Why, you can see them thinking."
-A spectator's comment on Biograph's THE WAY OF MAN, in Moving Picture World, 3 July 1909, p. 11

In 1908, the most important quality for film acting was clarity. The actors in demand were those who could tell the story with gestures, clearly visible at stage distance. It was then still fashionable to admire French filmmaking, and as Rollin Summers explained, the French were considered better film actors because

[They] seem natural adepts at pantomime. An arch of the eyebrow, a
shrug of the shoulders, a gesture of the hands, all these are aids in
expression to them. The American relies in his daily life, more entirely,
upon his words (Moving Picture World, 19 September 1908, p. 211).

In another issue, the Moving Picture World asked rhetorically:

What is it in the films of some foreign manufacturers that makes them
in...