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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Multiple Language Versions and National Films, 1930-1933. Statistical Analysis, Part I
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Cinéma & Cie
Charles O’Brien
2005/03/01
Carleton University, Ottawa
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Multiple Language Versions and National Films, 1930-1933. Statistical Analysis, Part I
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MULTIPLE LANGUAGE VERSIONS AND NATIONAL FILMS, 1930-1933.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS, PART I
Charles O’Brien, Carleton University, Ottawa




   The aim of this paper is to explore ways in which a statistical analysis of national
trends in conversion-era film editing might illuminate the film-historical significance
of the multiple-version phenomenon of the early 1930s.
   A statistical analysis concerned with stylistic trends for the major film-producing
countries of the time can suggest causal relations between multiple-version production
and national filmmaking practices in general that complicate familiar characteriza-
tions of multiple-version production as a phenomenon of temporary and marginal
film-historical importance. Moreover, in enabling comparisons that reveal novel pat-
terns of evidence, statistical findings may defy the historian’s expectations, and thus
stimulate new research and analysis. In any case, the task here is not to substitute sta-
tistical analysis for other film-historical methods but rather to explore what the project
of situating multiple versions within film history might gain from new combinations
of archives and methods, statistical and otherwise. Also, I must acknowledge at the out-
set that a conclusive demonstration of statistical analysis’ possibilities for multiple-ver-
sion study will require considerably more data than I have been able to gather so far, as
well as further methodological experimentation.
   Regarding specific possibilities for additional research, a comparative analysis of sta-
tistics pertaining to different language versions of the same script appears promising in
respects indicated in the Conclusion below. In the meantime, the findings and inter-
pretations presented below are intended as a first step in the use of statistics in clarify-
ing the significance of the multiple versions of the early 1930s for the film-style cur-
rents of the time.


Multiple Versions and Film-Editing Practice

  With sound-film style so evidently a function of technical constraint, and certain
recording methods more or less necessitating certain editing methods, film editing dur-
ing the conversion years is often characterized as a function of recording technique.1 In
the context of the new sound cinema’s technical requirements, questions arise regard-
ing the effect of multiple-version production on film style.
  For instance, did the technical requirements of multiple-version production in
Germany and the United States condition the stylistic and technical development of the
German and American film industries during the early 1930s? Or, to approach the topic
from a perspective encompassing a wider range of types of national film industry, how
do aesthetic trends in the export-oriented film industries of the United States and

CINEMA & Cie, no. 6, Spring 2005                                                         ­55
CHARLES O’BRIEN

Germany compare to analogous developments in countries such as France, where the
film industry was oriented to making films for domestic rather than international con-
sumption?
   The question as to how multiple-version production affected national film style as a
whole seems particularly imposing in the case of the German cinema during 1930-1932,
when multiple versions were estimated to have made up roughly one-third of the
German film industry’s entire output during this time.2 Did the demands of multiple-
version production on such a large scale affect German sound-film technique general-
ly? One factor to consider here is recorded sound’s impact on the project of making
films for export, a project crucial to the economic survival of the German and American
film industries during the early sound years.
   Key requirements in the export-cinema context concerned scripting and pre-produc-
tion planning. As producer Erich Pommer had noted in 1930, à propos of Ufa’s plan to
produce multiple versions on an industrial scale, synch-sound cinema required sound-
era producers to decide in advance of a film’s production whether the film was to be dis-
tributed internationally or domestically, on the grounds that international productions
during the sound era – multiple versions, specifically – required unprecedented prepa-
ration with respect to film technique.3
   Much less amenable to subsequent modification for foreign markets than silent
films, sound movies had to be conceived from the start for export. Because “[e]ine
Liebesszene hat in Berlin, Paris oder London nie die gleiche Färbung,” a sort of techni-
cal modularity was needed to facilitate minute adjustments for each version in light of
forces and conditions defining the target market(s).4 Given sound-era technical cir-
cumstances, the making of multiple versions implied a certain stylistic path for early
sound film, one diverging from that exemplified by many of the period’s talkies. Rather
than offer recordings of actors’ performances, multiple versions amounted to construc-
tions whereby various component parts were assembled in accord with producers’
expectations regarding the target market’s taste formations, censorship policies and
practices, and other distribution- and reception-related factors.


