In 1930 regular customers began attending movies less frequently and spending less money. The motion picture industry cut back on production budgets, furloughed workers, and sold theaters, all the while trying to keep America's alleged movie habit alive. The talkies had lost their allure as a technological novelty and a harbinger of scientific progress. The films of the 1930-1931 season had to succeed or fail on factors other than their use of sound.

The new filmmaking was very different. Sounds were being consolidated into the unostentatious presence which the critics had been espousing for a year or so. There was even a tendency to indulge in what producers were calling "silent" technique, though no one-except Charlie Chaplin, and even he only briefly-thought that real silent filmmaking would return. Filmmakers had the technical capacity to emphasize or diminish the sound at their...