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The Jazz Singer on Video - 1927

The Jazz Singer Video
Buy The Jazz Singer on Amazon

It's one of the most famous titles in film history, and everybody knows why: in a handful of sequences in The Jazz Singer, sound and image are excitingly synchronized. By 1927, some short subjects had already been "talkies," and a few features had synchronized music, but The Jazz Singer gets the prize as the breakthrough. Because the film is largely without dialogue, you can--even watching the film today--almost palpably sense the shift in movie epochs, as cinema takes an evolutionary leap from one form to the next. The movie itself, based on a successful Broadway show by Samson Raphaelson, is strictly melodrama of an ancient kind. Young Jakie Rabinowitz is expected to follow in the long line of family Cantors, but his heart yearns to sing "Toot Toot, Tootsie" instead of "Kol Nidre." Al Jolson plays Jakie (later Jack Robin of footlights fame), and you get a taste of why he was widely considered the greatest entertainer of his time; watch him with a tearjerker such as "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face" and you'll see the skillful, completely irony-free manipulations of a master storyteller. Equally fun is Jolson's non-singing patter--in fact, this is where you get the thrill of talking pictures, more so than the songs. "You ain't heard nuthin' yet," he burbles, and it's hard not to catch the excitement.

Available On:
Broadway on DVD Broadway on VHS

Starring:
Al Jolson as Jakie Rabinowitz (Jack Robin)

May McAvoy as Mary Dale

Warner Oland as Cantor Rabinowitz

Yossele Rosenblatt as himself

Eugenie Besserer as Sara Rabinowitz

Otto Lederer as Moisha Yudelson

Bobby Gordon as Jakie Rabinowitz (age 13)

Richard Tucker as Harry Lee

Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

Filmed: 1927 - Released: 1927

PURCHASE / MORE INFORMATION
Buy The Jazz Singer on Amazon Broadway on Netflix Broadway Video Listings Broadway on IMDB

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