ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the ‘silent’ film in modern times, that is, the narrative film made by a film-maker with full and easy access to the equipment that makes possible a film in which people speak but who has nevertheless chosen to make a film in which people do not speak. The adjective in all these cases is the equivalent not of ‘silent’ but of ‘mute’. English dictionaries indeed include ‘silent’ among the secondary definitions of ‘mute’, and vice versa. A peculiarly twisted logic can show the apparent sources of ‘My Mammy’, probably The Jazz Singer’s most famous song, bouncing this way and that over the course of a quarter-century. Encountering the same song at the end of 1927’s The Jazz Singer, however, an audience truly engaged with the film’s drama would have attributed it not to Jolson but to Jack Robin, the prodigal character played by Jolson.
