A. F. SHORIN’S SYSTEM AND THE “SOUND TURN” AT LENFILM

Prilutskaya Glafira Igorevna

This article interprets the transition from silent to sound cinema in Leningrad as a production-and-engineering transformation: the film shifts from a visual product accompanied in the theatre to a reproducible audiovisual object in which sound is embedded in the material carrier and governed by studio control. Focusing on the Leningrad trajectory from the late 1920s to the first half of the 1930s, the article examines how the rivalry between recording architectures and between Soviet optical-sound schools drove a technological selection in favor of solutions that were robust in distribution and scalable through standardization. It is argued that Shorin’s key contribution was not limited to the variable-area optical soundtrack, but also included the shorinophone as a sound-production instrument: long-duration multi-track electromechanical recording on 35mm film, accumulation and preparation of sound materials, repeatable takes, and the transferability of recorded sound across workflows. As a result, sound at Lenfilm in 1930–1934 became an autonomous production stage, reshaping both studio infrastructure and the professional composition of film crews.

Keywords:sound cinema; Lenfilm; A. F. Shorin; shorinophone; optical soundtrack; variable area; variable density; P. G. Tager; sound-on-film