The Jazz Singer
Love To Sing
The Jazz Singer hits all the right notes
By BRUCE KIRKLAND
In 1927, watching vaudevillian Al Jolson belt out a tune in the movie
The Jazz Singer, people were astounded. That is because they also
heard him speak dialogue as well as sing.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," the effervescent Jolson burbled as he
took the microphone on stage at Coffee Dan's, "you ain't heard nuthin'
yet."
Jolson was talking about his next song. Now we know he really was
talking -- famously so -- about the history of movies.
While not officially the original "talkie", The Jazz Singer was the
first to popularize spoken dialogue. It more effectively used the
revolutionary Vitaphone system to synchronize picture and sound. That
turned The Jazz Singer into a hybrid: Part silent film (with
intertitles) and part talkie. While theatrical and melodramatic, it
was enormously successful. Silent films were doomed as mainstream
entertainment.
DELAY
Now, 80 years later, The Jazz Singer is finally on DVD. The delay,
perhaps, was because Jolson's blackface routines are so culturally
incorrect and embarrassing. Nevertheless, like the odious Birth of a
Nation, which extols the birth of the Ku Klux Klan, The Jazz Singer is
an historically important film.
The DVD is spectacular. The film itself is stunning in its visual and
aural clarity, thanks to a restoration. The Deluxe Edition out this
week, also layers in an exhaustive menu of extras over three discs,
along with three souvenir booklets.
Among extras, there is an historical commentary, four vintage shorts,
the WB cartoon I Love to Singa (with an owlet jazz singer), the radio
version, a feature documentary on the history of sound movies and a
significant collection of restored Vitaphone shorts ranging from
1926-36. Deluxe, indeed!