Tag: SILENT FILMS

In the interview published in Jiji Shinpo, July 3, 1932, T.D. Cochran, the head of Paramount Tokyo Branch, condescendingly pointed out the miserable state of talkie in Japan. He recommended Japanese motion picture studios to quit developing their own “inferior technologies” and to use superior U.S. technologies instead. “It is true that Western-Electric system’s license fee is expensive,” he said. “But we have a discount for Japanese market at $200 per reel. You have to pay $500 per reel in New York.” It’s 60% off. It sounds terribly a good deal. But very few Japanese companies actually adapted the Western …

  In the last post, I discussed about the overall transition from silent to talkies in 1930’s Japanese cinema industry: number of theaters and total number of motion picture consumption. In this entry, let’s look at the talkie transitions at individual motion picture studios. Data is from “Annual Report of Motion Picture Censorship”.

You may wonder why Yasujiro Ozu was still shooting silent films well into 1936. It’s true that he was one of the most hesitant to adapt to sound films, but the conversion from silents to talkies was very slow process in Japanese cinema industry anyway. It took almost a decade for all the theaters to be equipped with sound film projection. There were many reasons for this relatively slow process. Film projection narrators, Benshis, were integral part of silent film projection and had strong influence on motion picture business. They demanded the production companies to support and preserve their businesses …