"...this shattering blow of audible speech"

An interesting newspaper article from April 27, 1928, via Silent Orchestra (Facebook page). Click here to view a graphic reproduction at G00gl3 news.

The most alarming thing on the horizon is the production of a number of hasty and poorly executed talking pictures, which after the first flush of novelty has worn off, will leave the public disgusted and disillusioned. This will be an easy and expeditious way of killing the golden goose. It is all too likely to happen and to lead to a serious set back to the talking film.

In my opinion, they accurately foresaw the future of film but not for the right reason. I think that the silent movie was an aberration and that the talking film went further to restoring story-telling to a more natural method. After all, the precursors of film: theater and even more ancient "'round-the-fire" story-telling relied on the spoken word. Silent film wasn't a protection against bad movies, it was just the first step in killing the art of story-telling.

Good article, though. Scroll up and read some other articles to compare how different and detailed newspaper reporting was 80 years ago to how it is now, when even newspaper articles are written in soundbites.