A Film Canon

To a considerable extent, The Jazz Singer is canonical simply by virtue of being the first feature-length Hollywood sound picture. That said, Crosland integrates the (relatively few) sound segments into the narrative in a particularly artful way. The conflict between an immigrant Jewish father and his first-generation son is deflected into a conflict between their respective tastes for liturgy and jazz, both of which function as pretexts for the first sound segments, and both of which would have been sufficiently exotic to a contemporary audience to reinforce the strangeness of those segments, as well as imbuing them with the theatrical momentousness they deserve. Relatively little space is reserved for dialogue, which tends to be clustered around these musical performances - although this is probably fortuitous. Al Jolson's hyperbolic acting (and singing) style translates quite poorly into sound, investing him with a creepy intensity that militates against his sympathetic appeal and, at worst, inadvertently corroborates the accusations of demonic possession made by his father. The silent segments are less impressive, although it may be that the few moments of sound make them seem more conspicuously melodramatic by comparison.