1. Clarificaiton about how sound worked in The Jazz Singer and how audiences reacted.
2. Describe what you heard when you watched the film. Be as thorough and as literal-minded as you can. Here are two different questions to get you started.
a. Why wasn't more of the film's dialogue "talkie"? (NOTE: There is a precise, correct answer to this question in the attachments to this question. The rest of the questions on this page are more subjective.)
b. Did this so-called jazz singer sing any jazz?
3. Identify the central thematic issues developed by this film. What are the larger questions this film wrestles with, beyond the career of one "jazz" singer? How are those questions possibly "answered" by the resolution of the plot at the end of the film? What does it mean that Rogin argues The Jazz Singer "condense[s] into a single feature film the entire history of American popular entertainment"?
4. $64,000 Question: Can you connect your answers to #2 and #3 in any way? In other words, does it make any particular sense to you that this film in particular was the first "talkie"?