The Jazz Singer
Scholar Corin Willis said about the use of blackface in "The Jazz Singer":In contrast to the racial jokes and innuendo brought out in its subsequent persistence in early sound film, blackface imagery in "The Jazz Singer" is at the core of the film's central theme, an expressive and artistic exploration of the notion of duplicity and ethnic hybridity within American identity. Of the more than seventy examples of blackface in early sound film 1927–53 that I have viewed (including the nine blackface appearances Jolson subsequently made), "The Jazz Singer" is unique in that it is the only film where blackface is central to the narrative development and thematic expression.