Statistical Analysis of Film Style

  With respect to national style differences, an inevitable starting point for statistical
analysis is the work of Barry Salt. Focusing on the early 1930s, my presentation juxta-
poses my own findings on the average shot lengths of conversion-era films from France
and the United States with analogous findings by Salt. My figures were gathered in the
context of a research project concerning the familiar notion that sound conversion pro-
duced a homogenization of film style worldwide during the 1930s.5 In this regard, the
recycling of the same sets, narratives, and production personnel in the multiple ver-
sions looks like an ideal-typical manifestation of the period’s dominant film-style ten-
dency. At the same time, multiple versions can also show up as something of a special
case, particularly when the inquiry expands to cover not only image techniques such as
editing and cinematography but how the aesthetic function of such techniques may
change in light of the sound accompaniment. For example, sounds recorded separately
from the image and then dubbed in during post-production may work phenomenolog-
ically very differently from sounds recorded simultaneously with the image, as techni-

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                                            MULTIPLE LANGUAGE VERSIONS AND NATIONAL FILMS

cians involved in the difficult challenge of dubbing were keenly aware. Recorded sound
open many new possibilities with regard to sound-image relations; so, if editing and
cinematographic practice, in fact, became standardized worldwide during the 1930s, it
doesn’t necessarily follow that film-stylistic homogenization also occurred, given that
the same editing and cinematic techniques might serve new aesthetic functions, and
produce different artistic effects, depending on the nature of the sound technique, not
to mention other decisive factors, such as exhibition circumstances. To cite a case in
point, the period’s numerous “filmed theatre” productions, with their evident simula-
tion of live-entertainment, offered a viewing experience differing vastly from films
inspired by the cinematic modernisms of the 1920s, as René Clair, for one, had
observed.6
  For an inquiry into the significance of multiple versions for the period’s broad stylis-
tic trends, the “average shot lengths” for films comprising a national film industry’s
output for a specific period provide a place to begin. A film’s average shot length, or
ASL, can be computed by dividing its total running time by its total number of shots.7
Once the individual ASLs for films comprising a national sample have been generated,
they can be averaged to produce a national mean, which can then be compared and con-
trasted with means for other national samples. According to Salt’s analysis, based on a
sample of several hundred American and European films, sound conversion coincided
with an increase in the mean ASL in both Europe and the United States, with sound-era
technical conditions reducing the amount of cutting on both continents.
  Although the American film industry remained committed to an editing-based nar-
ration, the number of cuts per film dropped during conversion as the American ASL
more than doubled, climbing from a norm of 4.8 seconds for 1924-1929 to 10.8 for 1928-
1933. The number of cuts for European films also fell significantly, as reflected in an
increase from the European mean ASL of 6.6 seconds for 1924-1929 to roughly 11.1 sec-
onds for 1928-1933.
  In light of the history of silent-cinema practice, this decline in the cutting pace – a
reversal of a twenty-year trend – would seem to count as a major film-historical event:
whereas the cutting pace of films increased worldwide beginning circa 1905 and con-
tinuing up until sound conversion, during conversion, the direction of change effec-
tively reversed, as the cutting pace for films made both in Europe and in the United
States dropped substantially. In light of the fundamental change in editing practice dur-
ing the 1930s, a homogenisation of film style is said to have occurred, with the techni-
cal demands of synchronous-sound filmmaking pushing filmmakers everywhere away
from the sophisticated, theory-informed editing experiments of the 1920s and toward a
long-take aesthetic whose history traced back to the cinema of the years before World
War One. With the talkies often cut to the rhythm of actors’ speech, many critics saw
the new sound films as a return to the filmed theatre of the 1910s, precisely the type of
cinema that the modernist and avant-garde film movements of the 1920s had appeared
to supplant.
  Nonetheless, a more differentiated picture of conversion-era film style, attuned to the
period’s wide diversity of film-style options, is suggested by statistics regarding the
impact on film editing of national differences in sound technique. For instance, when
the French cinema is examined relative to the American cinema, a significant national
divergence in the direction of stylistic change becomes evident.8
  Whereas Salt’s figures show that the ASL for Hollywood films gradually dropped

