Editing Sound film (section)

=== Aesthetic quality ===
In the first, 1930 edition of his global survey ''The Film Till Now'', British cinema pundit [[Paul Rotha]] declared, "A film in which the speech and sound effects are perfectly synchronised and coincide with their visual image on the screen is absolutely contrary to the aims of cinema. It is a degenerate and misguided attempt to destroy the real use of the film and cannot be accepted as coming within the true boundaries of the cinema."<ref>Quoted in Agate (1972), p. 82.</ref> Such opinions were not rare among those who cared about cinema as an art form; Alfred Hitchcock, though he directed the first commercially successful talkie produced in Europe, held that "the silent pictures were the purest form of cinema" and scoffed at many early sound films as delivering little beside "photographs of people talking".<ref>Quoted in Chapman (2003), p. 93.</ref> In Germany, [[Max Reinhardt]], stage producer and movie director, expressed the belief that the talkies, "bringing to the screen stage plays&nbsp;... tend to make this independent art a subsidiary of the theater and really make it only a substitute for the theater instead of an art in itself&nbsp;... like reproductions of paintings."<ref>Quoted in Crafton (1997), p. 166.</ref>
[[File:Westfront 1918 Weber poster.jpg|thumb|alt=Black-and-white movie poster featuring a stylized illustration of the profiled head of a helmeted man on the right, facing left. Behind him, and progressively to the left, are the front parts of three more such profiles, with nearly identical helmet tips, noses, lips, and chins. The title below is followed by the line "Vier von der Infanterie".|''[[Westfront 1918]]'' (1930) was celebrated for its expressive re-creation of battlefield sounds, like the doomful whine of an unseen grenade in flight.<ref name=Kaes />]]
In the opinion of many film historians and aficionados, both at the time and subsequently, silent film had reached an aesthetic peak by the late 1920s and the early years of sound cinema delivered little that was comparable to the best of the silents.<ref>See, e.g., Crafton (1997), pp. 448–49; Brownlow (1968), p. 577.</ref> For instance, despite fading into relative obscurity once its era had passed, silent cinema is represented by eleven films in ''[[Time Out (magazine)|Time Out]]'''s Centenary of Cinema Top One Hundred poll, held in 1995. The first year in which sound film production predominated over silent film—not only in the United States, but also in the West as a whole—was 1929; yet the years 1929 through 1933 are represented by three dialogueless pictures (''[[Pandora's Box (1929 film)|Pandora's Box]]'' (1929), ''[[Earth (1930 film)|Zemlya]]'' (1930), ''[[City Lights]]'' (1931)) and zero talkies in the ''Time Out'' poll. (''City Lights'', like ''Sunrise'', was released with a recorded score and sound effects, but is now customarily referred to by historians and industry professionals as a "silent"—spoken dialogue regarded as the crucial distinguishing factor between silent and sound dramatic cinema.) The earliest sound film to place is the French ''[[L'Atalante]]'' (1934), directed by [[Jean Vigo]]; the earliest Hollywood sound film to qualify is ''[[Bringing Up Baby]]'' (1938), directed by [[Howard Hawks]].<ref>''Time Out Film Guide'' (2000), pp. x–xi.</ref>

The first sound feature film to receive near-universal critical approbation was ''[[Der Blaue Engel]]'' (''The Blue Angel''); premiering on April 1, 1930, it was directed by [[Josef von Sternberg]] in both German and English versions for Berlin's [[Universum Film AG|UFA]] studio.<ref>Kemp (1987), pp. 1045–46.</ref> The first American talkie to be widely honored was ''[[All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film)|All Quiet on the Western Front]]'', directed by [[Lewis Milestone]], which premiered April 21. The other internationally acclaimed sound drama of the year was ''[[Westfront 1918]]'', directed by [[G. W. Pabst]] for [[Nero-Film]] of Berlin.<ref>{{cite web|author=Arnold, Jeremy|url=https://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/93569|title=''Westfront 1918''|publisher=Turner Classic Movies|access-date=December 13, 2009}}</ref> Historian Anton Kaes points to it as an example of "the new verisimilitude [that] rendered silent cinema's former emphasis on the hypnotic gaze and the symbolism of light and shadow, as well as its preference for allegorical characters, anachronistic."<ref name=Kaes>Kaes (2009), p. 212.</ref> Cultural historians consider the French ''[[L'Âge d'Or]]'', directed by [[Luis Buñuel]], which appeared late in 1930, to be of great aesthetic import; at the time, its erotic, blasphemous, anti-bourgeois content caused a scandal. Swiftly banned by Paris police chief [[Jean Chiappe]], it was unavailable for fifty years.<ref>Rosen (1987), pp. 74–76.</ref> The earliest sound movie now acknowledged by most film historians as a masterpiece is Nero-Film's ''[[M (1931 film)|M]]'', directed by [[Fritz Lang]], which premiered May 11, 1931.<ref>''M'', for instance, is the earliest sound film to appear in the 2001 [http://www.filmsite.org/villvoice.html ''Village Voice'': 100 Best Films of the 20th Century] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140331174817/http://www.filmsite.org/villvoice.html |date=March 31, 2014 }} poll and the 2002 ''Sight and Sound Top Ten'' (among the 60 films receiving five or more votes). See also, e.g., Ebert (2002), pp. 274–78.</ref> As described by [[Roger Ebert]], "Many early talkies felt they had to talk all the time, but Lang allows his camera to prowl through the streets and dives, providing a rat's-eye view."<ref>Ebert (2002), p. 277.</ref>