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Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate "production numbers."
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound. Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of title cards.
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is notable as the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech. Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and effectively marked the end of the silent film era. It was produced by Warner Bros. with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system and features six songs performed by Al Jolson. Based on the 1925 play of the same name by Samson Raphaelson, the plot was adapted from his short story "The Day of Atonement".
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures were made commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923.
The following is an overview of 1921 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
Kumudlal Ganguly, better known by his stage name Ashok Kumar and also fondly called Dadamuni, was an Indian film actor who attained iconic status in Indian cinema and who was a member of the cinematic Ganguly family.
Donald Patrick Murray is an American actor. Murray is best known for his breakout performance in the film Bus Stop (1956) with Marilyn Monroe, which earned him a nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Murray's other theatrical films include A Hatful of Rain (1957), Shake Hands with the Devil (1959) with James Cagney, One Foot in Hell (1960) with Alan Ladd, The Hoodlum Priest (1961), Advise & Consent (1962) with Henry Fonda and Charles Laughton, Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965) with Steve McQueen, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), Deadly Hero (1975), and Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
Laura La Plante was an American film actress, whose more notable performances were in the silent era.
Jean Darling was an American child actress who was a regular in the Our Gang short subjects series from 1927-29. Prior to her death, she was one of four surviving cast members from the silent era cast of Our Gang. At the time of her death in 2015, Darling was, along with Baby Peggy, one of the last surviving actors who worked in the silent film era.
Evelyn Preer, was a pioneering African-American stage and screen actress and jazz and blues singer of the 1910s through the early 1930s. Preer was known within the black community as "The First Lady of the Screen."
Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking which became characteristic of American cinema between the 1910s and the 1960s. It eventually became the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide. Similar or associated terms include classical Hollywood narrative, the Golden Age of Hollywood, Old Hollywood, and classical continuity.
Sarah Blanche Sweet was an American silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry.
Diana Serra Cary, known as Baby Peggy, was an American child film actress, vaudevillian, author and silent film historian. She was the last living person with a substantial career in silent films.
Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s.
John Boles was an American singer and actor best known for playing Victor Moritz in the 1931 film Frankenstein.
Georges Méliès (1861–1938) was a French filmmaker and magician generally regarded as the first person to recognize the potential of narrative film. He made about 520 films between 1896 and 1912, covering a range of genres including trick films, fantasies, comedies, advertisements, satires, costume dramas, literary adaptations, erotic films, melodramas, and imaginary voyages. His works are often considered as important precursors to modern narrative cinema, though some recent scholars have argued that Méliès's films are better understood as spectacular theatrical creations rooted in the 19th-century féerie tradition.
Broadway Babies, aka Broadway Daddies (UK) and Ragazze d'America (Italy), is a 1929 all-talking Pre-Code black and white American musical film produced and distributed by First National Pictures, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The film was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starred Alice White and Charles Delaney. This was White's first sound film with dialogue.
Lassie Lou Ahern was an American actress. Originally discovered by Will Rogers, she was best known for her role as Little Harry in the 1927 silent film Uncle Tom's Cabin and also for her recurring appearances in the Our Gang films. Except for "Baby Peggy", Ahern was the last living performer who had a substantial career during Hollywood's silent era.
Little Mickey Grogan is a 1927 American comedy-drama film directed by James Leo Meehan and written by Dwight Cummins, Dorothy Yost and Charles Kerr. The film stars Frankie Darro, Lassie Lou Ahern, Jobyna Ralston, Carroll Nye, Eugene Jackson, William Scott and Vadim Uraneff. The film was released on December 27, 1927, by Film Booking Offices of America.
References
- ↑ Rothman, Lily (October 6, 2014). "Why Contemporary Commentators Missed the Point With 'The Jazz Singer'". time.com.
- ↑ Pierce, David. The Survival of American Silent Feature Films, 1896–1929 . Library of Congress, 2005. ISBN 978-1932326390
- ↑ (24 February 2020). Baby Peggy, Last Surviving Silent Film Star, Dead at 101, Extra TV
- ↑ "Billy (Bill) Watson". Watsonwatchers.com. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
- ↑ Villecco, Tony (29 January 2001). Silent Stars Speak: Interviews with Twelve Cinema Pioneers. McFarland. ISBN 9780786482092 . Retrieved 9 October 2018– via Google Books.
- ↑ "Garry Watson". Watsonwatchers.com. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
- ↑ "Love, Live and Laugh". IMDb.com. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
