The Jazz Singer (1927 film)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
The Jazz Singer (1927 film)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1996.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American part-talkie musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music and lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolated sequences). Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and effectively marked the end of the silent film era with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, featuring six songs performed by Al Jolson. Based on the 1925 play of the same title by Samson Raphaelson, the plot was adapted from his short story "The Day of Atonement".
Why It's Essential
- It may not have been the first movie musical, or the first 'talkie' film or even the first film to use sound (sound was used in film as early as 1895), but it was the first film to convince both the industry and customers that sound would be an inevitable step. Based on a Broadway play, this film was the culmination of years of effort by Warner Brothers to make talking pictures a reality.
- Creating a subsidiary called Vitaphone, the Warners developed a sound-on-disc process, betting that records played simultaneously with projectors would be enough to keep sound matched with visuals. It was an extremely risky move, but with care, the process worked greatly. Warners had been using the Vitaphone process for shorts and features since 1926. However, this film was the first feature-length Hollywood "talkie" film in which spoken dialogue was used as part of the dramatic action. (Even if it's only part-talkie (25%) with sound-synchronized, vocal musical numbers and accompaniment)
- The film's script adds a prologue and at one point shows the young Jack’s discovery by Mary, an actress, in The Happy Hour, a Chicago speakeasy. This material expanded on the play’s dialogue. The film softens the play’s ending somewhat, and fortunately drops a moment when Jack discusses the philosophy of blackface: “Mary, you know if people only knew what it was like to black up like this, I bet everybody would do it... . It covers your face and hides everything.”
- Crosland directs the silent sequences in a solemn, maudlin manner, but the sound sequences have the impact of lightning. It’s true that cameras were difficult to move, that editing had to account for a soundtrack, that the film stock and lighting required for sound weren't as refined, that actors had to group around microphones with very limited ranges. But the film proves that with planning, the best techniques of silent film could still be used. The sound segments in the film feature everything from post-dubbing to double-exposures to traveling shots. The first extended sound sequence, which occurs three minutes into the film, consists of seventeen shots, including a traveling shot filmed from a truck—as well as an intertitle.
- Audiences were wildly enthusiastic when America's favorite jazz singer and superstar Al Jolson broke into song, ad-libbed extemporaneously with his mother at the piano, and proclaimed the famous line to introduce a musical number: "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothing yet." They're also the only moments (aside from the songs) vocal dialogue was spoken synchronously
Bad Qualities
- While the film may have been revolutionary for its time, nowadays modern viewers would be very unimpressed by it, especially since its then-revolutionary synchronized dialogue techniques have become commonplace.
- Plus, there's not that much to make the film stand out in today's era; Apart from its nine songs, and the 280 or so words of dialogue spoken by Jolson, it’s a strictly silent picture, and a pretty dreary one at that. Young Jakie Rabinowitz wants to sing jazz; his father, a cantor in a Lower East Side synagogue in New York, hates jazz so much that he throws Jakie out of his house. Years later, as theatrical star Jack Robin, the son returns home, only to be thrown out again. When his father collapses on his deathbed, Jack must choose between opening night on Broadway, or singing “Kol Nidre” for his father on the Day of Atonement.
- Near the end of the film, Jakie Rabinowitz -- Jewish performer -- would put on some blackface makeup, as he's preparing for one of his performanes, and he'd continue wearing it while singing his final number, My Mammy to his mother in the audience. It's implied this was meant to be symbolic for his assimilation into the culture, but the blackface still seriously drags down an otherwise landmark film.