Chaplin and Valentino versus Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor

Silent cinema gave its audiences less (no colour, no sound, less sophisticated codes of representation and so on). Therefore those audiences supplied more from their own psyches—and accordingly those stars assumed a potency and glamour and sheer fame no subsequent star has ever been able to manage. The more cinema offers its audiences, the less those audiences will care about cinema. That’s common sense.