The Wind (1928)

You can say a thing a lot of ways. That’s why we watch silent films, isn’t it? To see how, when the sound’s taken away, some great artist got his or her point across. To be reminded of all the options.

Imagine, for example, that you’re watching the story of a man and his wife, both young. They were married under pretences the male party now considers false. They’ve grown estranged. Now he is out on a job and she is home. An intruder muscles his way into the house and attempts to take her away. Realizing, finally, that she would rather stay with her husband than move on, she dispatches the intruder. As his heavy body hits the floor, two dinner plates, set askew on the table behind her, slide into an even stack.

There is no intertitle to tell us their marriage is saved. But it is. The plates said so.

Häxan (1922)

I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in history—the product of five years of study. In each of those years, I took at least one course on the Middle Ages.

The period was always great for stories. That’s why we loved it. Kings and queens, tyrannical churchmen, gruesome wars, plagues and hysteria—it was a tapestry woven, it seemed, of humanity’s best and worst capacities. On a bad day, when we were overtired, overworked, or just hungover, these outsized tales kept us focused. I remember them still.

But my best instructors weren’t satisfied with this kind of thing. They encouraged us to look beyond the extremes of the period. Consider the people themselves, they said. Think of their daily lives; the stresses they were under. Ask yourself if you’d be any different, in their position.