The effects of a new medium are not always clearly positive or clearly negative right away. There are cycles of technology and mediums becoming obsolete in the form of the phrase, “Out with the old; in with the new!”: radio to television in homes, landlines, and fax machines to personal cellular devices, and, of course, the transition from silent movies to “talkies” with the addition of sound. Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, his latest film, treats an audience to a marvelous reminder of the rewards of what the advances in technology on a grand scale can bring to an industry such as film, but, also, introduces multiple perspectives of the consequences, struggles, and successes that come with it.
The consequences, simply defined as a result of an action, of the “talkies” were largely positive ones for the industry. After all, it infinitely advanced the medium to the degree that the determining ideas of “what is possible” is still being explored today in 2023 at every technical and creative level available. The convergence of sound in film and television did more than give screen actors lines to remember, but planted a seed into the mind of the audience to wonder what could be. Today, the technology has propelled itself into the cornerstone of our society and culture as a platform for forums of entertainment, news, the arts, and ideas.
Babylon, a fictional retelling of Hollywood’s history based on the true events, alleged anecdotes, and the trails of the mysteries left from the stars of the 1920s and 30s, delivers a wildly suggestive and provocative look at how the change in how movies were made impacted an individual. It also hints as the fictional inspiration for the real 1952 film, Singin’ in the Rain, which is important to note as it was a happy-go-lucky recount of overcoming the obstacles of the implementation of sound to adapt a drama into a musical.
Chazelle himself deemed sound a “a wrecking ball hitting a fragile society still in its infancy, still figuring out its own parameters, and surveying the damage that wrecking ball causes (Crow).” Just as new technology either repurposes or makes obsolete that of which came before, viewing this changing of the guard for the film industry left debris in its wake. Chazelle took his time to provide his own examination of just some examples of the debris and “damage” done to his group of semi-satirical characters from the early days of Hollywood through his script, provided by Samantha Bergeson of Indiewire, across a film released with a three hour run time: a star slowly being snuffed out, the effects of the self-policed “Hays Code” of morality where the mere image of words and the words themselves being said on and off set mattered for once, and the exploitation of race.
In the days of silent films, typically every story primarily featured a romance between a leading man and the beautiful starlet. Perhaps the most popular leading man of all the silent romances and dramas was John, sometimes called Jack, Gilbert. Nicknamed, “The Great Lover,” his grandest roles were The Merry Widow and The Big Parade. Each new partnership with his leading actress came with rumors of romance off set, which mostly turned out to be true. He was as suave and as captivating as any of today’s stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney, and, yes, Brad Pitt. Pitt portrayed a fictional character in Chazelle’s Babylon named Jack Conrad who drew the most inspiration from the sad life of Gilbert, according to Chazelle. Gilbert, either due to a rumored-displeasure with his voice or, more likely, poor relationships in behind-the-scenes studio politics, saw his career fade before his eyes before he was found dead in 1932 at the age of 39 due to a heart attack.
Conrad’s story focuses more on the voice issue as he sees himself be passed over with the passing of time. In 1951, Adela Rogers St. Johns, known for her success as a female reporter with celebrity exclusives, said this of Gilbert:
“John Gilbert had just signed a new MGM contract calling for $1,000,000. Came the Talkies and he was worthless at the box office than a bag of popcorn. No man has hurtled from so high a pinnacle so fast. Three little words destroyed his fame, his fortune, his future. He was the first man to say ‘I love you’ in the Talkies. The audience laughed. That was the death-knell of Jack Gilbert. His voice didn’t match the screen personality the audiences worshiped. Today [sound] mixers and proper direction would make it okay (Bizarre LA).”
