By the Side of the Zuyder Zee (1907)

A Cinematophone singing film which was originally intended to play with a sound on a disc. A simple mechanism would approximately synchronise the sound and picture. The disc for this film does not survive, but this popular song of 1906 by A.J. Mills (lyrics) and Bennett Scott (music) does survive in printed form. The scene is a beach representing the Zuyder Zee (the inlet on Holland's North Sea coast that was dammed some 20 years after this film was made), and the singer appears in Dutch costume, singing to camera. In the backgorund there are some children playing giving an impression of depth and the picturesque to the scene.