Anna, qu'est-ce que t'attends?

Modern Americans often believe that talking pictures began in 1927 with Al Jolson's performance in *The Jazz Singer*, but the history of sound in film is much older. Thomas Edison had already envisioned combining the phonograph with motion pictures even before either technology was fully developed, and a test sequence was created as early as 1895. By the time this "phonoscene" was made, Alice Guy was already directing a series of such films, and a similar project was in production in Germany. However, achieving true synchronization remained a challenge, as records wore out and film reels broke, until the development of sound recorded directly onto film.