American Classic Screen Features by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press, Incorporated
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Jazz Singer

A Commentary on the Film’s

50th Anniversary

Rosalind Rogoff

Originally appeared in vol. 2, no. 1 (September/October 1977)

The Jazz Singer was more than just another sound novelty. It was more than just Al Jolson performing a few vaudeville numbers. It was more than just better tone and better synchronization. All of these already existed in the Jolson Vitaphone short of 1926. While this short had been well received, it did not rock the moving picture industry. The Jazz Singer was unique in the long struggle to put sound and film together. It was the first feature film to use synchronized, internal sound creatively within a cinematic framework. As such it set a new precedent for what a sound film should be.

What is meant by creative sound within a cinematic framework? Well, all previous sound films (except newsreels and educationals) used theatrical, operatic, or vaudeville subjects filmed essentially as they were presented on a stage. The Jazz Singer was also a theatrical subject. The play had opened on Broadway September 14, 1925, to good reviews. At the time Warner Brothers bought the rights to the play, it was not considered as a potential sound movie. If Sam Warner had wanted to make an all-talking movie out of The Jazz Singer, in the same way that Edison and de Forest had filmed their theatrical subjects, he would have just re-enacted the play on the sound-equipped stage of the Manhattan Opera House and intercut a few different camera set-ups. This had been done with the earlier Vitaphone shorts. Instead, The Jazz Singer was given an original scenario in much the same way as any silent film adapted from a stage play. The film’s scenario considerably opens up the original play. In the play there were only two sets: the parlor of the Rabinowitz apartment, and backstage of the theater in which Jack Robin was performing.

The show was not really a musical. In fact no musical numbers were performed on stage, although several took place off-stage, and the singing could be heard by the audience. Many scenes in the film were never in the play, and were only suggested by passages in the dialogue.

More than a month was spent in New York City filming location scenes of the Jewish Ghetto and the Winter Garden Theater. The film opens with a montage of shots taken on Orchard Street, setting the mood of Jewish culture. These shots were filmed in documentary fashion, unbeknownst to the people of the neighborhood. Director Alan Crosland hid his cameras in the back of an old moving van in the Orchard Street scenes. Through a slit in the burlap covering, the business of the Ghetto could be photographed unknown to its citizens.

Not only were documentary scenes filmed in this manner, but several action scenes were, too. Early in the film, Warner Oland as Cantor Rabinowitz angrily drags his young jazz-singing son out of a saloon, through the street, and back to their apartment. This was filmed using the residents of the neighborhood

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