A Forty-Five-Minute Talking Picture

This short item notes experiments in 1913 with multireel talking pictures in Paris. Gaumont's system, which had been in regular use in Paris for years and steadily improved in quality, was for uncertain reasons never put in wide circulation in the United States.

The most surprising claim in this notice is that the dialogue was easily heard throughout the theater, since amplification and intelligibility of dialogue (not synchronization) were generally considered the most difficult issues confronting makers of synchronized sound film.

A Forty-Five-Minute Talking Picture

At the Gaumont Palace Hippodrome in Paris, a few days ago, there was exhibited a speaking film running forty-five minutes. This is by far the longest talking picture ever thrown on the screen. The photoplay was taken from a famous French farce and was witnessed by nearly eight thousand people, the extreme capacity of the house. The dialogue was distinctly heard in the farthest corners of the auditorium without appearing unduly amplified to those in the pit. The Paris Daily papers gave the Gaumont talking pictures from four inches to three-quarters of a column next morning and described the entertainment as a revolution in the cinematographic art. Speaking photoplays running from twenty to thirty minutes are now being shown nightly by means of the Gaumont improved Chronophone in the Gaumont Palace Hippodrome.

Source: “A Forty-Five-Minute Talking Picture,” Moving Picture World 5 April 1913, 52.