Faculty Invited Talk: “Sound Effects Cinema: Mid-1930s Japanese films and the surprising synthesis of silent and sound techniques” – Dr. Sean O’Reilly

On November 14, 2024, Dr. Sean O’Reilly, Associate Professor in AIU’s Global Connectivity Program, was invited to Bordeaux, France to give a talk on early sound in Japanese cinema at the Le Japon Sonore conference.

Abstract

In late 1935, precisely halfway through the 1930s and Japan’s lengthy transition to sound cinema, a curious musical comedy-style period drama, Enoken Plays Kondō Isami (Enoken no Kondō Isami), was released. The vaudevillian-style comedy poked fun at famous nineteenth century patriots, depicting them as buffoons for comic effect. But the comedy was not only visual in nature; indeed, film studios’ first successes earlier in the 1930s with sync-sound “talkies” had already begun to condition moviegoers to expect much of the fun to enter through the ears rather than the eyes. The film makes frequent use of aural gags, so it may come as a surprise to notice that several of its most dramatic sequences were shot silently, with nondiegetic background music added later. Is this, then, a true talkie or does it still have one foot in the silent era?

I argue that this film’s bold—and tongue-in-cheek—blending of both silent and sound film techniques is its greatest strength. Its success shows that Japanese cinema’s range of possibilities was greater in 1935, in this hybrid stage, than at any other time before or since.