Scottish film could steal The Jazz Singer’s crown as ‘world’s first talkie’

Scots-written Till the Bells Ring premiered a year before the Hollywood film, which featured spoken words by Al Jolson For almost a century, The Jazz Singer has been celebrated as the world’s first feature-length film to include synchronised dialogue (known as a “talkie”), and English as the first language of cinema.

But a chance discovery threatens to upend film history with the news that it may have been beaten to the title by a full year – and by a film made in Glasgow and written in Scots.

The breakthrough was made by the historian and self-confessed “film nerd” Marc David Jacobs, who was conducting research for a book on the first wave of British sound films when he came across the story of Till the Bells Ring .

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