies. For example, thanks to his collaboration with Georges Demenÿ, he started the fabrication of a flexible mechanism which connect the wax cylinder phonograph and the cinematograph. This system was close to the Kinetophone of Thomas Edison (1877), we could heared sounds by means of headphones. The first patent in 1901 presented a connected system between an engine and a projector, the sounds spread through the screen thanks to speakers. At this time, the system wasn’t produced for commercial gain.
Sound recording wasn’t perfect yet but Alice Guy started to shoot her phonoscenes in 1902 anyway, which made her famous in the cinematographic world. This process needed two recordings, one for the sound and the other for the image. She was a pioneer because of her work with sound but also because she was the first female director and she made the first feminist movie with Résultats du féminisme in 1906, where the male and female roles are reversed. A new « glass case » was apparently constructed, exclusively for the shots with sound.
The same year, the recording became electric thanks to the use of a microphone and a stylus burner in steel. The sound amplification was made by the Elgéphone, another invention of the Gaumont laboratory, used with phonographic records for theatre, concerts or music-halls, and allowed to substitute a real orchestra. In the studio, the camera was in the both and the microphone above the actors, the electric cable transported the sound into the both. It was the movement of the recording which triggered the cinematograph.
In 1910, the Chronophone was born and presented at the Académie des Sciences of Paris, Gaumont shown the sound portrait of the professor d’Arsonval. The system was a new alliance between the phonograph and cinematograph, where the microphone was independent from the recording machine. The first version of the equipment was sold to showman for regular performances, but the factory of the company wasn’t ready for mass production and exportation. This was also due to a quality problem during the reproduction. The hole factory had to transform itself for the fabrication of the Chronophone and the specific film for phonoscenes.
The very next year, nine talkies were presented at the Société Française de Photographie. The Chornophone needed a phonograph reproducer to be really close to the screen then, although the projector was far away. So, the electricity had to synchronize both machines, both engines needed to rotate at the same time. To make the process easier, the mechanical part was also connected to the same machine, assuring the best synchronisation. The hardest part next was to record the sound and the images in the same film.
A Gaumont chronophone film by Guy starring Félix Mayol, famous French entertainer of the Belle Époque. Here, as in Gaumont’s other chronophone films, Mayol lip-synchs a previously recorded song (”Lilas blanc”) and when the sound recording and film are played together, we get the full experience. Absolutely wonderful for 1905!
