Early sound films are often praised for liberating cinema from the constraints of silence, but the transition exacted a hidden cost that historians of the medium now emphasize. Silent-era cameras had been mobile, gliding freely because their whir did not matter. The first sound cameras, by contrast, were bulky and had to be sealed inside soundproof booths to keep their noise off the recording, which pinned them in place. For several years, films grew visually static, their actors clustered near hidden microphones. Only when engineers muffled the camera itself did the fluid movement of the silent era return, now paired with sound. What looked in retrospect like steady progress was, in the moment, a temporary retreat: technique lost before it could be regained on new terms.