                                                                                       ­57
CHARLES O’BRIEN

during 1934-1939, to reach a low of 8.7 seconds late in the decade, the figure for
European films during the same period went up slightly, to yield a norm of 12 seconds;
among European countries during the latter half of the decade, France featured the
slowest cutting, with a mean ASL of 13 seconds. With respect to French films of 1930-
1933, my own statistics, based on a sample of fifty-four films, yield a mean figure of
11.2; the latter, when juxtaposed against Salt’s figure of 13 for 1934-1939, indicates that
French shot duration increased, on average, by nearly two seconds during the 1930s
[see Table I].9 At issue, then, appears to be a significant national difference in the direc-
tion of change, with the cutting pace for French films evolving in a direction opposed
to that for the contemporaneous Hollywood cinema: whereas Hollywood films were
cut with increasing rapidity in the course of the decade, editing in French films, on
average, slowed down and at a rate slightly greater than that for European films as a
whole.

             Table I. Statistics on national film-style trends during 1930-1933

  country/    Source    dates        #films    natl.      natl.        ASL            ASL
  region                             in        mean       median       range          std. dev.
                                     sample    ASL        ASL

  U.S.        Salt      1928-1933    136       10.8       11           5 to 25        3.4
  Europe      Salt      1928-1933    60        12         10           2 to 22        4.1
  France      O’Brien   1930-1933    54        11.2       10.7         3.7 to 30.5    5.5
  Germany     O’Brien   1930-1933    11        14.5       14.2         10.2 to 20.2   3.1
  U.S.        Salt      1934-1939    184       8.6        8            4 to 18        2.3
  France      Salt      1934-1939    64        13         11           5 to 22        4.2



National Differences in Data Range and Dispersal

   Suggestive of the impact of multiple versions on film-editing technique are national
differences in the dispersal of the average-shot-length data cited above, with the French
cinema of the early 1930s exhibiting a data range and standard deviation much wider
than that for the contemporaneous American cinema. Concerning the range for films
of 1930-1933, my analysis of French films records a low of 3.8 and a high of 31.7, which
yields a range of nearly 28, the widest of the national samples listed in Table I. Salt’s
findings show a range for American films of the same period of 20, roughly twenty-five
percent less than for the French films comprising my sample. A similar national differ-
ence obtains for the standard deviation, a common statistical measure for determining
a data sample’s degree of internal variation. As Table I indicates, the standard deviation
for the French sample remained significantly higher than for the American throughout
the decade, thus suggesting greater variety in editing technique in France than in
Hollywood.10
  A closer look at the films comprising the sample reveals that the wide range for the
French films cuts across differences in genre, with even films falling within the catego-
ry of commercial film theatre exhibiting a broad spectrum. Thus, the genre expected to
exhibit a standardized approach to editing – the commercial stage adaptation – instead
turns out to feature remarkable variety in editing technique.

