Early dialog hard to understand?

Did any other viewers have the same experience I did, watching "Free Soul" for the first time in our 21st century? In the early episodes of this film, I had real difficulty understanding some of the spoken dialog. It seemed that the actors "underplayed" their roles and spoke their dialog very rapidly, some of it in "throw-away" fashion. I'm reminded of post-WW2 actors like Brando and Clift, who deliberately MUTTERED their dialog to seem realistic. (They WERE realistic, but not always easy to understand.) Perhaps this "muttered" dialog as spoken in the early part of "Free Soul" was an attempt, in 1931, to get AWAY from the theatrical articulation used by actors in the first "talkies" (1927-30)? Some of those late-1920s actors had come to films from a stage background: they slowly and deliberately articulated almost every syllable they uttered, in order that every syllable would be clearly understood by those first "talkie" audiences (1927-30). If we interpret the "throw-away" spoken dialog in the early part of "Free Soul" (1931) as a reaction AGAINST the first talkies, that would indeed be very logical. -- Prof Steven P Hill, Cinema Studies, University of Illinois
"S(DASH)HILL4(AT)UIUC(DOT)EDU"