t also heavy-handedly hammered in things that today a director would trust the audience to infer from much less information. There were also places where the director chose to break the fourth wall, such as the scene in Corsica where (in a cue card) he assures the audience that all the scenes were shot on location, signing the card with his name.
Oh wow, this sounds a wonderful product of its time just on that alone :)

I recently went to 'A Night at the 1914 Movies', which was a selection of clips and shorts, and I was fascinated by the content and the *style* of the intertitles (and of the films themselves!). Hee, just found a great Tumblr of a whole load of them: http://silentintertitles.tumblr.com/