ABSTRACT
The coming of sound to world cinema has precipitated many important studies of its aesthetic, social, and cultural effects. Surprisingly, there exists very little systematic analysis of the consequences of this technological change for the international trade of motion pictures. In short, the studios which survived to become producers and distributors of talkies, despite the opening which seemed to come because of language barriers, grew even more powerful as distributors around the world. They did this because they colluded in the manner learned as Zukor and Schenck worked together to obtain the best possible deal from AT&T’s ERPI. The United States had been, since the end of the First World War, the global movie power. The coming of sound solidified a hegemony that lasts to this day.