Sure enough, Chazelle provides references to Singin’ in the Rain as if Conrad’s initial film efforts were the inspiration for the fictional film, The Dueling Cavalier, within Gene Kelly’s 1952 spectacle. The audience sees Chazelle employ those references to another character, Nellie LaRoy, as well. Chazelle spoke in depth regarding these similarities and why he chose to tell the particular version of Gilbert’s life that he did:
“The version of Gilbert, which is the version I believe a little more if you look at his sound films—he doesn’t sound that bad to me—it’s something subtler and more insidious than that. It’s not as simple as just he opened his mouth and some kind of very comically bad voice came out. Gilbert has this beautiful quote where he says, ‘It’s not that I had a bad voice, it’s that I had a voice (Crow).’”
Chazelle laments this “insidious” nature of the time through his screenplay by propping the lead Conrad to the status of a protagonist as he delivers monologue after monologue coming to grips with where films stand in the hearts and eyes of “the lonely man” that he wishes to inspire all over the country and within himself. Fresh from being married to a Broadway actress, he finds himself in arguments with his new bride about “high art.” It only increases the tragic nature of his tale because he remained hopeful of what sound meant to his passion and place in the world. He wanted to be a part of it:
JACK: Point is, I think movies are just as profound. And with sync sound -- which, who knows, could be what the discovery of perspective was to painting -- what I think we have here in Hollywood is a high art (Chazelle).
Conrad seems to finally realize his place in the world, or the lack thereof, in perhaps the most important monologue in the film delivered by Jean Smart. Smart portrays a character named Elinor St. John who is based on a combination of Louella Parsons and the journalist St. Johns mentioned above. St. Johns was quoted delivering a scathing recapitulation of Gilbert’s life long after he passed; Smart’s character, St. John, delivers a recapitulation of Conrad’s to his face in the same vein after he approached her when she asked, “Is Jack Conrad through?” in a magazine’s cover story. At this point, he had recently snuck into a premiere of his own film where an entire audience laughs at his delivery of weakly written dialogue in a romantic scene. It is a near frame-by-frame reference to a similar scene with Singin’ in the Rain, except, unlike Don Lockwood with his close knit crew of supporters where they come up with the idea to save their film by making it a musical, Conrad is alone and does nothing.
ELINOR ST. JOHN:Have you ever wondered why, when a house catches fire, the people die and the cockroaches survive?…What happened is you thought the house needed you. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t need you any more than it needs the roaches. So the roaches, knowing this, crawl into the dark, lay low and make it through. See, you held the spotlight, but it’s those of us in the dark -- the ones who just watched -- who survive…
JACK: ...A house fire...
ELINOR ST. JOHN: There’ll be a hundred more like it, too. An earthquake could wipe this town off the map and it wouldn’t make a difference. It’s the idea that sticks. There’ll be a hundred more Jack Conrads, a hundred more me’s, a hundred more conversations just like this one -- over and over again until God knows when. [a beat; and then, the sinker –] Because it’s bigger than you (Chazelle).
Conrad gets a call for a shoot from Irving Thalberg, an executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Thalberg is also one of the film’s few characters who shares the same name and position as a real-life person. Conrad agreed to it on the condition of honesty, and Irving admitted to the shoot being “shit.” While on set, he sees all the men working on the production, and notices how old they are. One mentioned that the current film was he and Conrad’s eighty-second together. Cut to a hotel lobby, where he is drinking and catching up with Lady Fay Zhu, a former star who lost her jobs due to outdated image concerns for the production companies. He admits that his latest film is “another giant swing at mediocrity.” Then, he laments one of his more repeated observations of the film:
JACK: It was the most magical place in the world... Wasn’t it?... I’m tired… The thing is, it’s ok... I was the luckiest bastard in the world. And I had a good run (Chazelle).
Chazelle then follows Conrad in one shot through the hotel lobby, up a winding staircase, past a conversation with a bellman where Conrad tips him all the cash in his pocket, unlocks a room door, and goes in. The camera stops to leer into the room just a bit. He exits the frame, wanders into a room, comes out back into frame with a gun and a cigarette as he strolls into a bathroom back out of frame. Then, before a hard cut to another storyline, a gunshot.
