Last night Brian and I watched MGM’s next-to-last silent movie, The Mysterious Lady (1928). It was on TCM channel (Turner Classic Movies).
Sometimes I cannot stay engaged with silent movies because the print is bad, projection speed is wrong, and/or the music is bizarre. TCM had one of the most perfect presentations of a silent I’ve ever seen in this one, and it made it easy to follow.
Another reason it was easy to follow, stars Greta Garbo and Conrad Nagel did wonderful acting and were roaring hot. I kept hoping that they would strip each other down to the skin. Those two would later star in MGM’s last silent, The Kiss (1929). I need to see that one sometime.
It was quite the experience, being that I’m not used to silent films. All that from the years my parents were being born.
In the 1980’s, I watched many Mexican silents in an art house cinema in Guadalajara. It was a great way to learn the language. It’s much easier to understand short blasts of written Spanish on the screen than constant audio. One helped me graduate into another and see great movies at the same time.
Fuenteovejuna did it 