sound picture?


Trivia sez it was the first MGM sound picture... are they referring to the music? I watched this film (it was very good), but it wasn't a talkie.

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I would assume that's what they're talking about. A lot of the silent films when shown to audiences had live orchestras, so the film itself was completely silent and the orchestras provided the score. I'm thinking perhaps they're talking about recorded scores being in the actual film. Though I'm probably wrong since I'm guessing that was done before 1928 with MGM.

By the way, how did you see this film? I really wanna see it but I can't find anywhere online that can tell how to purchase it/see it.

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Besides the music, this was MGM's first movie to include occasional synchronized (albeit lame) sound effects that correspond with things going on in the movie. Before this movie, no MGM film had ever included incidental sounds.

Following is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article about this movie:

"The film is known for being the first MGM picture to be released with a pre-recorded soundtrack. The soundtrack consisted of a romantic score by William Axt and David Mendoza, with a few sound effects such as wind howling, a storm, trees ruffling and one faint word 'Hello'."

And here's an excerpt from the TCM article about this movie:

"(T)he studio decided to make White Shadows in the South Seas their first sound film so they added synchronized music and sound effects including cries, laughs, whistling, and one spoken word, 'Hello.'"

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