A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film, 2nd edn (review)

It’s not that often that an academic book on what is ostensibly a narrowly focused area of study goes into a second edition, yet in the case of Richard Barrios’s A Song in the Dark this seems entirely justifiable. Although his focus is on the birth of the musical film from 1926 until its apparent demise in the spring of 1930, Barrios has written a book that will be required reading for anybody interested in the film musical, in the relationship between music and the moving image, in the aesthetic uses of technology, and in the history of Hollywood. While acknowledging that musicals have become a relatively scarce commodity in Hollywood in the twenty-first century, Barrios makes the argument that, when they do appear, they inevitably resonate with and draw upon the decades of musical work that preceded them. For this reason, the study of the very earliest screen musicals, made possible by the commercial exploitation of cinema sound technology, remains important.

Although his later chapters look at the resurgence of the musical genre in the 1930s, starting with Warner Bros.’ triumphant success with 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade in 1933, and finishing with the cycle of Astaire–Rogers musicals for RKO between 1933 and 1939, Barrios’s focus is on the rash of musicals that followed Warner Bros.’ tentative and hopeful screening of the Vitaphone shorts and the near-feature-length Don Juan in August 1926. Utilising what he calls his three ‘bases of operation’, Barrios looks at the musicals produced between late 1926 and the spring of 1930 by examining their background and production history, analysing changing perceptions of these films over time, and by detailing what he terms the ‘singular and precarious’ relationship that the films had with their diverse audiences. As he admits, this is not an easy task, since so many of the films have disappeared or survive only in segments, incomplete versions, or, worse, production stills. Equally, the myriad personnel involved in the production of these early musicals are no longer with us and Barrios puts little store in autobiographical accounts they may have left behind. On the other hand, and as this second edition acknowledges, the renewed interest in the coming of sound in Hollywood such as the excellent Vitaphone research project, together with greater accessibility to films, or at least fragments of films, on DVD and YouTube has made the material available to specialist and general audiences. Paramount’s 1929 ‘glittery wreck’ Glorifying the American Girl is, for example, currently available on YouTube, though without its colour revue sequences.

Produced at what Barrios sees as one of the most chaotic times in the history of American culture, film musicals embraced the possibilities of synchronised sound in a frenzy of activity. They were greeted with enthusiastic gusto by audiences who clearly enjoyed the novelty of sound and, in a surprising number of films, colour. At first, these audiences seemed prepared to forgive the fact that sound recording limited the flow of the camerawork and that the two-colour Technicolor process accented hues of salmon and turquoise at the expense of a full colour range. Imprisoned within their soundproofed booths, camera operators would dash from the booth, soaked in sweat, the minute the director announced, ‘Cut.’ The sophisticated swirling camerawork of the silent cinema, epitomised by the 1926 Academy Award winner Wings, gave way to static shots as actors were forbidden to stray far from the microphone hidden within the nearby prop. Barrios gives recognition to the process of wiring cinemas for sound, though his account falls short of giving detailed costings for the process and recognising the enormous diversity of response across different cinema circuits in different locales, such that as late as 1932, silent films were still standard fare in many rural US cinemas.

Barrios is even-handed in his discussion of the pros and cons of the competing sound systems vying for...