John Gilbert was a box office draw of a male lead role. For women, there was a sort of draw for sophisticated romantic dramas or, in the case of Babylon’s Nellie LaRoy, a wild “it girl.” LaRoy, portrayed by Margot Robbie, explained that she was a star before she even landed her first role and uses this ideology throughout the film:
NELLIE: You don’t become a star, honey. You either are one or you aren’t. And I am (Chazelle).
Sure enough, she dazzles everyone on the set of her first film where she is tasked to cry on command. Then, she dazzles everyone on the set of her second film, and then, her third. Remaining absolutely beautiful on camera, off camera she is a crude and seductive individual who winds up capturing the hearts, and primarily the eyes, of the world. Everything is easy for her until she has her first talking role.
Her character’s role was mainly based on Clara Bow. Bow, also a flapper actress from New Jersey, starred in The Wild Party (1929). Chazelle mentioned in an interview that the rumors were that she blew the sound valves with her first attempt on the set of a talkie with a screeching high-pitched, “Hello, everybody!” Chazelle replicates this in his film where LaRoy exclaims, “Hello, college!” From there, the next five minutes are a derailment into chaos as the audience is shown the technical challenges for a production transitioning into a new process of development (Crow). On silent film sets, an actor could hear real time direction from their directors as all sorts of other silent films and loud chaos is occuring simultaneously because who else would hear it? On the silent sets of the talkies, however, there was far more rigidity and not enough experienced structure and planning to adapt to the needs of the technology.
The rigidity was not limited to the production aspect of Hollywood, but it began to encroach itself upon the society as a whole. Beginning in 1930, films began to be self-regulated by a production code which came to be colloquially known as the “Hays Code.” The wild exploits and news of overdosages, deaths, sexually taboo escapades began to disgust political leaders of the country, and to prevent government intervention on the industry, self-regulation measures were put in place. A major proponent of the codes was Will H. Hays. Hays was a key figure in republican politics and was a dedicated Catholic. A core principle of the production codes stated:
“No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin (Mondello).”
Suddenly, being incredibly seductive and beautiful was not going to cut it for LaRoy, who welcomed being a coveted symbol of seduction and beauty itself.
Her character began to always be looked down upon because of her voice being sharp and high-pitched. Although, it was always subtly hinted at that the problem was really her New Jersey accent, or so it seemed. The degree of the disdain aimed toward her regional accent by the Hollywood high society seemed to be truly aimed at the region itself. Nellie grew up poverty stricken and made it out, but still could not escape the constraints that it held her to. She was proud of where she came from purely because of where she made it to. The high society notably damaged her sense of self-pride in who she was because of her struggles out into fame. Chazelle was incredibly clear this was on purpose:
“You can kind of see the seeds of the problem early on, but the problem is deeper than just a voice…It’s actually much more to do with this whole sort of social changes that were ushered in around this time, either having to do with sound or independent of sound, but certainly concurrent, which was this sort of move from a kind of free spirit, celebrating sexual liberation of a certain kind into a much more puritanical, moral clause-driven culture. It’s also pre-Code to Code as well… You stop seeing sex symbols of the kind like Clara Bow or Nellie LaRoy once you go into the ‘30s outside of certain anomalies, Jean Harlow for example. You really stop seeing that sort of actor where the entire point of their persona is this kind of game that they’re promiscuous as hell, that they’re gonna grab society by the lapels forcefully and shock it and shake the foundations (Crow).”
