The Essay

The live music and sound effects, the unruly audiences, the performers paid to interpret mysterious foreign intertitles, the usherettes spraying the audience with disinfectant. Matthew Sweet explores the sound-world of cinema's beginnings, from the orchestras of big-budget epics to the small improvising bands of the fleapits - and discovers how their ghosts haunt the modern cinemagoing experience.First broadcast September 2013.