Compared with Hollywood and other Western film industries, Chinese cinema’s transition from silent films to full-length talkies was gradual, spanning nearly six years, from 1931 to 1937. Shaped by technological, political, financial, and cultural conditions, this period was not simply a delayed version of Hollywood’s sound revolution. The coexistence of different sound practices–including synchronized music and songs on phonograph records, live musical accompaniment, and, in some venues, silence–created a varied and inventive cinematic culture that connected local experiences with transnational developments. Here, silent and partial-sound films compelled audiences to imagine what they could not hear and prompted different forms of accompaniment that shaped cinematic expression and the audience’s audiovisual experience.
During this transition period, there was no single standard for a night at the movies. Audiences experienced wildly hybrid formats: some films used sound-on-disc technology to sync phonograph records for specific theme songs, others relied on live theater musicians, and many remained physically silent. The messy and sometimes chaotic coexistence of technology forced directors to master the art of imagined sound. By using vivid visual cues, filmmakers triggered the audience’s internal mental hearing, transforming viewers into active acoustic participants who filled in the silence with their own aural imaginations.
Shi Dongshan’s 1931 film Yinhan shuangxing (Two stars in the Milky Way) offers a compelling example of this distinctive sound culture. Produced by the progressive Lianhua Film Company, the partial-sound film portrays the entertainment industry while bringing traditional Chinese musical sensibilities into dialogue with international cinematic trends. Its use of the era’s technological limitations highlights how early Chinese sound cinema transformed constraint into creative possibility. The film also features the role of imagined sound, suggesting that cinema’s most evocative sounds may be those audiences hear in their minds.
This according to “Mental hearing of sound: The evocation and mediation of acoustic experience in Two stars in the Milky Way (1931)” by Ling Zhang, The Routledge companion to global film music in the early sound era, ed. by Jeremy Barham (New York: Routledge, 2024, 517–529; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2024-1143).
