1927: The Jazz Singer - How The Movies Learnt To Talk.

Overview

The video traces the development of synchronized sound in cinema and explains why The Jazz Singer (1927) became a turning point. It was not the first film to use sound, but it was the first feature film to include synchronized dialogue alongside music. Its spoken scenes helped signal the rapid decline of silent cinema: by 1929, Hollywood was producing hundreds of fully dialogued films.

How Film Sound Developed

• The Kinetophone (from 1894): Thomas Edison experimented with synchronizing a kinetoscope and a wax-cylinder phonograph. The sound was not amplified, so only one person could listen at a time.
• Sound-on-disc systems (1900–1910): These systems mechanically linked a projector to a disc player. The Phonoscène, for example, paired filmed images with sound recordings. Such systems were quiet, could record only short segments, and could lose synchronization if a record skipped.
• Sound-on-film and amplification: The Tri-Ergon process recorded sound on film by converting sound waves into electrical impulses and then light, avoiding the synchronization problems of separate discs. Lee de Forest’s Audion tube made amplification possible. He combined it with his own sound-on-film process, Phonofilm. Although Phonofilm produced many short films, it did not attract Hollywood studios.
• Vitaphone: Western Electric partnered with Warner Bros. to develop this sound-on-disc system. Their 1926 feature Don Juan had synchronized sound effects and orchestral music, but no synchronized dialogue. It received a strong response but did not recoup its production costs, partly because theaters needed costly equipment that might not work with other systems.

The Jazz Singer and Its Impact

Warner Bros. made The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson as the son of a Jewish cantor who pursues jazz and fame despite his father’s wishes. The film was initially planned as a silent picture with six synchronized Jolson songs. Jolson improvised dialogue in two scenes, and those moments were kept in the film. The rest of the story used silent-film conventions, including intertitles.

Audiences reacted strongly to the spoken scenes and applauded the songs. The film became a critical and commercial success, earning about $3.5 million.

The Vitaphone setup was cumbersome: musical numbers were distributed across separate film reels and sound discs that had to be played in sequence. A small projection error could throw the sound out of sync.

The success of The Jazz Singer accelerated Hollywood’s move toward talking pictures. The fully talking feature Lights of New York followed, and by 1929, 335 fully dialogued films were being made.

Hollywood eventually favored sound-on-film systems, including Fox Movietone and RCA Photophone, because they were easier to record, edit, and project without synchronization problems. A 1928 agreement among five major studios established a standard approach, and Vitaphone stopped producing films in 1931.

The video’s central point is that The Jazz Singer was not the beginning of film sound, but it helped make sound technology—and the end of silent cinema—impossible to ignore. It closes with a 1927 observation by critic Robert E. Sherwood that the film made the end of silent cinema seem near.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Narrator/host: The presenter of 100 Years of Cinema, who explains the history and context.
• Al Jolson: Heard in the opening line (“Wait a minute…”) and in excerpts from The Jazz Singer, including a performance scene and a conversation with his mother.
• The mother character in The Jazz Singer: Heard responding to Jolson’s character; the performer is not identified in the subtitles.
• Unidentified voice in a Phonofilm example: Heard in the line about having “the ugliest daughters”; the speaker is not identified.
• Robert E. Sherwood: A critic for Life magazine, quoted at the end.
• Films and technologies cited: The Jazz Singer, Don Juan, The Singing Fool, Lights of New York, the Kinetophone, Phonoscène, Tri-Ergon, Phonofilm, Vitaphone, Fox Movietone, and RCA Photophone.