I haven’t really watched enough early '30s movies to judge, and most of the late 1930s movies have pretty spectacular sound quality (actors over-enunciating, zero background noise, etc.) but those first few years, were there any bugs that needed to be worked out?
I ask because it only seems logical that Hollywood was eager to come into the sound period, and it must have been technical problems that held them back as long as it did, so what kinks needed to work themselves out, and which films still exhibit some of these problems? I saw an early Lubitsch film the other night that was mostly silent, long stetches of action without dialogue–was that because it was hard to get sound right or just because that was the practice of directors of silents?
There were plenty of bugs – microphones were too sensitive or not sensitive enough. Sound equipment had to be kept in a sealed booth (that hindered mobility), and so on. If you look at early sound films, the camera isn’t as mobile as it could be, because of that clumsy “boat” for the sound recording equipment. In The Cocoanuts, the first extant Marx Brothers movie, I understand that the newspapers Groucho is holding had to be soaked with water, because otherwise the rustling of the dry paper was picked up by the microphones and swamped the sound of conversation.
Very early sound films – from 1929 and 1930 (The Jazz Singer, for example) often had long stretches of silence because they were mostly shot silent, with just a few sound sequences. However, films very early on were 100% sound as a marketing point. For the Lubitsch, I suspect the long sequences had no sound because it was difficult to put a music track on them in post production.
Singin’ in the Rain has a parody of how difficult it was to record sound for early talkies. It’s exaggerated, but most of the problems portrayed were concerns at the time.