Ferdinand von Galitzien, el aristócrata silente teutón por excelencia

Having watched three quality silent films (or, more precisely, two movies and over six and a half hours of Les Vampires) in the last couple of weeks, I guess it's safe to say that el cine mudo has become a bit of an obsession for me of late. The acting, the cinematography, and even the sets are so different from those of today that what might seem utterly primitive to some just seems positively vanguardista to me. True confessions time concluded, please permit me to direct your attention to the man with all those medals in the photo on the right.

Herr Graf Ferdinand von Galitzien, as he calls himself, is the nattily-attired auteur behind a silent movie blog of the same name. While I suspect that our aristocratic bloguero is Galician rather than German, what's more pertinent is that "this German count"--as he so often refers to himself in a charming third person devoid of the usual arrogance that U.S. athletes use when they speak about themselves in the same fashion--has one of the most entertaining and informative film blogs I've yet come across.

Although he usually posts in both English and Spanish, Herr Graf Ferdinand occasionally preferences one over the other or even abandons both to submit something gentlemanly in galego. If his blog is a playful cyber-schloss devoted to the joys of silent film, his reviews are a dangerous moat where "longhaired" people and all things "Frenchified" go to meet their metaphorical maker. For a random sampling of his Lautréamont-like sense of humor (I naturally mean the Uruguayan and not the Frenchified count here, of course), you can read his submissions on early Galician silent films aquí, a French movie ici and an historical epic of Teutonic provenance hier.

And now, if you'll allow me, this fan of the German count must temporarily take his leave to read and write about other "nitratos de plata" elsewhere.