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October 4, 2007
Special Event Alert: The Jazz Singer
When you list the truly groundbreaking films in the history of Hollywood, The Jazz Singer would be right up near the top (if not at the top). For those who don't know, it was the first successful "talkie"--a film that has synchronized dialogue. It opened in New York on October 6th, 1927 and changed the course of cinema history. Silent films, which until then had dominated the film industry, would eventually become little more than curios.
Tomorrow, in celebration of the film's 80th anniversary, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will be screening a restored and remastered version of this film classic at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The oldest surviving nitrate film elements and the original Vitaphone sound-on-disc recordings were used to prepare the version the Academy will be showing. Tickets are only $5 for the general public.
Photo courtesy of Warner Brothers
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starring the Jena 6 players?
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Christ, who would sit through this thing today? Aawwwkward.
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Of course, I mean the idiot students in blackface. Internet funnies are hard.
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Here's something about the use of blackface in The Jazz Singer from Corin Willis...
...in contrast to the racial jokes and innuendo brought out in its subsequent persistence in early sound film, blackface imagery in The Jazz Singer is at the core of the film's central theme, an expressive and artistic exploration of the notion of duplicity and ethnic hybridity within American identity. Of the more than seventy examples of blackface in early sound film 1927–53 that I have viewed (including the nine blackface appearances Jolson subsequently made), The Jazz Singer is unique in that it is the only film where blackface is central to the narrative development and thematic expression.
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Is that kind of like my foot being central to an ass-beating?
"blackface imagery...[as] an expressive and artistic exploration of the notion of duplicity and ethnic hybridity within American identity"?
Right...
That must be like all of those white actresses who played mulattos in movies such as "Imitation of Life" (the 1959 version) not wanting their Black heritage to be discovered since they were so adept at duplicity.
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It's actually a reference to Jewish performers hiding their heritage. The blackface in The Jazz Singer is a metaphor for that.
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It's still (not) funny how the metaphor gets lost in all that racism. I guess it's easier for others to overlook this, casually or otherwise.