I agree with the previous reviewer that the Jazz Singer is a film very much of its time. I've now seen four versions: the original, the Danny Thomas version, the Neil Diamond 1980s version, and Jerry Lewis' TV adaption.
I now understand why the Jazz Singer belongs to its original time period. It's not a story about a jazz singer - though all the versions over the years have kept the title. At first I thought it was Jolson's personality and performance that made the story legendary. It's interesting that Jerry echoes Jolson's makeup in the last part of the TV version (it's very strange seeing Lewis in the closing scene, in the synagogue wearing cantor's robes and his clown makeup) Certainly the power of hearing Jolson sing was instrumental in making the original a sensation.
The story is about the old clashing with the new: it's apt that it was chosen for Jolson's vehicle, part silent mixed with the scenes of Jolson singing (as I remember it, none of the scenes with sound were all dialogue: all featured singing, and two of the singing voices weren't Jolson's).
It's also about the old generation clashing with the new generation: the father's old world cantor struggling with the son's new world show business song and dance man. The story doesn't really work in Jerry's version. Jerry was a good singer and he's fantastic in the opening sequence. Lewis' Joey Robin has elements of Buddy Love, the suave, successful, gifted conceited smart Aleck. It would have been captivating if Lewis had been given the opportunity to expand on his portrait of guy who has made it but forgotten all the human values of his parents and his upbringing. Alan Reed is brilliant as the uncle, but it's a shame that Molly Picon and Eduard Franz aren't given the possibility of expanding their roles beyond brief clichés.
The movie is tied down by the elements of the Jolson movie, already long standing clichés in the 1950s: the big show, the big chance on Yom Kippur, the call to his father's deathbed, and the last scene in the synagogue singing Kol Nidre for the father.
I realized that the Jazz Singer also echoes the anxieties of the first European born generation regarding the American born second generation: will they keep the traditions, or reject everything, including morality and religious belief. The 1950s versions- both the Thomas movie and Lewis' TV play- have a father who is evidently American as well. Hence the story doesn't have the resonance of the fears of adjusting to a new country and the freedom it brings.
Lewis' Jazz Singer is entertaining, but the last two acts are badly handled: the sequence of Joey's daydream could have been come from one of Lewis' screen farces. If the play had been better directed, and focused on Lewis' character as a comic struggling with his father and his family's religious values this would have been a powerful film.