The Jazz Singer
The Jazz Singer is critical in several ways. Most dramatically it is credited as the first full length narrative film with some synchronized sound - which it is not. A great deal depends on your definitions and what aspects of sound are thought of as most significant.
The development of sound has many parts to it which had to be developed before sound could happen with films. Edison worked on it early trying to combine his phonograph with his motion pictures. These early attempts were with motion pictures that were not projected.
The major obstacles once films were projected were:
Early attempts at sound were somewhat successful, but none met all three requirements. There are several films which had some synchronized sound with them which predates The Jazz Singer including many shorts - one of which "A Plantation Scene" stars Al Jolson singing three songs and talking to the audience.In 1927 using techniques developed by Western Electric Warner Brothers, having formed a joint corporation called "Vitaphone" produced The Jazz Singer which has sequences in which contain synchronized sound. The most important difference here is that all previous sound films, were done as performance addressed to an audience - in The Jazz Singer there is some conversation between Jakie and his mother in which the conversation is not addressed to the audience, but rather gives the feeling of "eaves dropping" on a conversation, hence the feeling that this is really the first modern synchronized sound film. Sound was recorded on 16 inch discs which played at .33 and 1/3 RPM .
Theater companies were not overjoyed about the arrival of sound since it would mean expensive alterations to every theater they owned.
The distributors feared that the use of language would be a problem in marketing films internationally - especially in countries where the actors were not speaking the language of the audience. British audiences could understand American English but Germans could not.. It had been rather simple to change the few intertitle cards that existed in the silent films
Actors were tense since many of them had voices that did not match their image in the films. Heroic leading men were found sometime to have high squeaky voices. Others had impenetrable regional accents.
There were problems with microphone placement in order to catch all the performers' dialog, and the noise of the camera required it be muffled by equipment which made the camera dfar less mobile.
The emphasis in some ways shifted from the camera telling the story to the dialog telling the story and in effect the films were seen as somewhat less a visual art.
One of the unexpected results of sound was that actors had to memorize lines. This meant that to a certain degree the "wild Hollywood" with it ories and wild parties was forced to calm down since actors were now home learning lines. In addition to the sound problem, new lenses showed wrinkles and lines more and performers had ti get more rest to look presentable on film. This is one of the things that led to the lessening of the scandals that had plagues the system.
The Jazz Singer operates on many levels but basically deals with the Jewish son of a cantor who prefers Jazz to liturgical music much to his father's horror. His insistence on performing jazz leads to his father disowning him.
The film, now nearly 90 years old is complicated y some of Jolson's performance being in "blackface" - a process wherein White actors used burnt cork to darken their skins, leaving a white circle around the mouth. It was not only White performers’ who appeared in blackface, but African American performers did as well, going so far as to apply white make up around the mouth. This practices was objected to by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) but African American performers claimed they could not perform without it and they felt "naked" if they didn't make up that way.
Ethnic humor was certainly common in those days with virtually all ethnic groups being made fun of on the basis of some stereotype.
Several modern day responses have occurred. One is to condemn the practice altogether. A second is to acknowledge it and apologize for it. A third approach is to try to explain in social terms. Two groups arguing about Prissy's "I don't know nothin' about the birthin’ of babies" but in Gone With the Wind has been seen by some as a vile stereotype and by others as a realistic depiction of passive aggression, the only kind of aggression open to most African Americans at the time.
Jolson himself, of course, performed in "blackface" regularly, it is not something simply associated with the character. He was an ardent support of civil rights and often went out of his way to help in the struggle to obtain those rights/ He was well regarded by the African American community of the time. He seems to be a paradox in the same way Americans felt Japanese military men were who were seen as committing acts of absolute brutality and violence and also being involved with the art of flower arrangement and calligraphy. Trying to resolve the apparent contradictions is not easy between two different cultures, not two different time persons in any culture.
The story does set up a number of pairings (sometimes called "binary oppositions" (see anthropological folklorist Claude Levi-Strauss) between such things as:
There seems little doubt that the film is equating American jazz with liturgical music and imlpying that jazz is a kind of "prayer".The film seems to be struggling with the problems of immigrant families wherein the parental generation was born "in the old country" and the younger generation is born in the United States. The adoption of "America" as home and a struggle to find something American resolves itself in the film by virtually equating jazz with the new liturgical music of America. Jazz being uniquely American and strongly associated with African Americans, the taking on of "characteristics" of African Americans becomes somewhat clearer. The story (originally called "The Day of Atonement" and the play and film which stem from it) seem also to link two groups seen by the author as related through discrimination = Jews and African Americans
So while the film is certainly famous for its use of sound, the appearance of the highest paid, probably best known performed in the world at the time, it also continues the tradition of fims looking at social issues as has happened from very early times in film.
The advent of sound and its social impact can be seen in the film Singing in the Rain and well as the Kaufman and Hart play Once in a Lifetime