ABSTRACT
In 1929, the British industry, and specifically British International Pictures (producer of Hitchcock’s Blackmail), achieved a faster transition to sound than any other European country. Yet in terms of adventurous music provision and the general use of sound in the transition years, Britain proved more conservative than major European countries like France and Germany. Based on analysis of surviving films, contemporary trade papers, and surviving documents, this chapter considers the timid use of the new technology (with one exception: Edmund Meisel’s work on The Crimson Circle), and the persistence of silent-era ‘fitting’ in talkies musically supervised by cinema accompaniment veterans.
