Now compare that total to how many black and white movies you’ve ever watched. I’m assuming that if you’re around my age, you’ve probably seen any number of B&W flicks, but not too many silent ones. As in, all the way through and everything. The only one that I can think of that I’ve seen is The Call of Cthulhu, and that was a fan project designed to evoke the silent movie era.
It’s odd, when you think about it. Thirty years’ worth of cinematographic development, and we barely collectively remember anything about it. Doesn’t help that (at least according to Wikipedia) most of the silent movies made during that period are lost anyway… well, actually, that’s probably one of the major reasons why we don’t collectively remember much about the period. But I still suspect that the lack of spoken dialogue makes some of these movies less accessible to us than we might consciously imagine…
Moe Lane
PS: I dunno why this was interesting to me, either. Probably because of something I saw in comments.