Escape from Dartmoor

Sally lives in a cottage on Dartmoor when, on a dark and quiet night, a man breaks into her home having just escaped the high-security prison across the moors. That man is none other than Joe, a former barber's assistant at the place where Sally used to be a manicurist. As they connect eyes, the audience flashback to the times where Joe and Sally once worked together and he had tried to woo her at the beginning of a series of events that now brought them to this place.

The BBC's summer of British films this year turned out to be better than I expected it to be because, instead of wheeling out Zulu, Dam Busters and all the usual British films, they actually screened lots of films that I had not seen or, in some cases, heard of. Of course this meant that some of them were not any good but at least it was an attempt to fresh up the idea of what British cinema is. A Cottage on Dartmoor is a good example of this as it is rare for silent films to be screened on television and far more rare for them to be British silent films. I had never seen this and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Narrative-wise the film opens with an element of fear and tension before jumping back to more of a comedy and romance. As this builds back to where it started again for a good finish. The film is maybe 15 minutes too long for the material to sustain but otherwise it is well delivered. The funny bits are amusing, the tense bits tense and the romance nicely melodramatic and tragic, however it is the delivery that makes the film – specifically that of Asquith and his cinematographer. Visually the film matches the tone of the film really well – opening and closing with sharp shadows on the moors, and enjoying a bright and carefree air early in the barbershop scenes. The images are sharp and really well formed with plenty of clever shots. Mirrors are used well, conversations represented by stock footage, flashbacks delivered within flashbacks and a great scene where we watch a cinema audience reacting to a film they are watching. Visually and technically it is very impressive and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Deserves to be screened a lot more than it is and be seen by more people than it is, but credit to the BBC for showing it recently.

Stylish and tense melodrama which features an opening scene where a man who has just escaped from prison is seen crossing the stark and gloomy moors, the sky darkened by black clouds, and not much more to be seen than a few wandering cows and a dark, bare tree. A woman cares for her baby at a lonely, isolated cottage, the man slithers in and confronts her and - she knows him! Now in flashback we see the background story of these two, Joe and Sally, co-workers in a barber shop where he gives men a shave and a haircut while she manicures their nails and gives the customers flirtatious smiles. This prompts more than just jealousy in this man - he pursues her, she doesn't really seem to like him that much but does agree to go out with him and they spend an evening together at her boarding-house where numerous well-meaning, slightly interfering old-timers seem to live (and he gets some pretty scary expressions on his face in what seems to be his desperation to kiss her). When she agrees to go see a "talkie" with a certain male customer, Joe turns stalker as he sneaks into the theater, secretly plants himself in the row behind them, and in an amazingly photographed scene shot using rapid-paced editing, we never see the film they are watching - instead the camera cuts between audience members plus Sally reacting as they watch the film, the orchestra playing, and Joe - who is not watching the film at all, but rather he's glaring in a steady gaze at Sally and her "date" in front of him.

This is a really excellent, well done film featuring loads of interesting cinematography - softly filtered lighting and shadowy scenes, facial close-ups, and lots of fast cutting. The guard who discovers Joe's escape is seen mainly in shadows against the cell walls, the menacing face of the convict as the camera quickly zooms in to show his face as the woman recognizes him, Joe sharpening his razor, quickly cut between two gossiping female co-workers, as he contemplates murder! The Kino DVD of this features a great looking black and white print and nicely done piano score that helps enhance the tension in the film. A great silent film, well worth seeing.

Uno Henning escapes from Dartmoor Prison and makes it to a small cottage where he confronts Norah Baring. We see in flashback that he worked in a barber shop and had a crush on Baring. After she (kind of) unintentionally leads him on, he discovers that she plans on marrying customer Hans Adalbert Schlettow. Bad things happen.

The last of four silent films made by Anthony Asquith, it was made so much on the cusp of talking films that the characters go see one in the film. It's a striking visual film with strong expressionist elements and odd, dynamic editing. It's also about 15 minutes too long.

Asquith cameos as a customer in the quite long movie theater scene.

A Cottage on Dartmoor is a late British silent of stunning clarity and poetic justice. The use of the camera to caress the homey accents in Norah's boarding house, the use of mirrors to dramatize the lives and thoughts of the characters, the elongated camera angles of the escaped convict jumping from captivity to freedom, and running from his past into redemption. All of this and more make this late silent itself almost a valentine to the end of the silent era and the dawn of sound.

One of the most poignant scenes in the movie demonstrates this by taking us to a "talkie" that nonetheless has a full orchestra that the camera hones in on and romanticizes.

While this is a tale of obsession, it is also a story of love that has many emotionally tense elements that Norah Baring and Uno Henning handle with dignity and grace. I'm very surprised that I've not heard more about either of these actors.

A Cottage on Dartmoor is a very beautifully realized film that probably wouldn't have been as effective had it been made as a sound movie.

I'm extremely impressed with every aspect of 'A Cottage on Dartmoor', directed by the underrated Anthony Asquith (son of the Prime Minister). The camera-work features some superb tracking shots, kept perfectly in focus by focus-puller Arthur Woods (later a brilliant director in his own right, all too briefly before his death in World War Two). There is a clever and subtle flashback transition. The frame compositions are excellent, as are the performances by this obscure cast. At the climax of this monochrome film, there is a single flash of red: Hitchcock would later use this same device in 'Spellbound'. I wonder if Hitchcock copied it from Asquith.

Most of this story takes place in flashback, a device which I normally dislike. Flashbacks are now so hackneyed that there is an entire cinematic grammar of flashbacks: the screen goes blurry, the soundtrack swells with theremin music. Here, the transition to flashback is done subtly, with the first dialogue intertitle bridging the shift. Well done!

Some minor details distressed me. We see a prisoner who escaped from Dartmoor. His uniform displays a number, but shouldn't it also have the broad arrow? Also, since Joe (the convict) has sworn revenge against Harry Stevens -- his rival for the affection of Sally -- why ever have Harry and Sally moved to a remote cottage on Dartmoor, conveniently close to Joe's prison? This is the sort of thing which Hitchcock identified as 'icebox logic', the cinematic equivalent of "esprit d'escalier".

This film was made at an awkward moment of cinema history. The movie is silent, yet (in the dialogue titles) the characters on screen discuss going to 'a talkie'. But when they go to the cinema, a live orchestra are playing ... which indicates that the movie being shown is a silent. And an insert shot of a programme book tells us that the movie is Harold Lloyd's 'Safety Last', definitely a silent.

Not the least of this film's pleasures is its depiction of life in George V's England. I got a twinge of nostalgia from a brief shot of an infant clutching a rusk. (Do modern babies eat rusks?) In the central role, Norah Baring is excellent: portraying a simple manicurist, she is personable and pleasant to look at, without the implausible amount of glamour that a Hollywood actress would have brought to such a workaday role. I'll rate this fine character drama 8 out of 10.