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Why is The Jazz Singer not considered a completely talking picture?
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Silent film era
(From left) Zasu Pitts, Gibson Gowland, and Hughie Mack in the silent film Greed (1924), directed by Erich von Stroheim.
The Jazz Singer (1927) is often misidentified as the first "all-talking" picture, but it is more accurately described as a transitional film that combined silent film techniques with synchronized sound.12
The film is not considered a completely talking picture for the following reasons:
- Limited Synchronized Content: While it featured synchronized singing and select spoken dialogue, these sequences accounted for only about one-fourth of the film's total runtime.12
- Reliance on Intertitles: The majority of the film's dialogue was delivered through the written intertitles that were standard in the silent era.1
- Technical Format: It utilized the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, which was primarily used to provide a musical score and sporadic sound effects or speech, rather than a continuous recorded soundtrack.32
The industry did not release a feature-length film with entirely recorded dialogue until the debut of Lights of New York in 1928.12