Cinematographers now do everything they did in silent drama dares in
Hollywood.
JOHN SEITZ, Cinematographic Annual 1930

The obvious question to ask John Seitz is, Why was adapting sound fihmmaking to "silent" practice considered desirable? This conservative impulse probably did not arise simply from practical considerations; it required skill, resourcefulness, and effort to maintain the appearance that everything was the same. Many stresses inside the industry pushed film toward systematic stability. It is also likely that external forces were at work.

The films of the 1929-1930 season approached sound in seemingly contradictory ways: they exploited it while hiding it. Audiences could still see movies which emphasized the newly discovered screen voice. They could also observe film styles which played down formal expression and novel effects to construct an illusion of unified audiovisual space. Just as the sound engineers were making their technology "inaudible...