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                                              MULTIPLE LANGUAGE VERSIONS AND NATIONAL FILMS

  For instance, ASLs for some examples of théâtre filmé register at double the mean
national figure while those for others fall well below it. For instance, On purge bébé
(1930, Jean Renoir), a boulevard-play adaptation, yields an ASL of 26 seconds, an excep-
tionally high figure, more than double the contemporaneous national norm for the
early 1930s of 11.2. At the opposite end of the spectrum are films such as Le Roi du
cirage (1931, Pierre Colombier) and Le Chien qui rapporte (1931, Jean Choux), whose
narratives are organized around performances by stage-identified actors, and whose lib-
eral use of multiple-camera shooting facilitated very rapid cutting, with ASLs well
under half the national average. While these films count as examples of filmed theatre,
and feature extensive use of direct sound, they also exhibit great variety at the level of
editing technique.
  One 1934 account attributed wide variations in a French film’s total number of shots
to specific sound-film production methods: a post-synchronized “film reposant sur la
technique ‘cinéma’” might comprise up to 900 shots (in which each shot was filmed
separately, in silent-era fashion) whereas a direct-recorded “vaudeville filmé” might
include 400 shots or less.11 At a general level, this sort of technical breakdown among
types of sound films can be helpful. It seems generally true, for instance, that high shot
counts are likely in films made by directors with modernist or avant-garde back-
grounds, disposed perhaps to practice “la technique ‘cinéma.’” For instance, Le Parfum
de la dame en noir (1931, Marcel L’Herbier) has 844 shots, some three hundred more
than the national feature-film norm for 1930-1933 of 547.12 La Fin du monde (1930, Abel
Gance) another celebrated film-modernist, likewise features an unusually high number
of shots, as do the first three films that Clair directed at Tobis Films Sonores, all of which
feature ASLs under nine seconds. Indicative here also are films such as Fantômas (1932,
Pál Féjos), Le Chien qui rapporte, and Le Triangle de feu (1932, Edmond Gréville), all
with exceptionally low ASLs (i.e., under five seconds), as well as cutting patterns famil-
iar to silent-era modernist montage.
  The French film industry appears to confirm characterizations of sound-film tech-
nique as a function of the filmmakers’ intentions with regard to distribution, although
in a national rather than international context. Geared to making films not for export
but for the domestic film market alone, French film companies of the early 1930s –
notably Pathé-Natan, the country’s largest production company, but also other firms,
such as Braunberger-Richebé – adhered to an understanding of sound-film technique
that differed from that in Germany and the United States, an understanding according
to which fiction filmmaking was seen in terms of recording rather than assembly.


Conclusion

  The figures and analysis presented above suggest some possibilities offered by statis-
tical analysis for multiple versions study. But statistical analysis can also constitute
research phenomena on a smaller scale than the broad style trends considered here,
most typically, the hundreds of shots comprising a feature film.13
  In allowing for precise comparisons of different versions of the same title, micro-level
analyses of this sort may offer possibilities for an improved understanding of the mul-
tiple version phenomenon. One place to begin is with how differences in cutting pace
may imply producers’ assumptions concerning the tastes of particular national audi-

                                                                                           ­59
CHARLES O’BRIEN

ences. Consider, for instance, English and German language versions of Der blaue Engel
(1930, Joseph von Sternberg), which feature an average-shot-length difference – 12.2 sec-
onds for the German version, versus 10.2 for the English – homologous with the two-
second difference in American/European averages for the early 1930s discussed above.
Comparable differences in editing pace between English and German versions are evi-
dent in other multiple versions during this period. For instance, F.P.1 antwortet nicht
(1932, Karl Hartl) features an ASL of 8.5, whereas the English version yields an ASL of
6.3; likewise, the German Die singende Stadt (1931, Carmine Gallone), with its ASL of
25.9, is cut much more slowly than the English City of Song (1931, C. Gallone), whose
ASL works out to 15.8.14
  Are these differences between German and English versions simply accidental, or do
constitute a pattern or trend? If they suggest a pattern, what does the latter imply con-
cerning the filmmakers’ intentions? Do these figures indicate, for instance, an under-
standing on the filmmakers’ part that English-speaking audiences, accustomed to
American films, preferred relatively rapid cutting?
  In the meantime, an implication of the research presented above is that industrial-
scale multiple-version production in the United States and in Germany opened the way
in those countries’ film industries for a pre-designed modular film-sound technique,
whereby scenes were assembled, according to plan, from separate and interchangeable
components. In contrast, the French film industry’s domestic-market emphasis seems
to have allowed for an ongoing commitment to improvised simultaneous sound-image
recording throughout conversion, and hence to evolve in a stylistic direction different
from that of the export-oriented German and American film industries, a direction
entailing the widespread use of direct-sound techniques largely abandoned in
Hollywood and in the German film industry during 1930-1932, the peak years of multi-
ple-version production.



