[78-L] Help Identifying a 78

[Chris Zwarg]

At 20:26 01.11.2008, you wrote:
>These short films were called "Phonoscènes", to be played on Gaumont's 
>Chronophone.
>One of them, titled "Jerusalem" has survived and can be found on a DVD.

A number of others survive as well - excerpts of chansons sung and acted by Polin, Mercadier, Dona, and Dranem (all popular stars in pre-WW1 Paris) were shown in a French TV documentary "Le roman du music-hall" which is available on video. There is also a fine DVD "Les premiers pas du cinéma: A la recherche du son" which has several Phonoscènes in their entirety, among them a Lucia Sextette synched to the 1908 Caruso/Sembrich record (the actors are not authenticated, but both Sembrich and Caruso do look very much like the "real thing" - maybe this was shot by Gaumont while the Metropolitan Opera ensemble was in Paris for guest performances?), and a "La donna è mobile" also sung by Caruso, but obviously acted by someone else (one source says we are seeing the obscure German tenor Bernhard Ahlbeck here). 

Recently, the German and Austrian National Film Archives each (re-)discovered a number of German-language Messter-Gaumont phonoscenes in their vaults; some of these feature major stage stars of the period like Alexander Girardi and Fritzi Massary, in excerpts from then-current operetta productions, and the best of them are currently being restored - I am actively involved in tracking down the discs and remastering the soundtracks. Run at the appropriate (odd) speeds, the sync mostly is on a par with much later lip-synched musical movie scenes, and the effect can be pretty stunning - real "soundies" a hundred years old. Hopefully we will get these on a DVD at some point; currently, producing modern 35mm sound-on-film prints suitable for theatrical screenings is the idea.

Chris Zwarg