Every time I watch a really, really old silent film – I'm talking about movies from the 1900s and 1910s – I'm reminded of the weird incredible power they have. You're just looking at material culture that is basically gone today, and you're looking at people who have died out of living memory, and you're seeing not just them but their movements, their mannerisms, how they self-consciously express and perform social ritual for the camera. It's mesmerizing, even if the movies themselves (the few that survive for us to see) are not great on the merits as movies.
Anyway this is all apropos of Mubi doing a sort of mini-retrospective on Alice Guy-Blaché. You should check those movies out, they're like all less than 20 minutes long.