1 With respect to recorded sound’s impact on editing technique, see Don Fairservice, Film
  Editing: History, Theory and Practice (Manchester-New York: Manchester University Press,
  2001); Karel Reisz, Gavin Millar, The Technique of Film Editing (London: Focal, 1968).
2 Concerning the extent of the German film industry’s commitment to multiple-version pro-
  duction during 1930-1932, see Joseph Garncarz, “Making Films Comprehensible and Popular
  Abroad”, CINÉMA & CIE., no. 4 Nataša Ďurovičová with the collaboration of Hans-Michael
  Bock (eds.), Multiple and Multiple-language Versions/Version multiples (Spring 2004), pp.
  72-79; Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London-New York: Routledge, 2000).
3 Concerning Pommer’s ideas on the sound-era “international film,” see: Ursula Hardt, From
  Caligari to California: Eric Pommer’s Life in the International Film Wars (Providence, Rhode
  Island: Berghahn, 1996), p. 128; Wolfgang Mühl-Benninghaus, Das Ringen um den Tonfilm:
  Strategien der Electro- und der Filmindustrie in den 20er und 30er Jahren (Düsseldorf: Droste,
  1999), p. 243.
4 A variety of dubbing-related examples of this sort of modularity are examined in Nataša
  Ďurovičová, “Local Ghosts: Dubbing Bodies in Early Sound Cinema,” in Anna Antonini (ed.),
  Il film e suoi multipli/Film and Its Multiples (Udine: Forum, 2002), pp. 83-98. The quote from
  Pommer appears in Corinna Müller, Vom Stummfilm zum Tonfilm (München: Wilhelm
  Fink, 2003), p. 297.

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                                                  MULTIPLE LANGUAGE VERSIONS AND NATIONAL FILMS

5 An expanded version of the research presented in this paper can be found in my book
   Cinema’s Conversion to Sound, forthcoming from Indiana University Press.
6 See René Clair, “The Art of Sound,” in Elisabeth Weis, John Belton (eds.), Sound Film: Theory
   and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 95.
7 For alternative approaches to computing the ASL, see Barry Salt, “Statistical Style Analysis of
   Motion Pictures”, Film Quarterly, Vol. 28, no. 1 (1974), pp. 13-22.
8 See Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (London: Starword, 19922),
   pp. 214-216.
9 Salt doesn’t provide an ASL average for French films during 1930-1933. The figures reported
   here are based on my own analysis of a sample of fifty-four French films made during these
   years.
10 The standard deviation figures cited for Salt in Table I are not provided by Salt but derived
   from my own computations, based on data extrapolated from graphs in B. Salt, Film Style and
   Technology, cit., p. 214, p. 216.
11 In Arthur Hoerée, “Le Travail du film sonore”, La Revue musicale, no. 151 (December 1934),
   p. 64.
12 This figure was generated from a sample of twenty French films of 1930-1933 whose running
   times exceeded sixty-five minutes.
13 With respect to the statistical analysis of individual films, see the writings by Barry Salt list-
   ed in these footnotes; and also Thomas Elsaesser, Warren Buckland, “Mise en scène, Criticism
   and Statistical Style Analysis”, in Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie
   Analysis (London: Arnold, 2002), pp. 80-116.
14 The ASL computations reported in this paragraph were based on a study of films and videos
   shown at the MAGIS Gradisca International Film Studies Spring School, and ought to be ver-
   ified by a second examination. For films viewed on Pal or Secam video, the ASL figures were
   multiplied by 1.04 to compensate for the slight speed increase (i.e., 25 rather than 24 frames
   per second).




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