Saw The Wedding March, a silent film from the 20s about the prince of an impoverished aristocracy who falls in love with a musician's daughter. Unfortunately, his family intends to marry him off to a wealthy businessman's daughter. C'est la vie. It was fairly slow and uninteresting to me, save for a few things I'll point out here. Silent films in general are slower I think. Their establishing shots are fade-ins/fade-outs. Their characters say words, the words appear, and then they finish saying words. I had to re-caffeinate myself mid-way through.
The interesting bits: There's a color sequence part-way through that must have been a special-effects extravaganza for the time. The colors are nowhere near Gone With The Wind of course, but you can differentiate red from grey, which is nice. Interesting to see what real people in the 20 looked like. Also interesting is the use of medieval knights as a symbol for cold, unfeeling political intrigue. Nowadays we regard knights as romantic figures, saving princesses and nobly loving from afar. Back then though, I suppose the reality was a bit fresher in people's minds. Maybe, I dunno.
Anyway, this movie was homework for me. The story is not uninteresting but it drags on forever and the ultimate message (marry the person you love, dumb dumb) is so done to death. As I say, it's not without merit, and there's some interesting bits near the end, but it was not worth the slog for me. Too late in the day for this stuffy, dreary stuff.
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