Review #1326: The Jazz Singer.
Cast:
Al Jolson (Jakie Rabinowitz / Jack Robin), Warner Oland (Cantor Rabinowitz), Eugenie Besserer (Sara Rabinowitz), May McAvoy (Mary Dale), Otto Lederer (Moisha Yudelson), Richard Tucker (Harry Lee), and Yossele Rosenblatt (Himself) Directed by Alan Crosland.
Review:
Some films are just born to endure forever. When it comes to the transition from silent to sound in Hollywood's golden age, this film is often marked as the dawn of a new era and of a new genre - the musical. This was the first feature-length film where you could hear someone talk alongside music in the background. The film was adapted from the play of the same name by Samson Raphaelson (which he had adapted from his short story "The Day of Atonement" based on Jolson's real life) from Alfred A. Cohn as a Warner Bros. production through the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system. One thing I should make clear is that this is not the first time anyone heard any kind of sound in a film before. Several short films had dialogue present before 1927, and the studio had utilized the Vitaphone system for a synchronized musical score and sound effects with Don Juan (1926). D. W. Griffith's Dream Street (1921) had a single singing sequence alongside crowd noises with its Photokinema sound-on-disc system, including an introduction sequence of the director speaking to the audience, although not many theaters showed this due to not having the system installed. Sound-on-disc was the uses of phonograph (or an other disc) to record or play back sound that synced with a motion picture through a interlock with the movie projector. It wasn't as if sound film was a new idea that Warner Bros. did alone - the Fox Film Corporation had bought their own system in Fox Movietone, utilizing it first with Sunrise (1927) that included music and sound effects, which they used for motion pictures until 1931 and their newsreel service until 1939.
In the end, sound-on-film would become the standard for talking pictures by the time the 1930s were over, when studios didn't need to produce sound and silent versions of films anymore. Warner Brothers had started in 1923 from the creation of four brothers: Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, with the first three having emigrated as young kids from Poland to Canada. They had started their careers involved with film through the movie theater business, having a movie projector that they could use to show film, which led them to their first theater in 1903 with the Cascade. They soon grew onto distribution and production by the time they formally incorporated their company in 1923. When it comes to the moment one needs to hear a voice, the film certainly does not disappoint, doing so seventeen minutes in with the famous line of "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet". This of course is preceded by a few songs and caption cards, since the film is mostly a silent production, with just two minutes of synchronized talking. Jolson certainly seems in his element when it comes to singing, for which he has six songs. Jolson wasn't once dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer" for nothing. Today the film may seem a bit over-sentimental, but it certainly played well to a crowd that made Jolson the right man at the right time to give sound film a push forward with his voice. Jolson's performances in blackface makeup are considered dated and viewed as implicit racism now, but it should be noted that Jolson himself fought against discrimination for African Americans when it came to Broadway productions. He has a complex legacy, but he should still be celebrated for the things that he did that aren't dated to time. The other actors do just fine, including Besserer when it comes to her key scene: a dialogue with her on-screen son, brief yet necessary to everything that followed in the next decade. The film as a whole is okay, holding together on the strength of Jolson's charisma with songs more than its family drama, but one can still find appreciation for what goes on screen without becoming bored in its 89 minute run-time (not including the seven minutes of overture and exit music that open and close the film, respectively) for too long. It is a film that holds to the traditions of the past in several ways that also looks to the future, with this being a key step in the evolution for filmmaking. It won an Honorary Academy Award for its studio and production chief Darryl F. Zanuck (who would become a prominent studio figure in his own right in the following decades), "for producing The Jazz Singer, the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry". The film has been remade three times, having been done in 1952 (with Danny Thomas), 1959 (a TV adaptation with Jerry Lewis), and 1980 (with Neil Diamond). In any case, this is a fairly decent film that endures for its historical value alongside an alright foundation of actors and songs that helped in starting the tide for sound and songs for film.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
