The Jazz Singer (Three-Disc Deluxe Edition)
by Alan Crosland, Bobby Connolly, Bryan Foy, Buster Keaton, F. Lyle Goldman
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Al Jolson, Eugenie Besserer, May McAvoy, Otto Lederer, Warner OlandDirector: Alan Crosland, Bobby Connolly, Bryan Foy, Buster Keaton, F. Lyle Goldman
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: NTSC
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 265 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-16
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 79889
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- The first feature film to utilize Synchronous Sound. The story is about Cantor Oland's son who goes into show business over his objections. Tunes include "Mammy," "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" and more. Academy Award Nominations: 2, including Best Adapted Writing. Academy Awards: Special Award for technical achievement. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS Rating: NR Ag
Movie Reviews of The Jazz Singer (Three-Disc Deluxe Edition)
Movie Review: Almost perfect. Almost.
Summary: 5 Stars
Rather than echo what so many other people have been saying on this great set, I'll just start by affirming that the transfer is good. The sound is great considering the sources (I also restore old recordings). The features are soooo informative and exceptional. It's almost the perfect package.
As a historian who does restoration of old recorded and printed materials, I could have hoped for a couple of things to have been done, but they did not keep me from going to the fifth star in any case. There are two prescient glitches in the original film that could have been fixed without altering the history, and which most certainly the original editors should have caught, and what actually may be the fault of the processors.
One is just before Jolson (Jack) sings Dirty Hands, Dirty Face. He is seated at a table and a dialog card shows but applause fades out. The card is up for a long time. Then back to the table as (I'm guessing) the next disc is started. The drop and sudden reappearance of applause and seeming inaction of Jolson after a fifteen second slide slows the pace and is awkward at best.
THEN, a flaw that has existed in all versions I've seen, so it is either an original editorial or distribution fault. In the train station Jolson is composing a letter. He writes a sentence with no sound. Then there is cut showing him. Then they cut back to him writing, this time with music, and he writes the same sentence - a time warp. There was no particular reason - even "historical accuracy," to leave in that first few seconds of him writing. Sometimes corrections don't detract from history, and actually improve the work without denigrating the original intent.
One more thing - most of the dialog cards have an obvious one or two small dots on them. Perhaps these were some kind of code or an identification. However, in modern context they are that random dot on the page which draws one's eyes away from the text. Since this was a computerized restoration, fixing those would have been a no-brainer.
The rest is still wonderful. As a ragtime-ear historian I recommend a good look at A Plantation Act on Disc One for a number of reasons.
First, Jolson was a ragtime era entertainer before he was a jazz singer. In fact, he was the first real male superstar of the 20th century. Take into context his normal venue when watching him perform. He was trying to convey the message of a song to 500 to 1000 people at once from a stage, so everything needs to be bigger to reach the people in the cheap seats. While his actions and contortions are exaggerated, it is largely from habit and experience, not realizing that in front of a camera, less is more. The singing itself is beyond competent, and much better than twenty years hence when he did the still good but not so brilliant recordings for Decca. This is Jolson still not far removed from his peak as a singer and entertainer, so important to note that he was the Elvis or Elton John or Bono of his time. This is not so far-fetched.
Second, the blackface. It was originally done in the 1840s by whites in order to convincingly convey their performances of black music forms and try to add credibility to those performances through context. It wasn't until after the Civil War that minstrelsy started to really get racist, and even then, many blacks like Bert Williams when in the Ziegfeld Follies did their stage work in blackface to convey a similar message while using irony to offset it and garner sympathy for blacks. So since they used it as well, it doesn't make it perfect, but it brings more context to the "art" of burnt cork. Jolson used it the same way - honoring Negroes in a sense by using their visage to put a song across in, perhaps, a more authentic method, and as an homage, not a denigration. Remember the parallels between oppressed blacks and oppressed Jews, and maybe the allegory will become clearer. It was a product of that time, but still not harmful in context.
Lastly, the one surviving disc for the barely distributed A Plantation Act (and I wish that some small featurette had been included for it) was in the late 1990s in four pieces. The UCLA film school sound techs and historians managed to piece it back together and record it in several segments, sometimes one rotation at a time, and then reassemble it completely to create the soundtrack heard here. THAT is a great testament to those who are still trying to make this history live (as much as it is to the efficacy of the superior Case sound system of that time) and that they were able to recover to entire performance from that source is extraordinary.
Remember, after each 20 plays the disc must be replaced. With this set that will happen in the next year or two!
The sound documentary is very informative, and more accurate than most have been. The Vitaphone features on disc three were wonderful. I would only have hoped for more of the Case material, like Eubie Blake and Eddie Cantor.
Now I don't have to wait for this. I instead now start bugging them about Hollywood Revue with Crawford, Keaton, and Ukulele Ike debuting Singing in the Rain.
Support these efforts by purchasing this set.
RAGards, "Perfessor" Bill Edwards
Summary of The Jazz Singer (Three-Disc Deluxe Edition)
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