Lights of New York

The first feature in which everybody talks, all the way through, and it is a gangster picture. Warner Bros. began it as a two-reel Vitaphone short and let Bryan Foy keep shooting until it ran under an hour, so it has the shape of a dare. The microphones were hidden in telephones and flower vases, and the actors lean in towards them. Hawk Miller, the boss, gets the line that went round the country: "Take him for a ride." Listen to the nightclub, where for the first time an audience could hear a room of strangers talking over a band. Watch Gladys Brockwell as Molly, the boss’s discarded girl: the ending belongs to her.