Manuel “Manny” Torres, played by Diego Calva, is the film’s top riser. He was the first to meet Nellie and fell for her instantly. He winded up accomplishing his dream of working on a movie set by becoming a hand to help after driving Conrad home. Flash forward some years later, and he is directing musicals with Sidney Palmer, an African American trumpeter and bandleader, for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, played by Jovan Adept. Eventually, he is brought back to his initial employer Don Wallach of Kinoscope Studios. His first task is to salvage the image of Nellie LaRoy being an “It Girl” into being a sophisticated actress to be more adaptable to the "more appropriate" Hays code. Helping her with speech lessons and other lessons of elegance initially was, the previously mentioned, Lady Fay Zhu, played by Li Jun Li. She was an Asian-American actress who received stardom for being an exotic example of seduction. Like LaRoy, she embraced it because she knew it got her jobs, but she also did the art for the title cards in the silent films. Well, after rumors of a relationship between the two arose in a tabloid, Manny was was forced to fire her to keep away any distractions:
MANNY: You’re messing with Nellie’s career... [Manny’s holding the TABLOID up to Lady Fay, who’s dressed as elegantly as ever] and we’re trying so hard to get it back on track. There’s a new sensibility now. People care about morals. [Manny hands Fay the tabloid, continues] This sort of thing is no longer acceptable. What I’m trying to say is...Kinoscope can no longer employ you. Your image is not helpful, and we don’t need titles anymore. That’s it. I’m sorry (Chazelle).
The entire time this scene is rolling, there are hard cuts between four storylines including Thalberg recording notes to build upon for future projects. All the notes consist of quick opinions on certain actors and their voices. They are delivered with a sense of detachment as he mentions a Spanish actor having too much of a “south-of-the-border accent” and a leading lady who stutters too much and is then relegated to supporting roles, among others.
Manny and LaRoy arrive at a dinner party where Manny warns that it was her last shot. She almost makes it through all the posh, high society, superficial conversation that the rich men and women surround her with. She almost made it through all of the snide comments at lesser people as they discussed writers and rhetoric seemingly on purpose to expose her for faking an accent like theirs and not being a part of their pseudo-educated club. Well, after being pressured to make a joke, she finally explodes with her normal voice:
NELLIE: Haven’t you heard what they say about me? I’m a degenerate f***** animal. “Oh, Nellie, well you know Nellie -- I mean who knows what she might do? She’s from Jersey, you know...” I know all of you. And all you are is a bunch of moralizin’ hypocrites who’ve done worse than I have but won’t ever be honest about it (Chazelle).
This is where the juxtaposition of LaRoy and Sidney Palmer becomes clear within how they approached the limits society placed on them. LaRoy approached every obstacle with resistance. She refused to adapt to the game of the business, and it resulted in a fading star. Palmer was an African American man in the 1920s and 30s. He did not have a choice but to adapt if he wanted to stay in the game. His talent and work ethic were explicitly stated over and over again. The talent he possessed was shown by centered and focused shots of him playing at all the wild and chaotic parties. These made it seem as though he was the true star of the party. He convinced Manny of this, as well, who began directing his bands for films. His work ethic was shown by how he was revered and respected by his bandmates and in how he gave direction to his players:
SIDNEY: It’s not a threat, it’s just how it is. You keep playing flat, I'm gonna head-butt you in the face.
SAXOPHONIST: Joe, did you hear what he just said? Listen to this psychopath! When are you going to do something??
SIDNEY: You ever heard of Alexander Scriabin? Russian piano player, broke his own hand so his fingers could stretch wider across the keys.
SAXOPHONIST: The f*** do I care about Alexander Scriabin?
SIDNEY: I’m just saying, if I headbutt you it might change the shape of your face and give you a better sound.
SAXOPHONIST: You are f****** deranged, Sidney. Deranged. That’s why none of these guys is ever gonna hire you.
SIDNEY: I’m just talking about being committed to the music (Chazelle).
They knew he was not one to mess around with when it came to his work. It is exactly why he ended up being hired despite the proclamation made by his saxophonist. He eventually arrives at the same party scene where LaRoy and Manuel are. She gets most of the attention, but eventually he is slowly approached until he gets his own crowd of people surrounding him to offer their privileged opinion on the various Negro films of the time, begging and, then demanding, him to play, and, finally before trying to say:
RICH WHITE MAN: I think what your films can offer are olive branches to help heal th–
SIDNEY [fed up, off his watch,]: Ah, that’s my cue, I’m afraid. It’s been a pleas-- RICH WHITE WOMAN: But you have to play for us (Chazelle)!
