Lights of New York (1928)

There’s something… not right about the idea of a 1928 talkie somehow in a way I can’t actually explain. I know the popularity of The Jazz Singer in 1927 kicked off the revolution and things developed throught out 1928 to the point where Hollywood had essentially given up on silent films by the following year… but somehow when I encounter a 1928 film with sound, I feel weirdly disconcerted by it. And I’ve seen a few of the surviving examples like Lonesome, Noah’s Ark, and In Old Arizona, plus obviously this evening’s example, and all of them are… strange in a way I don’t understand. Look, it’s just one of those “me” things. Let’s leave it at that. Suffice to say tonight’s viewing is a piece of Hollywood history, having been Hollywood’s first all-talking feature-length film. Also, frankly, it’s a bit crap. And on this second viewing it had not improved at all.

In fairness to it, Lights of New York wasn’t supposed to be a feature at all, let alone the first feature-length talkie; Warners only meant it to be a two-reel Vitaphone short but somehow it got out of hand during filming and director Bryan Foy ended up with a six-reel film… Jack Warner was furious, having wanted Warners’ first all-talking feature to be something kind of prestige, but he reconsidered when Foy threatened to sell it to another distributor. And in the end it was a wise choice; having spent $22,000 on the thing, it returned a million dollars at the box office… mostly because of the technological novelty than the critical acclaim, cos there wasn’t any of that. And frankly, not without some good cause.

Look, early sound films need more slack cut for them than most old films; it’s a period of film history I’ve always been fascinated by for some reason and I know it’s much more complex than reductionist history (as if most history isn’t reductive, of course). It wasn’t just a case of Al Jolson ad libbing a few words in The Jazz Singer and everything changed overnight. But that preview scene in Singin’ in the Rain where Don and Lina’s talkie debut turns out to be a catastrophe… well, it’s kind of merciless but not entirely unfair. (My old DVD of SitR actually features the “take-him-for-a-RIDE” scene from Lights as an example of early talkies being… not very good, and… yeah. It’s not.) Even allowing for the fact that no one had quite worked out what to do with sound technology, Lights is a difficult film to make allowances for; some of the acting is just terrible (looking at you in particular, Robert Elliott as the detective) and the dialogue in the climactic scene is just godawful, and they would’ve been so even just a few years later when the technical issues had been sorted. It’s just… yeah, not very good. Still, the milestones of history aren’t always the ones we wish they were, and to be honest I’m impressed and surprised that this one is still around to be watched nearly 100 years later…