Strange as it sounds, Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni played a his­toric role in the intro­duc­tion of talk­ing motion pic­tures.

Through­out the ear­ly 1920s, var­i­ous sound tech­nolo­gies for cin­e­ma were test­ed and exhib­it­ed pub­licly. By 1927 two rival com­pa­nies were on the home stretch in the race to intro­duce a viable syn­chro­nized sound sys­tem for wide­spread com­mer­cial use in the­aters. Warn­er Bros. had invest­ed heav­i­ly in a record­ing-on-disc method trade-named “Vita­phone,” and would unveil the first fea­ture film with record­ed dia­logue sequences, The Jazz Singer, on Octo­ber  6, 1927. Mean­while the Fox Film Cor­po­ra­tion was devel­op­ing a sound-on-film tech­nol­o­gy, called “Movi­etone,” that would lat­er become the indus­try stan­dard.  With Movi­etone the audio was record­ed as a vari­able-den­si­ty opti­cal track on the film, along­side the visu­al image, instead of on a sep­a­rate gramo­phone record.

To beat Warn­er Bros. to the punch, Fox pre­miered its Movi­etone fea­ture Sun­rise, by the Ger­man expres­sion­ist film­mak­er F.W. Mur­nau, at Times Square in New York on Sep­tem­ber 23, 1927, two weeks ahead of The Jazz Singer. Mur­nau’s film had syn­chro­nized music and sound effects, but no dia­logue. The heav­i­ly pub­li­cized event includ­ed the screen­ing of a pair of Movi­etone news­reels: one of the Vat­i­can choir, the oth­er of Mus­soli­ni. “See and Hear ‘The Man of the Hour’ His Excel­len­cy Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, Pre­mier of Italy,” said a Fox adver­tise­ment. “He speaks to you and lives before your eyes on the Movi­etone!” The ground-break­ing news­reel was a pub­lic­i­ty coup for both the movie com­pa­ny and the dic­ta­tor. Film his­to­ri­an Don­ald Crafton pro­vides some back­ground in his book The Talkies: Amer­i­can Cin­e­ma’s Tran­si­tion to Sound, 1926–1931:

On 20 April 1927, Charles Pet­ti­john, gen­er­al coun­sel for the Hays Office and head of the Film Boards of Trade, was meet­ing with Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni. He sug­gest­ed that the dic­ta­tor sit for a film­ing, and Mus­soli­ni, a long­time film buff, read­i­ly agreed. Il Duce liked the result so much that he ‘is hav­ing a talk­ing film pre­pared that will show his dai­ly activ­i­ties.’ Mus­soli­ni report­ed­ly said, ‘Let me speak through [the news­reel] in twen­ty cities in Italy once a week and I need no oth­er pow­er.’ This film would enable him to appear in pub­lic with no threat of assas­si­na­tion.

The orig­i­nal ver­sion of the “Mus­soli­ni Movi­etone” includ­ed footage of Fas­cist reg­i­ments drilling, and a grand intro­duc­tion of the dic­ta­tor by the Amer­i­can ambas­sador to Italy, Hen­ry P. Fletch­er. “I am very glad,” Mus­soli­ni says in the news­reel, “to be able to express my friend­ly feel­ings towards the Amer­i­can nation, friend­ship with which Italy looks at the mil­lions of cit­i­zens, who from Alas­ka to Flori­da, from the Pacif­ic to the Atlantic, live in the Unit­ed States, which lay deeply root­ed in our hearts.” Four­teen years lat­er Italy and the Unit­ed States were at war, and less than four years after that, on April 28, 1945, Mus­soli­ni was killed by his own peo­ple. They made a news­reel about that, too.

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If you’ve nev­er watched a doc­u­men­tary by Ken Burns, maybe you just haven’t had the time. Ten hours for The Civ­il War, eigh­teen and a half for Base­ball, near­ly nine­teen for Jazz; such blocks can be dif­fi­cult to carve out, even when you’re carv­ing them out for the mas­ter audio­vi­su­al sto­ry­teller of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Burns takes on such icon­ic sub­jects, and in so doing attracts so much acclaim — includ­ing the inim­itable form of recog­ni­tion that is a spoof on The Simp­sons — that he seems like some­one whose work you should know well, even if you’ve only glimpsed it or heard it ref­er­enced. Luck­i­ly, film­mak­ers Tom Mason and Sarah Klein have put togeth­er a doc­u­men­tary of their own, one on Ken Burns, that you can watch no mat­ter how packed your sched­ule. In a mere five min­utes, Ken Burns: On Sto­ry con­veys just enough of impor­tance about Burns’ per­son­al­i­ty, work­ing prin­ci­ples, and world­view that it may leave you feel­ing like you have no choice but to dive into his fil­mog­ra­phy imme­di­ate­ly.

Of course, this all depends on how you feel about sto­ry­telling. In explain­ing his own view on film­mak­ing, Burns rolls out that old quote from Jean Luc-Godard, “Cin­e­ma is truth at twen­ty-four frames a sec­ond.” But he has his own response to the famous procla­ma­tion: “Maybe. It’s lying twen­ty-four times a sec­ond, too. All the time. All sto­ry is manip­u­la­tion.” With as much vehe­mence as Godard has aired his griev­ances about how the forces of sto­ry, plot, and nar­ra­tive hope­less­ly and per­verse­ly dis­tort artis­tic truth, Burns declares his accep­tance and even admi­ra­tion of that ele­ment of sto­ry­telling. To him, craft­ing a prop­er sto­ry requires manip­u­la­tion, but he does­n’t con­sid­er all manip­u­la­tive tech­niques equal. “Is there accept­able manip­u­la­tion? You bet,” he declares. “Peo­ple say, ‘Oh boy, I was so moved to tears by your film.’ That’s a good thing? I manip­u­lat­ed that!” And even if you feel you have no stake in mat­ters of sto­ry, truth, and manip­u­la­tion, keep watch­ing; Mason and Klein even­tu­al­ly get Burns talk­ing about some­thing that would fas­ci­nate any­one: his desire to “wake the dead.”

(See also the Atlantic’s inter­view with Mason and Klein about the mak­ing of Ken Burns: On Sto­ry.)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.