1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… High up in the sky we float. We turn to observe the neighbourhood. But wait, no: we are drawn towards them, more than a dozen people. And so we go, down, down, down to the earth. All because of that sweet tune, we are so eager to explore this fresh world beyond. And so goes sound’s first great crane shot (I love it, and I suppose I’m a very bad poet). From the very man who opposed the new technology came France’s first internationally successful talkie, Sous les Toits de Paris. “It is not without a shudder” wrote Rene Clair in 1927 “that one learns that some American manufacturers, among the most dangerous, see in the talking picture the entertainment of the future, and that they are already working to bring about this dreadful prophecy”. It wasn’t the primitive technology that worried him, it was the mere suggestion of merging sound and image. After all, imagine if you came to a museum to admire a painting that had only been made in order for a film to be projected onto it.