Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

L’expression ”cinéma muet” est
trompeuse: de façon générale, comme
on sait, les films étaient rarement
projetés dans un silence total. Un
accompagnement musical (au piano
ou à l’orgue, voire même un orchestre)
était presque la règle et la musique,
autant que les images, faisait partie
d’une sortie au cinéma. L’expression
”cinéma muet” signale plutôt l’absence
d’une bande son synchronisée à l’image,
soit sur le film lui-même (une piste
optique), soit par le biais d’un moyen
extérieur, tel un enregistrement de
gramophone synchronisé au projecteur
par un lien mécanique. Dans les années
20, le cinéma connut l’une de ses
transformations majeures: le son était
arrivé et tout changeait. Le cinéma
suédois, comme un peu partout ailleurs
dans le monde, devint ”parlant” à la fin
des années 20.
Les archives de l’Institut suédois du
cinéma de Stockholm ont récemment
restauré d’intéressants exemples
de films sonores de cette époque,
notamment deux films de1929. Le
premier, Finurliga Fridolf, un sketch
comique, utilise la synchronisation avec
un disque de gramophone. Le second,
Konstgjorda Svensson, l’un des premiers
longs métrages sonores suédois, utilise
aussi le système Vitaphone de couplage
avec un disque. Les deux films ont fait
l’objet d’une restauration, aussi longue
que complexe. Le long métrage, dont
la restauration n’est pas entièrement
terminée, sera présentée avec une piste
sonore Dolby inscrite côté perforations,
de manière à préserver l’image plein
cadre d’origine.
Le troisième cas étudié dans le présent
article s’attache au travail expérimental
de l’inventeur suédois Sven Berglund
qui, aussi tôt que 1922, avait réussi à
enregistrer le son sur le film. La bobine
sur support nitrate contenant ses
premières expériences en ce sens a
été conservée, numérisée et restaurée.
Après bientôt un siècle, nous pouvons
découvrir cette réussite unique de l’un
des authentiques inventeurs du son au
cinéma.
width of the film where the image usually resides. Unlike a normal image,
though, this had to be done without framelines. A frameline read by an
audio head resembles the sound of a motor boat.
Even at this early stage it occurred to me that if we could somehow recover
this audio track, we could use the track itself as an image. The soundtrack is
quite beautiful, and could be synchronized to the optical soundtrack that it
produced. This would make a wonderful presentation print, but recovering
the sound was a challenge in itself. Building a custom optical sound head
was beyond our budget, and impractical. Nor was it any closer to being
authentic to the original recording system. By building a pseudo-authentic
analogue light valve we would simply be adding noise to an already noisy
recording, something we wanted to avoid. We also could not make such an
investment without knowing if the track actually yielded any audio (speech
or music). Visually, the track resembles a simple sine wave. Instead we
turned to Chace Audio and their proprietary laser scanning system.
Reading an optical soundtrack with light, albeit a laser, was fitting. This was
done with highest resolution. At 22 frames per second (Berglund’s own
running speed) and with painstaking accuracy and attention to detail, we
were able to scan the track and identify 11 different audio tests.
A short series of processing tests were done to remove the hiss, crackle,
distortion, and modulating noise floor to improve the listenability of the
audio. The Noise Demodulator algorithm in the Audio Cube AC-5 proved
remarkably effective in evening out the varying noise issues.
An optical track was produced from this file, and we were then able to
synchronize this with the “sound as image” negative we had optically
reduced to Academy ratio. In January 2011 we successfully projected
the final print, and were thrilled to finally hear and see the work of Sven
Berglund. While many of the results are no more than crude experiments,
the remarkable clarity of the spoken word demonstration recorded on 29
October 1921 clearly cements Berglund in the history books as an early
contributor to the development of optical sound recording technology.
Special thanks to: Deutsches Filminstitut, Wiesbaden; Chace Audio by
Deluxe, Los Angeles; Nordisk Film Post Production, Stockholm; Håkan
Lindberg.
Finurliga Fridolf (1929)
Finurliga Fridolf (literal translation, “Crafty Fridolf”) is a one-reel comedy
sketch produced in 1929, starring Fridolf Rhudin and Weyler Hildebrand.
The sketch was produced with sound, using the Vitaphone system. Our
archive had a duplicate negative that had been reduced to Academy ratio,
and a viewing print with sound. The source materials for these elements no
longer existed. Not only was the viewing print completely out of sync and
the audio quality extremely poor, but sections of the audio were missing,
resulting in silent passages within the sketch.
In May 2009 Arne Lundgren, a retired projectionist and avid collector,
contacted us. He had found and purchased an “Artiphon” record labelled
“Finurliga Fridolf” at a car-boot sale, and wondered if we wanted to borrow
it. After its delivery I carefully transported it (by hand, as it is fragile) to the
Kungliga Biblioteket (National Library of Sweden) for transfer to digital. This
was done on authentic equipment and transferred without manipulation.
52 Journal of Film Preservation / 85 / 2011