A great movie for the great unwashed

Rating: 2/10 (27 October 2012)

I started to watch this piece of dog-roll while on a flight into Singapore and got past only 10 minutes into it and gave up in disgust. I just knew it would be a travesty on silent film and wasn't disappointed. In Vietnam I bought a pirated copy for 50c so that my wife and I could see it together at home. How could such an abortion of a film manage to fool the masses into believing it great? Maybe it was the dog? and the two points I gave it was for the dog.
Why was there no speaking parts even when in the "reality" of off-stage? Why was the hero so obsessed with noise, sound, etc. Could it be he was as deaf as the aged Beethoven? Could it be that the stars' French accents would have given the game away? No sound, hardly any music make for a dull, irrating waste of one hour, forty minutes....except for the antics of the dog.
If this is supposed to be a homage to a largely forgotten era, then it was the duty of the producers and director and stars to know something about the Silent Era (which was anything but silent). By 1929, the writing was on the wall for silents. The last of the great studios, MGM, went sound that year. The hero had to be more than deaf, to be dumb enough to try making a silent in 1930.
Peppy's critique of silents, when interviewed in a restaurant, is wrong from start to finish, especially the comment about "mugging". If there were space enough, I could list a hundred silent films with superb acting. Have a look at Lillian Gish in the "Wind" or the whole cast in the German film "Asphalt".
The vulgar command "Listen up" is contemporary but is used in the film. I'll stop here and merely say that if this film encourages more to view and appreciate films, shorts, cartoons of the Silent Era then it was worth my sacrifice of fifty cents.
Kudos to the dog.