Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
If I were teaching a film history class I'd either be very vague on this part or I'd have to go into more detail listing all the intermediate stages. And what was really the first full-length feature film with a live-recorded dialogue and music soundtrack throughout? It must have come after both DON JUAN and THE JAZZ SINGER.
Yes, it comes after those two landmark films: Lights of New York. It is interesting to note that all three were released by Warner Brothers and that all three used a Vitaphone sound-on-disc process that would quickly become obsolete.

I do get into a lot of detail when I teach the transition to sound. It's a most fascinating period in film history. BTW, a current debate among film historians concerns whether the need to enclose the noisy cameras in a booth and the unidirectionality of early microphones resulted in films with little or no camera movement. There is evidence of that, as well as evidence that filmmakers managed to make dynamic films anyway.