A couple of decades before the Warner Brothers introduced talkies, they had already been produced in goodly numbers, in a series of shorts by Gaumont in France and by Deutsch Bioscop in Germany. This is one of the latter, a record of Alexander Girardi, one of the stars of the Vienna stage performing one of his numbers.
Like the earliest of the Vitaphone shorts twenty years earlier, there is no camera movement, and Mr. Girardi's performance is limited to coming onstage, hitting his mark in the center and performing to the camera lens. Coincidentally, the sound was recorded on platters about the same size as the Vitaphone discs and, like them, the needle traveled from the center out in recording. It makes one speculate on how much the newer technology was based on the older.
Like the earliest of the Vitaphone shorts twenty years earlier, there is no camera movement, and Mr. Girardi's performance is limited to coming onstage, hitting his mark in the center and performing to the camera lens. Coincidentally, the sound was recorded on platters about the same size as the Vitaphone discs and, like them, the needle traveled from the center out in recording. It makes one speculate on how much the newer technology was based on the older.