The scene then immediately cuts to Nellie’s outburst, and he is in shock along with everyone else. It is shocking for a different reason. He’s shocked because he has had to endure attention and conversations of race his whole life and, no doubt, he’s had to bottle up plenty of rage to get to where he is. As the scene’s climax began to near, he began to realize to himself that he was supposed to have made it. These things are still happening- being treated like an exhibit, rich white people trying to tell him how he’s solving racism, and then being expected to perform on the drop of a dime. He’s in shock at Nellie because he spent his whole life bottling up that rage, and she immediately, understandably, released it.
This is where the film arrives at a pivotal scene for Palmer. On the cusp of beginning another filming of his band playing for a movie featuring LaRoy, there’s a discussion between Manny and one of the distribution executives about how, in the lighting, Palmer looks white and, therefore, the band looks mixed. Manny was confused as to why it was a problem because, after all, Palmer was not white, and the band was not mixed. The pressure was on due to LaRoy’s involvement, and there was only solution Manny had available- a can of makeup powder labeled “BURNT CORK.”
After suggesting it would put his band out of work, Palmer agrees and plays in the blackface makeup. Unfortunately, this was just one instance of discrimination of skin color in the film industry and shows a clear impact on a main character. Palmer, while wearing the makeup, kept his eyes locked past the cameras and an upbeat delivers a piece laced with all sorts of riddled fury. Even down to the first-ever talkie film, The Jazz Singer (1927), black face and racism have been prevalent elements throughout the entire history of entertainment. The reason why, in particular, Manny was placed in the situation to ask Palmer was entirely because of racism in the South. There was racism everywhere, absolutely, but in the segregated South, however, a mixed band was not allowed which is why the distribution executive was so concerned (Sietz). Chazelle, once again, felt that the story of Hollywood could not be told without it:
“I wouldn’t say it was exactly the norm, but it had happened enough for it to be noteworthy. The first time I read about it is this Amos and Andy movie, ironically, called Check and Double Check, 1930, where the Duke Ellington Orchestra, or the Juan Tizol wing of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, was playing. It was an all African American band, but two of the musicians were instructed to put cork on their face for the same reasons delivered in the film: Certain theater chains would otherwise not exhibit it if it looked like an interracial band (Crow).”
After the incursion with Manny, Palmer was approached by the same distribution executive who was star struck. He wanted to discuss a future, but never was given a chance. Palmer simply walked away, out of the sound stage, tossed his key into his studio-gifted convertible, and turned in his lot ID. An African-American security guard warns him he would not be allowed back in without it. Then, with all the power and determination he could possess, without a beat, Palmer replies, “It’s ok. I’m not coming back.” Palmer does not reappear much in the third act of the movie. This could be easily seen as a statement in and of itself as Hollywood proceeded to be selective on the appearance of any star of color or someone that was a minority.
He does in fact reappear toward the last few scenes of the film, after Nellie LaRoy fades into a black night while Manny is driven out of LA by goons of a man Nellie owed money to. He is introduced to play in a blues club band at what appears to be an all-black bar. He plays a somber song while a montage plays over newsreels and newspaper clippings of the vast success of movie business, Conrad’s funeral, and then, a small section of a newspaper page that Nellie was found dead. Music slows to a halt.
Cut to 1952. Manny gets off a bus in Los Angeles with a family. His family. He returned to Los Angeles twenty years after barely escaping with his life to New York. Looking up at the entrance of Kinoscope Studios, he tells his daughter in Spanish about how he used to work there. His wife lets him wander around for some space, and he finds himself in a movie theater. While he did not know what was playing, he bought a ticket anyway. It was Singin’ in the Rain. He is quickly overcome with déjà vu, anger, and sorrow as he sees his experiences of the people he knew: Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont who was like Nellie LaRoy with a shrill nasal voice or Gene Kelly as Don Lockwood, a silent screen star like Jack Conrad. He looks around at everyone laughing. He weeps. His tears of anger become tears of laughter as well. Conrad’s speeches seemed to be even more prevalent to Manny. He had heard it over and over again from the one man who wanted nothing more than to be a part of the revolution, yet seemed to be the one man left behind:
JACK: We have to redefine the form! The man who fills your gasoline tank goes to the movies ‘cause he feels less alone there. Don’t we owe him more than the same old shit? You got the guys in Europe with the twelve-tone, you got Bauhaus architecture -- know what I mean, f****** Bauhaus -- and we’re still doing costume pictures??? It’s the dinosaurs, kid -- the ones who get together for f****** meatballs and margaritas in Beverly Hills to reminisce about the good ol’ days when they can’t see there is SO MUCH MORE TO BE DONE... [stomping with emphasis now] We need to innovate! We need to inspire! We need to dream beyond these pesky shells of flesh and bone -- map those dreams onto celluloid -- imprint them into history -- turn today into tomorrow so that tomorrow’s lonely man might look up at that flickering screen and say, for the very first time -- “Eureka! I am not alone (Chazelle).”
