House of Mirth

After reading through House of Mirth, I can just not get over the character of Lily. She seems to always pass up the opportunity to marry a rich man in the vain hope that an even richer man will come along. She goes from nervous to almost arrogant after meeting Gryce and deciding she wants to marry him.

The various intricacies of high society were also rather amusing to read. Stealing guests from other parties and then complaining about it later, though the large amount of gossip that seems to occur between the women seems to be a running theme in novels that involve high-class women with seemingly nothing to do but sit around and talk to one another.

Greed

I actually liked the film 'Greed' that was shown in class today. I suppose I was one of the few that had seen a few silent films in the past, so the lack of actual dialogue was not very difficult. The trick I've found is to pay more attention to the hand gestures, body language and music in order to follow the story. Most silent films do not have a large amount of plot twists, they are relatively simple stories overall and it doesn't take a great deal of understanding to keep up with the plot.

I did enjoy the small bits of humor that were thrown in, the funeral procession outside of the wedding ceremony, the spanking of the little boys and the dinner table scene. I only wish we could have seen the movie in its entirety and not just a little clip here and there.

Of all the scenes we watched, I thought the ending portion was the most interesting. It seemed as though the actors were hardly even acting, being exposed in the hot death valley in real life while filming, it is not like today where actors spend the time between shoots in an air conditioned trailer and then fake sweat is applied to their bodies. It's all very real. The lack of special effects I quite enjoyed as well, far too often modern movies rely on fancy special effects that are almost as comical as some believe 'Greed' to be.