From Silents to Talkies | On the Streets of Istanbul by Muhsin Ertuğrul

First Turkish Talkie

"Istanbul Sokaklarinda/On the Streets of Istanbul", the first joint (Turkish, Egyptian, Greek) production and sound film [1]of Turkish cinema, written by Muhsin Ertuğrul[2] and directed with İhsan İpekçi.

Muhsin Ertuğrul [2]

İhsan İpekçi [3]

The film was shot in Istanbul, Cairo, Alexandria, Athens and Paris, and was screened to the Egyptian Embassy and the Press in Paris on December 21 and in Istanbul on December 30.

It was screened in Melek and Alhambra cinemas on January 1, 1931.

The music of the film was made by Ferit Alnar and Hüseyin Sadettin Arel, and the Cinematographer was Cezmi Ar and Nikolas Farkas. The editing was done by Muhsin Ertuğrul and the decor design was by Vedat Ar, the producer of the film was İpek Film. Starring Talat Artemel (Talat), Semiha Berksoy (Hancı's daughter Semiha), Behzat Butak (Hancı Halil Ağa), Aziza Amir (Semira), Hazım Körmükçü (Hazım) and Bedia Muvahhit (Berber), the film is a high-cost films of the period. was among them.

The film was about two brothers' lives being ruined when they fall in love with the same woman. Rahmi, who works at the bank, fell in love with a singer woman, and his brother Talat had an affair with the same woman. Rahmi was spending all his money with the woman for the sake of his love, and after a while he even started to use the money of the bank he worked for for the woman he fell in love with. The bank management realized the situation and fired Rahmi, and collected the money he used from Rahmi's family. Talat went to his brother to ask for the account of the family that lost all his savings and found his brother and the singer woman drunk.

The waitress, who is the partner of the singer woman, put sleeping pills in her drink to defraud Rahmi. When Talat attacked his brother and threw the glass of medicated drink at Rahmi during the fight, the medicated drink came into Rahmi's eyes and Rahmi's eyes were blinded. The film proceeded with a series of disasters such as the doctors asking for a lot of money for eye surgery, the two brothers' decision to go to their rich uncle and ask for help, but meanwhile their uncle died, the only thing left of their uncle was the house burned down, and Talat, who was slandered, was imprisoned. Semira Hanım, a rich Egyptian writer who emerged towards the end of the year, had Rahmi operated on and her siblings regained their former bliss.

Despite this exaggerated and absurd theme of “On the Streets of Istanbul”; Due to its high cost compared to its period and being the first sound film, it has gained an important place in Turkish cinema history.

During the 1920s, Rudolph Valentino was one of the most striking actors of the period. Hüseyin Rahmi Öztoprak was nicknamed Valentino Rahmi to refer to his resemblance to Rudolph Valentino.  Rahmi came to Turkey for a vacation while he was studying in Germany at that time, and Naci Bey, one of the bosses of İpek Film at that time, recommended him to Muhsin Ertuğrul and he hired Hüseyin Rahmi Özpınar for the lead role after the auditions to star in his first and last film, "Streets of Istanbul." 

He continued as an academician at Yıldız Technical University and passed away in 1984 at the rank of professor.

[1] A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923.

In 1913, Western Electric, the manufacturing division of AT&T, acquired the rights to the de Forest audion, the forerunner of the triode vacuum tube. Over the next few years they developed it into a predictable and reliable device that made electronic amplification possible for the first time. Western Electric then branched-out into developing uses for the vacuum tube including public address systems and an electrical recording system for the recording industry. Beginning in 1922, the research branch of Western Electric began working intensively on recording technology for both sound-on-disc and sound-on film synchronised sound systems for motion-pictures.

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[2] The most important figure of the cinema in the Republican Period – just like in the theater – is undoubtedly Muhsin Ertuğrul. In cinema, which he started in 1922, he had almost a monopoly until 1939. He laid the foundations of Turkish Cinema. He produced many important films, from Halide Edip's adaptation of "Ateşten Shirt" to "Istanbul Sokakları", the first sound film of our cinema. (Later, Ertuğrul would direct the first color film of our cinema, "Halıcı Kız".) During his years in the Soviet Union, he worked with the most important names of both theater and cinema such as Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Eisenstein. Afterwards, he directed Darülbedayi and took part in the establishment of the State Theatre. With the film Leblebici Horhor Ağa, which he shot with Nazım Hikmet in 1923, he won an award at the Venice Film Festival, making the first film from Turkey to win an international award.

[3] Ihsan Ipekçi  was a producer and writer, known for Istanbul sokaklarinda (1931), Senede bir gün (1946) and The Favorite Concubine of Selim III (1950). He died on December 20, 1966 in Istanbul, Turkey. İhsan İpekçi  (b. Selanik 1901- d. Istanbul1966) Turkish filmmaker, novelist, screenwriter. He came from a Jewish convert (Sabetayist) family dealing with silk trade in Thessaloniki, is the son of İsmail Bey from İpekçizades. İhsan İpekçi was the father of journalist and politician İsmail Cem and uncle of journalist Abdi İpekçi.

After graduating from Galatasaray High School, he studied business in Berlin (Germany). Ihsan İpekçi, who saw that the cinema brought great profit in Berlin, convinced his father and great uncle Kani Bey and introduced the family to the cinema industry by taking the management of the Alhambra Cinema in Beyoğlu Street in 1923. Two years later, it became a brand with Melek (today's Emek) Cinema.

Since the mid-1920s, it has not only imported films, but also started to make domestic films. Nâzım Hikmet and Muhsin Ertuğrul also worked with İhsan İpekçi along with the preparation of the scripts of domestic films. He also wrote novels and screenplays under the pen name "İhsan Koza". İhsan İpekçi, who died on 19 December 1966, was buried in Zincirlikuyu Cemetery.

Literary Works

Affet Beni (1944), Aradığım Kadın (1945), Senede Bir Gün (1946), Zümrüt (1947), İstiklal Madalyası (1948), Sen İstemeyinceye Kadar, O Gece, Aşktan Sonra (1964), Yasak Cennet (1966), 

Bibliography

Selanik|ten İstanbul|a İpekçiler ve İsmail Cem (Abdullah Muradoğlu, 2002)