★★★★
The rap on The Jazz Singer is worse than it deserves. It's hardly fair to complain about melodrama in a film that was released in 1927 for a mass
audience. Most if not all its
contemporaries relied on melodrama to bring their audiences along, even in higher-brow work like Sunrise and Metropolis.
But there is a fair objection to the way Crosland ambles
with the melodrama. Much of the film shows Jakie torn in two directions. On one
side are his Jewish race, music, traditions and family (visually represented by
ethnic rituals, actors and décor) while on the other side is Caucasian show
business (which we see as coat-and-tie producers, a platinum blonde love
interest, sleek clothes, sequins, and
ragtime). This conflict seems to come to
a head and resolution with the melodramatic backstage visit of Yudelson, but right after
a long, intense interchange between Yudelson and Jakie, Jazz Singer milks the same dramatic
conflict a second time when Jakie’s mother comes to the theater. This repetition works the same melodrama but doesn’t
move the film forward at all as neither visit dissuades Jakie from his choice of a career. Shortly
afterwards, though, we see Jakie with his father, apparently having chosen the path of tradition. Crossland, however, decides to extract even more melodrama
from the tradition/business conflict by having Mary and the show’s producer inexplicably show up in
the apartment on the left side of the screen to pull the hapless Jakie towards
Caucasian business and away from the Jewishness on the right side of the screen
in the person of Jakie’s mother and Yudelson.
The melodrama in this conflict of values is effective the first time, but by
this third trip to the bank, it’s just dead plotting.
Even worse, after all the buildup over Jakie’s choice, we eventually discover that the soul searching is unnecessary. Jakie was either
going to join his family and tradition and lose his future career, or he was
going to have that career at the cost of his family and his very identity. These are high stakes. He chooses family, and we see him as the
cantor of his synagogue with his deceased father, who fades in with his hand on his son’s
shoulder. A touching scene, but one that’s
immediately followed by Jakie’s hit Broadway show. As it turns out, Jakie didn't need to worry as he could have both his tradition and his show business career. All the worry and conflict
was completely unnecessary, a very unsatisfactory outcome.
Despite the terrible plotting, there are elements here that
make
The Jazz Singer worthwhile. For
one, it deals with the very American theme of assimilation at a point in time
when it was a significant issue.
Watching Jakie torn between his Jewish identity and assimilation into
the broader swath of America is an insight into a challenge immigrants to this
country have always faced. In fact, it’s
a topic that's treated even today in cinema. And
the film gives additional insight into the role of religion in American pop
culture. It’s already well known that
churches and gospel music were the foundation of R&B music and singing; in
The
Jazz Singer, we see the background role of the synagogue and its musical
training to the many Jewish performers who were important in American popular
culture. The movie gives an insight into
another aspect of the importance of religion in American culture.
The most fantastic moment of the film is also the most
famous: the first moment of synchronized speech in a feature length movie. And while I was prepared to see the moment, I
wasn’t prepared for how seamlessly it fit into the
Jazz Singer’s larger themes
and into larger cinematic history. The
entire first section of the film is done using the traditional conventions of
silent film: melodrama, intertitles, exaggerated acting, stiff editing. With synchronized music already established
by this point in 1927, we also see Al Jolson perform a few numbers as Jakie,
the rebel who wants to jump into his new American identity and shake up his
received culture. The bit of dialog
in
The Jazz Singer that was to change how movies are made occurs when our anti-tradition
hero sits down at a piano to do a song for his mother, who has always supported
in progressive attitude. In the middle
of his song, he starts to tell her he’s going to get her a dress, we hear her
wave it off with ‘Oh…..no……,” and the conversation continues for short
time. The moment, like the jazz Jakie
loves, is clearly improvised, and it’s just as revolutionary as the hero
breaking away from his traditions. The
film leading up to the exchange is all traditional silent movie language, but
at this moment we can, even today, feel the seismic shift in Jolson’s
improvisation, his discovery that silent film conventions aren’t necessary in
cinema. It’s only a small breach in film
language at this point as Jakie’s father enters the room and, with him, silent
film’s traditional conventions reassert themselves. But the few minutes of synchronized conversation
between Jakie and his mother not only reflect the conflicts in
The Jazz Singer
but also undermine the very language of contemporary cinema, making a improvised turn towards a different future for the art.
I know of no other moment in film so laden with portent.
This seminal American film also raises some of the same
questions as another seminal American film, Birth of a Nation. It’s clear in The Jazz Singer that Jakie’s putting
on blackface is his way of breaking away and joining the world of performance
and theater. In fact, when his mother
and Yudelson visit him backstage, they can’t even recognize him. But it’s an unfortunate choice of symbol,
rendolent of the condescending, racist portrayals of blacks in contemporary minstrel
shows. As painful as it is to watch
Jolson’s concluding blackface performance here, we are fortunate that Alan
Crosland didn’t choose to include a full Jolson minstrel performance. Those shows are as abhorrent to today’s
audience as watching the Ku Klux Klan ride to the rescue of maidens, and perhaps
even more so.
There are many things in The Jazz Singer that could be
better, but the film offers us a very rare opportunity to not only see but even
participate in a historic moment. It’s
rare to find a scene in a film that can both sum up the issues in the movie and
create a watershed change in the history of an art form at the same time. The short dialog between Jakie and his mother
in this film does all these, and it does so thanks to an important element of
American art, improvisation.
