Christoph Henzel: „A Jazz Singer – singing to his God“. The Jazz Singer (1927): Musik im „ersten Tonfilm“* 

 

The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature-length “talkie,” was also the first Hollywood film with a Jewish topic. It details the conflict between a devoutly religious cantor and his Americanized son (Al Jolson) who is eager for a career in show business. The movie lends authenticity to the solicited themes of assimilation, independence, and self-fulfilment by employing musical symbols of modern life in Jolson’s songs and portraying the father’s world of orthodoxy as outdated and foreign through (mostly compiled) background music laced with exoticism.

 

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