Le cinéma inventé : quand le cinéma cherchait sa voix

I've seen several documentaries on this subject, and I was surprised to see so much of this documentary dedicated to French experiments in sound film that I had never even heard of. This was all interesting to me, since I had already learned about the American path to sound film. But since this is only a one hour documentary on the subject, it caused the production to seem very crowded and rushed.

It also has a rather strange structure. It starts off chronologically discussing ways to allow live performers (musicians, narrators, etc.) to sync what they were doing in the theater with what was playing on the screen, gets to The Jazz Singer, and then starts over again at the beginning, and goes through chronologically discussing sound on disc and sound on film systems, and again stops at The Jazz Singer.

This is almost completely a technical discussion, and it does not talk about the chaos that the transition to sound film caused in the film industry. If you want a discussion that includes both the technical developments and the artistic impact, I would suggest the last installment of the 1980 documentary "Silent Hollywood" entitled "End of an Era".