Considered as records of history in the
making, Pathé’s early newsreels suffered from the disadvantage (unless you could lip read) of being silent and the odd full-screen caption was no substitute for words that people could receive via their ears. Starting, as the name suggests, in the US, the newsreels of Fox Movietone News were also silent when it was launched in 1919. Then, when Charles Lindburgh made aviation history in 1927 by flying across the Atlantic, Fox made newsreel history by recording the takeoff with sound as well as vision. In 1929 it gave birth to a British cub, British Movietone News. And so British cinema- goers too could enjoy news enhanced by state-of-the-art sound. June 9 was clearly a slow news day, as Movietone kicked off its first short in this country with a full-screen caption of the type and typeface used on silent comedies: ‘The Duke of Connaught Takes Salute at King’s Birthday Parade’. However, this was not looking for laughs: it was the Trooping of the Colour. The ceremony itself dated back to 1748. It was in the news in 2020 because it was cancelled on account of coronavirus but news values were clearly more elastic in 1929: it made the bulletin merely because was the first Trooping since, well, 1928.
And troop they did: men in busbies on horses; men in busbies on foot, sometimes marching backwards, which would fool the enemy. And the sounds: horses trotting, men stamping, sergeant-majors shouting. The sound of bells (but no whistles). In subsequent years Movietone returned – later with full colour – for more Trooping of the Household Division and, by way of variety, the Trooping of the 5th Battalion of the Royal Malay Regiment in, as the name suggests, Malaysia. The advantage of the ceremony for the pioneering picture-gatherers was that they knew where they were, ie on Horse Guards Parade. The
next item, ‘the Derby Photographed with Sound’, was trickier, as these horses moved around a lot. There was spiel from bookies, women dancing and a man with a drum. The crowd roared but there was no commentary as such, although a caption did explain ‘They’re off’ and another announced that the winner’s odds were 33-1. If a camera had been manhandled to the finishing post, its footage appears to have been mislaid in the ensuing nine decades. After those early days, newsreels grew up to become the first draft (or rushes) of history. Today, the AP archives bring to life the people and happenings of the last century: suffragette Emily Davison dashing to her death under the king’s horse, Pearl Harbour, Hiroshima, Martin Luther King, the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe serenading President Kennedy. The 1937 Hindenburg disaster showed how far Movietone had come since the goats- chewing-laundry days. The dramatic shots of the giant airship in flames were taken not by chance but because the newsreel executives deduced that sending up balloons filled with highly inflammable gas was a tragedy waiting to happen so they sent camera crews to wait at the docking station until it did happen. Which indeed it did.
theJournalist | 19
TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY
LMPC
Looking back to:
1929
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