[Dixielandjazz] "The Jazz Singer" reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

DVD Extra: Vitaphoning It In
by Lou Lumenick
New York Post blog, January 8, 2013
Warner Home Video has launched its extensive salute to the studio's 90th anniversary
with a Blu-ray upgrade for "The Jazz Singer" (1927). The four Warner Brothers --
Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack -- had entered the movie business as exhibitors in 1905,
started making their own films in 1918, opened their first Hollywood studio and incorporated
Warner Bros in 1923 (the "official" start date). By 1925, Warner Bros. employing
major talents like John Barrymore and Ernst Lubitsch. But Warner Bros. history as
a major studio really begins two years later with "The Jazz Singer," the first feature
film to feature talking sequences, a technology that had been used in various forms
for shorts for two decades but never really captured the public's imagination.
Except for one 1926 Vitaphone short -- included in the bountiful bonus materials
-- none of them had Al Jolson, a legendary stage performer who electrified audiences
with his singing and ad-libbed dialogue (which, contrary to legend, was agreed to
in his contract rather than spur-of-the-moment decision).
It's Jolson's outsized personality that makes "The Jazz Singer" -- a creaky melodrama
about the son of a cantor (Warner Oland before his run as Charlie Chan) who becomes
a Broadway star derived from a Samson Raphaelson play inspired partly by Jolson's
own life and which Jolson starred in on stage -- more than strictly a historical
curiosity. (Like many of Jolson's films, it's rarely shown because he performs a
scene in blackface.) Film historian Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project, on the
excellent commentary track with bandleader Vince Giordano, speculates that Vitaphone
may well not have caught on so quickly if the film had instead starred original choice
George Jessel (who refused to sign unless he was paid extra for his voice).
Lubitsch had been penciled in to direct "The Jazz Singer," but left for a lucrative
deal at Paramount before it went before the cameras. The task fell to Alan Crosland,
who the year before had helmed the first Vitaphone feature, "Don Juan," which had
a soundtrack with music and sound effects, but a frustratingly mute Barrymore in
the lead, as well as a couple of similar sound-enhanced features.
An an excellent feature-length documentary -- like all of the extras, ported over
from WHV's superb three-disc 80th anniversary DVD edition from 2007 and not in high
definition -- explains, Vitaphone was a subsidiary jointly owned by Warner Bros.
and AT&T's Western Electric division that was formed to exploit Western Electric's
system of recording and reproducing motion picture sound on discs. This cumbersome
system would quickly be supplanted by the sound-on-film system that was the norm
until the current digital revolution, but not before Vitaphone's superior sound reproduction
would propel Warners into Hollywood's front ranks.
Audiophiles will most appreciate the crystal clarity, and spectacular dynamic rage,
of the musical soundtrack that represents the major advance for the Blu-ray of "The
Jazz Singer" -- the restored but still fairly soft film elements don't hugely benefit
from the extra definition. Also carried over from the 2007 DVD are more than four
hours of Vitaphone shorts, mostly records of vaudeville acts (some with famous performers,
some truly obscure) that provide a valuable record of stage performances from the
early part of the century. This time around, the discs are packaged in a 77-page
Digibook with archival materials that further explains Vitaphone's importance to
the studio's history.
Warners continued using the Vitaphone brand for shorts into the 1950s, two decades
after the studio switched to sound on film. The Warner Archive Collection, which
has already released a couple of collections of Vitaphone shorts -- including many
early ones that utilize long-lost sound discs rounded up by the Vitaphone Project
-- recently put out three more. "Vitaphone Varieties: Volume Two" includes 35 of
these rare shorts from 1926 to 1931, some featuring the sound debuts of such future
stars as Edgar Bergen, Bert Lahr, Fred Allen and Joe E. Brown.
Full column:
http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/movies/dvd_extra_vitaphoning_it_in_PZhL7rFwOawNCB4yzPZ9TK#axzz2HOZvAGse
-30-



-Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
Aboard the Holland America Maasdam, Caribbean
JazzSea Cruise

I think Congressmen should wear uniforms, you know, 
like NASCAR drivers, so we could identify their corporate sponsors.