A comical song about the trials of the traffic policeman with synchronised sound. It's interesting from an historical perspective - like Alice Guy's Work of the same period, this German short was made almost 20 years before Don Juan would herald the beginning of the talkie revolution - but hardly amusing otherwise.
2 Reviews
A Policeman's Lot is Not a Happy One
boblipton4 April 2010
Despite claims that the first sound films were produced by Warner Brothers in the mid-twenties, most famously with THE JAZZ SINGER, sound films were around from almost the beginning of the movies: an experimental was made by Dickson at Edison in the mid-1890s, and the first regular series of sound films seems to have been directed by Alice Guy in 1905, mostly music hall songs.
The Germans were not far behind and the surviving discs seem like a curious anachronism because they closely resemble the Vitaphone discs from the mid-1920s: about sixteen inches in diameter and the track started from the center and the needle moved out.
This early sound film can be found on the Europa Film Archives site. It is a comic stage performance, a song about the duties of a traffic policeman in Berlin. The camera sits, watching Bender, as, backed by a silent chorus of marching policeman, he sings his song. It's interesting for people interested in the history of film or the music hall, but not terribly exciting otherwise.
The Germans were not far behind and the surviving discs seem like a curious anachronism because they closely resemble the Vitaphone discs from the mid-1920s: about sixteen inches in diameter and the track started from the center and the needle moved out.
This early sound film can be found on the Europa Film Archives site. It is a comic stage performance, a song about the duties of a traffic policeman in Berlin. The camera sits, watching Bender, as, backed by a silent chorus of marching policeman, he sings his song. It's interesting for people interested in the history of film or the music hall, but not terribly exciting otherwise.
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