She Blogged By Night

The subject line says it all: What a horrible week for a movie blogger to be on hiatus! With all that's happened the last few days, I figured a brief entry about a few of this week's major movie events was warranted.

Everyone's been talking about the remastered DVD release of "The Jazz Singer", the revolutionary 1927 musical and first part-talkie film. I was so engrossed in all that responsible stuff I'm supposed to be doing that I was unaware of this 80th anniversary release, until I caught the movie starting on TCM last Tuesday. While watching it (again; this must have been my third viewing) I noticed the intertitles and musical elements had been cleaned up. It's a nice print of the film, and the sound has been noticeably improved. I ventured to the Internet, repository of all knowledge, and discovered this was the 80th anniversary of the film. Silly me! Forgetting such a thing, especially when I remembered the August anniversary of "Wings" (1927).

More about the restoration of "The Jazz Singer" can be found on AMC's blog here. Dave Kehr's NY Times review of the restoration DVD is a must-read; a contemporary 1927 review of the film has been excerpted here on the Usenet group alt.movies.silent by Jason Liller.

The new restoration is quite good, but I confess I find movie itself to be quite mediocre. Jolson is not my favorite entertainer -- many have said that his performance style simply didn't translate well to film -- and he's far too old for the part. Just as I noticed with another Jolson film, "Wonder Bar" (1934), many of the songs seemed out of date for the time. The film's portrayal of the old ways versus the new is ham-fisted and rather insulting to devoutly religious persons; just because one is devout does not mean one is inherently out of touch. And, of course, there's the problematic minstrel number done with Jolson in "traditional" blackface. One would have to be deliberately obtuse to ignore the importance of the blackface number; contemporary posters, movie stills, and even the enormous Warners Theater sign (pictured) focused on the minstrel show number. Most of my fellow film buffs disagree with me about this, but I find the accessibility and entertainment value of a movie is hampered by any racist, sexist, and similar outdated social ideas shown in the film. I can acknowledge and understand that in 1927, a white man in blackface was not seen as impossibly inappropriate, but that doesn't mean I am able to ignore its modern-day implications.

On a sad note, actress Deborah Kerr passed away on Tuesday, October 16, in England. She was 86. A fine obituary via the BBC can be found here, as well as a nice photo montage of her career. I'd recently re-watched "The Innocents" (1961), one of my favorite movies, and was again compelled by Kerr's intense portrayal of the governess Miss Giddens. She was never one to shy away from controversial parts, as evidenced by "The Innocents", as well as "Tea and Sympathy", "From Here to Eternity", and "The Gypsy Moths". I happened to also re-watch "Casino Royale" last week and was impressed by Kerr's willingness to be silly for the sake of fun. She clearly enjoyed her role and played the part with great enthusiasm, and as such was one of the few actors in who really seemed to fully grasp the idea of this Bond spoof. She is one of my favorite actresses, and she will be missed.

The last member of the famous Rat Pack, Joey Bishop, died on October 17. He was 89. I didn't know much about Bishop; I've seen him in "Ocean's Eleven" (1960) and "A Guide for the Married Man" (1967), neither of which impressed me. His live routines were apparently much funnier than anything he did on the big screen. A terrific biographical page of Bishop can be found here at the Favorite TV Classics site.

CREDITS:
Deborah Kerr photo from Jet Set Modern.
"The Jazz Singer" photo of the Warners Theater from audioheritage.org.