The Jazz Singer (1927)
Directed by Alan Crosland

Film Review

The film that sounded the death knell for silent cinema and revolutionised the movie making industry overnight is also the film that saved Warner Brothers from bankruptcy and made Al Jolson a household name across the globe.  The Jazz Singer was not the first film to incorporate sound elements but it was the first feature-length film that employed synchronized dialogue sequences which the public took to.  After this, cinema would never be the same again.

The synchronization of sound and image had been the greatest challenge that faced filmmakers since the birth of cinema.  In an article published in Colliers' in 1924, the legendary filmmaker D.W. Griffith stated that "it will never be possible to synchronize the voice with the picture" and added "we never shall want the human voice in our films".  Griffith saw no future in sound cinema although he predicted that colour photography in film would be perfected within a few decades.  Attempts to solve the synchronization problem had achieved only partial success.  In 1902, Léon Gauomont's Chronophone (a device comprising a coupled phonograph and projector) offered a possible solution, but this required actors to mime to their dialogue, which was pre-recorded on wax cylinders or disks.  Despite such developments, it was not until The Jazz Singer premiered on 6th October 1927 that sound cinema caught the public imagination and brought about an immediate and irreversible sea change.  Within three years, virtually nobody on the planet was making silent films.

The Jazz Singer was based on a hit Broadway play of the same title, written by Samson Raphaelson.  The latter's inspiration for the story was the real life experiences of Al Jolson, a young popular jazz singer of Russian Jewish extraction who had risen to national stardom within a decade.  Jolson's gimmick was to black up as an African-American, something that would today be considered the absolute height of political incorrectness but which was, in Jolson's day, accepted as a respectful homage to the African-American culture from which ragtime and jazz sprang in the 1910s and early twenties.  This was after all the era of Scott Joplin and Josephine Baker.

Originally, Jolson was not considered for the role of Jakie Rabinowitz in the film.  George Jessel, the lead actor in the Broadway production, was lined up for the part, but when he tried to renegotiate his contract with Warner Brothers (after learning the film was to include sound dialogue) he was thrown overboard and replaced by Jolson, who was in any event the obvious choice for the role.  By this stage in his career, Jolson was at the height of his powers and it is hardly a surprise that he had audiences enthralled when he threw himself into his inimitable renditions of songs such as Dirty Hands, Dirty Face, Blue Skies, Toot, Toot, Tootsie and the immortal My Mammy.  Jolson's warmth and vitality as an entertainer still radiate from the screen when you watch The Jazz Singer today.  This was a man who lived and breathed his art like no other performer.

With a substantial budget of 400 thousand dollars and the use of an unproven technology, The Jazz Singer was a tremendous gamble for Warner Brothers at a precarious time in the company's history.  But the gamble paid off handsomely and the company netted 4.5 million dollars, instantly making it one of the big players in Hollywood.  The other studios were falling over themselves to follow Warners' example and make an immediate switch from silent to sound cinema - an event that is accurately portrayed in the film Singin' in the Rain (1952).

How appropriate that the first words of sound dialogue in The Jazz Singer should be "Wait a minute, wait a minute, " followed by Jolson's catch phrase: "You ain't heard nothin' yet!"  After this, no one (other than die-hard reactionaries) wanted to watch a silent movie again, and you can see why.  The story may be awash with mawkish sentimentality that must have been hard to stomach even in the 1920s, but the experience of seeing and hearing words come out of an actor's mouth for the first time was nothing short of a miracle for most moviegoers.  The era of sound cinema had begun.

Film Synopsis

In Manhattan, New York, Rabinowitz is the Cantor at the Russian Jewish synagogue and is adamant that his young son Jakie will carry on the tradition which goes back five generations.  Jakie, however, has other ideas and is more interested in singing ragtime numbers at the local beer garden.  When he hears of this, Rabinowitz  is outraged and drags his son home so that he can beat some sense into him.  For Jakie, this humiliation is the last straw.  He leaves home and vows never to return.  Many years later, Jakie has embarked on a promising career as a jazz singer.  Through his girlfriend Mary he lands the top spot in a Broadway revue and looks set for stardom.  But on the opening night Jakie is visited by his mother, who comes with the news that his father has fallen ill and is close to death.  The old woman pleads with her son to take his father's place as the Cantor at the holy Day of Atonement.  Jakie is faced with an impossible choice.  He must either sacrifice his one chance of professional success or break the heart of the mother he loves...