Neither a true sound film, nor a musical: a strange breed whose historical significance alone cannot increase its low artistic merit. Widely mentioned, but selom discussed in detail, this is the movie which set the stage for the sound era with its musical scenes and spoken lines simultaneous to the action. What most people are not aware of, is that one of the first sounds in "The Jazz Singer", that audiences listened to around the world was not Al Jolson's racial mockery and not his "you ain't heard nothin' yet"; it was a rendition of the Jewish prayer "Kol Nidre". Jolson, playing the recalcitrant son of a prominent Cantor, who abandons tradition to pursue a career in show business, later making peace with his dying father, according to many film historians, practices vaudeville in blackface in order to escape his Semitic identity, to become more white in a sense. But such is the subtext of the time period, not the movie itself, which does not purposefully suggest the idea. Being one of the first studio films to portray Jews with relative sympathy, it still features some disgusting stereotypes, such as Moishe, a leery neighbor and a pillar of his community who looks like a living version of a Nazi propaganda poster. Technically, the picture is uneven and inconsistent, with only one speaking segment (a conversation between Jolson and his elderly mother), the rest are musical numbers. What message the filmmakers tried to convey to the masses of the time is less than clear. Was it "There are a few decent Jews out there", "You can pass for white as long as you're not black", "Come hear the next big thing", or all of the above ?.

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Chaplin's second full-length feature, and the decade's universal top-grosser, "The Gold Rush", as with most of his multi-reel films (with the exception of "The Circus", a marathon of cramping laughter), is more endearing and consciously nostalgic rather than flat-out hilarious. But Charlie, a director of immeasurable talent , never allowed his work to slide into anything resembling cheap. The staggering amount of inventive jokes and clever special effects could be understood by billions without additional translation. A universal anxiety reliever for many years, the movie, as other Chaplin works, are now unfortunately forgotten by mass US audiences, although destined to immortality through fervent adoration by cinephiles.

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How "Triumph of the Will" can be hailed as a masterpiece is strangely more understandable than the persistent acclaim of this atrocious example of a mass medium used to disseminate ideas of duplicitous evil. From a historical standpoint, Griffith's Civil War and Reconstruction themed saga of three plus hours, was a blueprint for modern narrative film, but do its methodological novelties justify the movie's claim to be a work of art ? Can, in any event, a practical recruitment ad for the Ku Klux Klan, be viewed as a work of art ? Can the climactic "rescue ride" by the white-hooded clansmen be deemed exciting ? No more so, I daresay, than a pornographic video, no matter how high in quality, which depicts simulated rape or torture. But the latter's existence is in a way, more justifiable, since assisting a disturbed individual to release (usually his) dark fantasy in a safe manner is not the same as an active promotion of hatred. No smutmaker would ever demand legitimate recognition as an artist, and no critic would ever even give so much as a thought to lauding a smut flick, even if it's a personal favorite. But "Birth of a Nation" has a greater purpose than instant gratification - as the opening intertitles declare, to "preserve the purity of the Aryan race", and to paint the events as truth, albeit unfortunate. Watching the film in its entirety can be an ordeal which one does not soon forget. It is a spectacle of little dramatic merit : after calculated sentimentality of the prewar exposition, and a few grand-scale battles, the "Negro savages" (white actors in blackface who act like subhuman troglodytes, bipedal apes) are introduced, and an indignant posse of "noble white knights" is promptly assembled to liberate the South once and for all. What follows is a spectacle that makes one twitch in disgust and anger, the viewing of which can start a riot in a matter of minutes. Only for educational reasons, to stimulate meaningful discussion, Griffith's opus should not be prohibited from being shown, as any first-amendment protected work. The director himself later repented, making some real cinema with the the obvious title "Intolerance" in 1916. Why the AFI voters did not include that instead, baffles any intelligent mind.

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