Manny wept in awe, grief, agony, and missed opportunity… his past life. A new montage begins with clips in a silent film format from earlier in the movie. It was a reflection on the journey of the characters, who represented archetypes more than actual individuals, with an emphasis on the beauty and talent they all possessed. Any comparison or contrast between Babylon and Singin’ in the Rain comes down to change. The characters of both films saw change in their industry. The differences were their responses to the adversity. Babylon showed attempts, but none felt full hearted. The film reflected similar sentiments of a 1929 magazine cover that proclaimed, “The Microphone—The Terror of the Studios: You can’t get away with it in Hollywood! (Spitzzeri)” Babylon showed that the grass was not always greener for everyone on the other side.
After the flashback, the film cuts to a compilation of iconic scenes from all sorts of famous films in full color that take away the whole screen- the scenes begin with the development of the technology of being able to record moving pictures and take the viewer through a complete history of film all the way to 2022 when this film was released. Manny saw the entire future of film in line with his own past... and just, once again, weeps in silence.
Bibliography
Bergeson, Samantha. “Read Damien Chazelle's 'Babylon' Screenplay for a Dive into the Roaring Hollywood Epic.” IndieWire, IndieWire, 12 Jan. 2023, https://www.indiewire.com/2023/01/read-babylon-script-online-1234798738/.
Chazelle, Damien. Babylon. Directed by Damien Chazelle, Paramount Pictures, 23 December 2022
Crow, David. “Damien Chazelle Breaks down Babylon's Sordid Hollywood History.” Den of Geek, 12 Jan. 2023, https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/damien-chazelle-breaks-down-babylon-hollywood-history/.
Faraci, Devin. “Talkie Terror: The Transition from Silents to Sound.” Birth.Movies.Death., 31 Aug. 2014, https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2014/08/31/talkie-terror-the-transition-from-silents-to-sound.
Mondello, Bob. “Remembering Hollywood's Hays Code, 40 Years On.” NPR, NPR, 8 Aug. 2008, https://www.npr.org/2008/08/08/93301189/remembering-hollywoods-hays-code-40-years-on#:~:text=The%20major%20principles%20governing%20the,%2Ddoing%2C%20evil%20or%20sin.
Seitz, Loree. “The Jazz Singer and Blackface: Hollywood's Long History with Racism.” MovieMaker, 31 Jan. 2023, https://www.moviemaker.com/jazz-singer-blackface-birth-of-a-nation/.
Staff, Bizarre. “John Gilbert - Photos and Quotes.” Bizarre Los Angeles, 19 Jan. 2022, https://bizarrela.com/2017/06/john-gilbert-photos-quotes/.
Spitzzeri, Paul. “That's a Wrap with ‘Photoplay’ Magazine, December 1929.” The Homestead Blog, 21 Dec. 2020, https://homesteadmuseum.blog/2017/11/24/thats-a-wrap-with-photoplay-magazine-december-1929/.
Wilkinson, Alissa. “Babylon's Debauched Old Hollywood Is about Something Much Bigger.” Vox, Vox, 23 Dec. 2022, https://www.vox.com/culture/23516618/babylon-review-chazelle-hollywood.
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