Available at Amazon.com
Director
Alan Crosland
Cast
Al Jolson ………. Jakie Rabinowitz (Jack Robin)
May McAvoy ………. Mary Dale
Warner Oland ………. Cantor Rabinowitz
Eugenie Besserer ………. Sara Rabinowitz
Otto Lederer ………. Moisha Yudelson
Robert Gordon ………. Jakie Rabinowitz , age 13
Richard Tucker ………. Harry Lee
Cantor Joseff Rosenblatt ………. Himself
The Movie
There are things you could get away with in the early part of the 20th century that you can’t get away with nowadays. Outside of using racial epithets, painting oneself in “blackface” is something so unquestionably racist that they’d warrant a public outcry now. Back 60 years ago, Al Jolson could paint his entire body black and do a blatantly racist impression of a black man without being labeled in the same sort of way that David Duke would. It was a different time and a different era, but Jolson’s starring turn in The Jazz Singer would usher in a wave of change unlike any in film history.
When The Jazz Singer came out in 1927, it made Jolson a cinematic star and revolutionized the industry in a way that is unheard of now. Finding a way to sync up music and picture on a scale never before seen, the film would change movie-making in a way unheard of until the advent of color. The film, mainly a silent picture, features the big song and dance numbers with the sound intact. While today it seems like a non-issue, hearing Jolson sing and dance on the big screen was a revolution for the time and would forever change film for the better.
It’s a relatively simple story. Cantor Rabinowitz (Warner Oland) is concerned and upset because his son Jakie (Jolson) shows so little interest in carrying on the family’s traditions and heritage. For five generations Rabinowitz men have been Cantors in the synagogue, but Jakie is more interested in jazz. One day they have such a bitter argument that Jakie leaves home for good.
After a few years on his own, now calling himself Jack Robin, he gets an important opportunity through the help of Mary Dale (May McAvoy), a well known stage performer. But Jakie finds it difficult to balance his career, his relationship with Mary and his memories of his family. It forces him to eventually make some difficult choices.
The Jazz Singeris a interesting film to watch but not necessarily a good one. While its historical notoriety is too large to ignore, its actual quality in a film has decreased significantly with age. The remake of the film as a Neil Diamond vehicle tended to expose the film’s flaws; it’s based more on good musical numbers but is avalanched by bad melodrama but its historical effect can’t be denied.
A/V QUALITY CONTROL
There are two audio tracks presented for The Jazz Singer. There’s a Dolby Digital 2.0 plus you can choose to listen to the film in the original Vitaphone sound on a 1.0 soundtrack. It’s a relatively bad audio component, as it is alternately high and low despite a medium setting. The film is also presented in black and white, which is noticeably weathered and grainy. It has been cleaned up a bit, but looks quite aged.
The Extras
A rather expansive set, there are three discs included in the set with lots of extras.
Disc One:
Al Jolson in A Plantation Act features Jolson, in blackface and ragged costume, prancing on screen in a rustic setting. Singing three songs, it’s as unsettling to watch as the film is because of Jolson’s appearance.
An intimate dinner in celebration of Warner Bros. Silver Jubilee is a short piece featuring stars from Warner Bros. at the time celebrating the studio’s 25th anniversary.
I Love to Singa is an old Warner Bros cartoon with the same story of The Jazz Singer with owls instead of Jews.
Hollywood Handicap is another short talkie that sits on that edge of being either partially or completely racist in its portrayal of black people.
A Day at Santa Anita is a Technicolor talkie short subject film with the Vitaphone sound.
6/2/1947 Lux Radio Theatre Broadcast is the audio presentation of The Jazz Singer in its original form, the radio broadcast.
There’s also a Jolson Trailer Gallery featuring trailers for The Jazz Singer, The Singing Fool, Mammy, Wonder Bar, Go Into Dance and The Singing Kid.
Commentary Track featuring Ron Hutchinson and Vince Giordano, two film historians, is included as well.
Disc Two:
The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk is a retrospective on the film, which was the first movie to feature sound. Harry, Albert, Jack and Sam Warner, the Warner brothers whose studio would be named after them, were the sons of Polish immigrants expounded upon a gimmick by D.W Griffith in Dream Street, in which he introduced the silent film in audio through a technique a bit advanced from Edison’s initial failure, and wanted to use the power of radio to innovate motion pictures. Silent films had been the rule of the day, as talking pictures were a commercial failure due to the limits of the technology at the time. This is a fairly expansive documentary piece, running around 90 minutes, as they cover with a lot of depth the history behind the ability of films to have sound in the manner we have now.
Gold Diggers of Broadway Excerpts are two excerpts from the lost talkie Gold Diggers.
The Voice from The Screen, Finding his voice, The Voice that thrilled the World, Ok For Sound and When the talkies were young are some of the first short subject talkies to have come out. It’s an interesting look back at earlier Hollywood film-making.
Disc three has 24 talkie shorts on it from the early days of film.
The Jazz Singer: Three-Disc Deluxe Edition |
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