Sound film
The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie was "The Jazz Singer", released in October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures.
René Clair
Clair was initially sceptical about the introduction of sound to films, and called it "an unnatural creation". He then realised the creative possibilities that it offered, particularly, in his view, if the soundtrack was not used realistically; words and pictures need not, and indeed should not, be tied together in a clumsy duplication of information; dialogue did not always need to be heard. Between 1930 and 1933, Clair explored these ideas in his first four sound films, starting with "Sous les toits de Paris" ("Under the Roofs of Paris"); this was followed by "Le Million" (1931), "À nous la liberté" (1931), and "Quatorze juillet" ("Bastille Day") (1933). All of these films portrayed an affectionate and idealized view of working class life, and they did much to create a popular romantic image of Paris which was seen around the world. These films were made at the Epinay Studios for Films Sonores Tobis, a French subsidiary of the German-owned Tobis company.