COMM150: The Art of the Cinema
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Chaplin's Thoughts on Sound

Chaplin's films had utilized the more universal language of motion and pantomime, and he worried about the impact that sound would have. He thought that sound would ruin film as we knew it. "Moving pictures need sound as much as Beethoven needs lyrics", he said in 1928. He thought that sound, in particular the sound of the human voice and spoken language, would likely enslave movie making to a kind of mechanization.

"Movement is near to nature, as a bird flying, and it is the spoken word which is embarrassing. The voice is so revealing it becomes an artificial thing, reducing everybody to a certain glibness." In essence, he believed that his character, especially the Tramp, would not be viable and not have the same everyman appeal that it had with the silent film. So he resisted making sound movies.

In 1931, in relation to City Lights, which he made as a silent film even though the technology had been around for four years, he said that "Dialogue may or may not have a place in comedy. Dialogue does not have a place in the sort of comedies I make. For myself, I know that I cannot use dialogue. Dialogue, to my way of thinking, always slows action because action must wait upon words."

After City Lights, which didn't fare so well at the box office given the popularity of talking pictures, he reconsidered. "Although City Lights was a great triumph, I felt that to make another silent film would be giving myself a handicap. Also, I was obsessed by a depressing fear of being old-fashioned. Although a good silent film was more artistic, I had to admit that sound made characters more present." The presence is conveyed by the spoken word.