Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		3.5

Soundies: The Ultimate Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 24, 2023

If you're like many film fans, the terms "silents" and "talkies" are instantly recognizable and identifiable, but - soundies? Those "in the know" will already be aware that the Soundie "phenomenon" (if it ever really rose to that level) was rather short lived, existing from circa 1940 to 1947, courtesy of the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago (viewers will note that several Soundie productions bear the production entity name Minoco, an abbreviation of the company name). Mills made its name with any number of coin operated machines, including slots, jukeboxes and the delightfully labeled Panoram, a "jukebox" of sorts that allowed a customer to play a 3 minute (or so) Soundie for the princely price of a dime. The Panoram held a loop of 16mm film that featured eight Soundies, and customers were unable (as in the case of an actual jukebox) to choose which short they saw, as they simply had to settle for whatever was next up in the queue (hey, this is starting to sound like reviewing Blu-rays). Soundies may have lacked a lot of gloss and technical finesse, but they offer a really fascinating overview of all sorts of music genres (and a few other specialty acts) that helped to give the forties and especially the wartime forties their flavor.

The all knowing internets tell me there have been a number of documentaries about Soundies that quite understandably aired on PBS (one assumes during Pledge Week), and it looks like Thunderbean Animation also released a compendium a few years ago, no doubt due to the fact that, as archivist and Soundie and Panoram expert Mark Cantor discusses in several supplements on these discs, the Soundies are "orphan films", in that no one owns them anymore and they're in the public domain. What sets this four disc collection apart, aside from the number of Soundies it offers, is that it's a curated collection, with some appealing and interesting groupings of films, and a number of insightful introductions given by Susan Delson (one minor quibble: I wish interview producers would stop "stylizing" their interviews by weirdly cutting from a full frontal POV where the interview subject is speaking directly to the camera to a three quarters framing where the speaker is staring off into the side of your screen).

Delson, along with Ina Archer, Media Conservationist at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and who is wisely on hand to contribute to a number of introductions for Soundies that prominently feature black performers, do a good job a knitting together various Soundies to offer at times quite provocative looks at things like gender norms, the role of women during wartime, and how the Soundies treated two of their breakout stars, Dorothy Dandridge and Gale Storm, both the same at times, and then quite differently at others. And in fact it may be the incredible archival video of now unfortunately lesser remembered black musicians where Soundies really provides a service of sorts, allowing subsequent generations to see some true trailblazers in a variety of genres.

Soundies: The Ultimate Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Soundies: The Ultimate Collection is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber Classics, an imprint of Kino Lorber, with AVC encoded 1080p transfers in 1.33:1. As Mark Cantor gets into, while the Soundies were originally shot on 35mm, they were almost immediately reduced to 16mm for actual "exhibition" in Panorams across the globe, and while some of Cantor's interview segments seem to suggest that 35mm elements still exist somewhere, it looks to me like these were sourced from sometimes pretty raggedy looking 16mm. Cantor actually commendably gets into why the quality is so bad on some of these, since once Soundies ceased production and the catalog was sold to another company, they got copied and copied and copied some more. The result of all of this is that expectation bars need to be set realistically. There are all sorts of problems that accrue throughout the presentations on the four discs, including tons of very bad scratches and nicks, actual missing frames, huge emulsion bubbles that appear and then ebb, frame instability, wonky contrast and just about any other age related anomaly you can think of. That said, the imagery is often surprisingly spry, at least in passing, and all of the Soundies exhibit a properly gritty texture which, along with that aforementioned unignorable damage, argues against any aggressive digital scrubbing.

Soundies: The Ultimate Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The same lowered expectations bar that I suggest should accompany approaching the video is also recommended for the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono tracks on the Soundies. As is discussed in some of the supplements, all of these shorts were prerecorded and then the performers lip- finger- and or otherwise- synched to the audio, and as such as they often say with Italian releases in particular, "synch can be loose". But even more problematically, there's the same kind of damage in evidence on the audio side as there is on the video, and some in fact is linked to the video, as in moments where there are missing frames and you get to miss some of a song. Background hiss and crackle is the norm, and there are occasional issues with wobble that can affect pitch. Optional English subtitles are available.

Soundies: The Ultimate Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• Birth of the Soundies (HD; 14:14) is the first of several interviews with author and archivist Mark Cantor scattered throughout the four discs in this set, here giving some background on the technology.


• From the Vaults (HD; 8:05) features Matt Barton and Mike Mashon from the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center at the Library of Congress discussing preservation efforts.

Disc Two

• Inside the Panoram (HD; 3:45) offers Mark Cantor giving an up close and personal tour of a Panoram. Yes, he evidently has one (or several).

Disc Three

• Modes of Production (HD; 6:39) features Mark Cantor discussing how the "production line" aspect of Soundies required a "particular set of skills".


• The Minoco Logo (HD; 1:57) takes a look at various ways the Mills Novelty Company introduced some of its Soundies. Kind of hilariously, this has no sound.

Disc Four

• Epilogue (HD; 7:26) features Mark Cantor once again, this time discussing both the legacy of the Soundies.


• Celebrating the Chorus Line (HD; 21:41) offers a closing aggregation of Soundies, which do have "marquee" stars but also feature ensembles.

Additionally, an incredibly informative insert booklet is included which offers writing by Delson and Cantor, along with a wealth of background on the Soundies in this collection. Finally, packaging features a slipcover.

Soundies: The Ultimate Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is one of those relatively rare releases where the technical merits are frankly not all that hot, and yet where I still feel the release is of some considerable value. The "curation" of the Soundies is especially notable (no musical pun intended), and helps to elevate this collection substantially. The introductions are typically excellent, as are the included supplements, especially the first rate insert booklet. With technical merit caveats noted, Recommended.