Sound film
Era: late 1920s -
Related: sound - film - silent film
Jazz Singer (1927) - Alan Crosland [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927), wearing blackface
Sound film
A sound film (or talkie) is a motion picture with synchronized sound, as opposed to a silent film. Although not the first, the most famous of the early talkies was The Jazz Singer in 1927.
In the early years after introduction of sound, sound films were called "talkies", from "talking picture" on the model of "movie" from "moving picture".
The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the motion picture itself; some of the early experimental films at the Thomas Edison laboratory in 1889 were combined with sound recorded on wax Phonograph cylinder. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film
Jazz Singer (1927) - Alan Crosland
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 U.S. movie musical notable for being the first feature-length motion picture with talking sequences. Released by Warner Bros., it was directed by Alan Crosland and starred Al Jolson, who sings five songs. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer [Mar 2006]
See also: black - American cinema - sound film - jazz - singing - 1927
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on features and nearly 2,000 short subjects produced by Warner Brothers and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Many early talkies, such as The Jazz Singer, used the Vitaphone process. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the so-called sound-on-disc processes. With improvements in competing sound-on-film processes, Vitaphone's technical imperfections led to its retirement early in the sound era. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaphone [Mar 2006]
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