The Jazz Singer, vecteur de la mémoire judéo-américaine ?

Examining the conditions of production and the reception of the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, this paper seeks to explore the archaeology of the material and its various European and American strata— from an East-European fable characteristic of Yiddishkeit to a short story which stands on the threshold of the American Jewish novel of assimilation. The article seeks to demonstrate that this cinematic portrait of a second-generation American Jew might have been an extremely valuable one but for the limitations imposed on a fertile narrative and a rich script. What could have been a sincere portrait of life in a time of crisis for a Jewish family, a fable of adjustment depicting how the new generation finds its place in a cultural tradition, is transformed into a more characteristically American fable of success