Obviously on one level it's not, because there are title cards that pop up occasionally with dialogue so the audience can follow along as to what's happening.

But did people who watch silent film try to figure out what the actors on screen were saying by reading their lips? Or was it the visual experience/pantomime that is all they focused on? Did anybody write or comment on lip reading being an element or layer of enjoying/appreciating the work that people were missing out on by not doing it? Was the dialogue even a focal point of silent film enjoyment, or was it the general story/ way it was acted out on screen that is what people cared about?

I'm not sure how common lip reading was at the time (I'm thinking pre-1930s during the heyday of silent film). I'm also aware that a film might be shown to an audience that didn't speak any of the actors' language(s), so lip reading would have been pointless.

I ask this not because I'm a lip reader, but because I've seen some silent films (most recently the 1925 Phantom of the Opera silent film) and realized you could kind of tell what some of the actors were saying at some point, and it did somewhat match the title cards. Not sure if that's always true.