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13 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Beautifully Realized British Silent, 15 January 2007
10/10
Author: sunlily from Dallas, TX.

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.

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9 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Grand Cottage, moor please!, 8 June 2006
8/10
Author: FilmFlaneur from London

COTTAGE ON DARTMOOR: an expressionistic and claustrophobic account of sexual obsession and jealousy, very Hitchockian in the way it deals with the resulting crescendo of suspense, especially in connection with a key throat-cutting in a barber's chair incident. Asquith was a director who grew stodgy as his career entered into the sound era, viz his terribly British adaptions of Rattigan, but the present film (1929) is rather an eye opener. One standout scene is set within a cinema, partly a comment on the imminent and creatively burdensome coming of clunky sound, and which contains an extended eye opening use of editing, cutting about within an audience as the beady-eyed boy friend watches his victims - a bravura sequence which ought to be much better known to cineastes.

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
beautiful, poetic and haunting, 4 June 2006
10/10
Author: gavinlockey from United Kingdom

Firstly, let me say that my little lad eats the occasional rusk and loved them when a baby (now nearly 4). I loved this movie...I saw it for the first time last night on the BBC. I too enjoyed the flashback vehicle, which by using the exclamation (via title) "Joe!" jolted us into flashback. I thought the use of mirrors imaginative and symbolic (Norah appearing at times a disembodied - if beautiful - head among possessive men in the barbershop. I was quite enthralled by the big farmer coming in for a manicure (wink-wink). The images are on reflection quite disturbing in the barbershop...a man having his hands caressed by a pretty girl whilst a cut throat razor is applied to his throat. I too found the trip to the cinema memorable and also poignant. The director at pains to reveal to us the value of the cinema orchestra at a time when their jobs would have been in extreme peril. Couple this with mention of a "talkie" earlier (this received a blank response) and these elements could be viewed as a swan song for the silents. You must see this film, it is truly wonderful. The performances are spot on and it does not always take the predictable turn. Considering the intensity of obsession the male lead character conveys, the film develops great warmth. UNIQUE!!

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7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Did Hitchcock steal from this movie?, 23 October 2005
8/10
Author: F Gwynplaine MacIntyre (Borroloola@earthlink.net) from Minffordd, North Wales

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.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Only 1/- for a haircut!, 31 July 2007
8/10
Author: Gary170459 from Derby, UK

First time of viewing this one: a marvellous experience, from the opening shots of a prisoner on the run over moorland from prison guards to the ending where …

The first intertitle is "Joe!" and we're immediately launched into an hour long flashback of how Joe got to be a prisoner and how he knows Sally. He's obsessively in love with her with awful consequences for the man she really loves, and himself - realistically portrayed and apart from the incident in the barbers unfortunately only too believable. The three main leads play their parts wonderfully well with incessant close ups, inventive photography, low cameras and precise mirror shots highlighting the intensity. Photogenic Norah Baring thankfully was no Hollywood Queen, her self possession and simple youthful homeliness adding an extra dimension to the time honoured tale. Favourite bits: Life in Sally's boarding house with the old biddies, ear trumpets and ancient furniture and plants; The cinema segment with everyone including the redundant pit orchestra intently watching a talkie, and of course the orgasmic psycho-jazz snappy editing; The "murder" in the barbers (it was fun watching everybody apparently just watching the dying man dying).

One of the last mainstream silent films produced, it just couldn't have worked even one year later as a slave to the voice – this shows exactly what silent films could offer as an artform, and still do to those with a little patience. Try it.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Seattle International Film Festival, David Jeffers for SIFFblog.com, 11 June 2007
Author: rdjeffers from Seattle

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Fatal Attraction

Wednesday June 13, 7:30p.m., SIFF Cinema (The Nesholm Family Lecture Hall), Seattle International Film Festival

Sunday July 15, 6:00p.m., The Castro, The San Francisco Silent Film Festival

A deranged man escapes from prison to seek revenge on the woman who put him there in A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929). Revealed in flashbacks and punctuated with rapid montage, this late silent era film displays the mastery of visual narrative achieved just prior to "the talkies" using lurid metaphor and a minimal number of intertitles.

Joe (Uno Henning) a barber's assistant, is obsessed with Sally (Norah Baring) a pretty manicurist who has fallen in love with a customer and local farmer (Hans Schlettow). As their attachment grows, Joe becomes increasingly jealous, cutting the farmer's throat with a straight razor when he finally snaps.

Director Anthony Asquith etches his characters with sparing light against the darkness of night, in the street, the theater and farmhouse. By contrast, the dark doings of Joe's crime are all the more shocking in the only bright setting, the barbershop. As mayhem ensues, a bottle falls from an overturned table, its liquid contents burbling onto the floor. An overwrought Joe smears real blood across his face and claims his innocence, "I never meant to do it." A glowing ceiling light over his shoulder recalls the earlier image of a sinister moon hiding behind clouds as he runs across the darkened countryside.

In production …

Fundamentally a silent film, A Cottage on Dartmoor was released during the period of transition into sound when hybrid productions were common. The original film included one scene, in which Joe spies on Sally and the farmer at the movies, with a synchronized soundtrack. Ironically, the group who would soon be thrown out of work by sound is featured in this segment, the theater orchestra. Anthony Asquith appears briefly as an audience member, mistaken for the star on the screen by two boys. While this scene remains in the film, the synchronized soundtrack recorded in Germany is now presumed lost.

Multi-national in the truest sense, A Cottage on Dartmoor was co-produced by British Instructional Films and the Swedish Biograph Company. Schlettow, a German, appeared in numerous Fritz Lang productions, also working with D. W. Griffith and Joe May. Henning, a Swede, appeared in G. W. Pabst and Victor Sjöström films, while Baring, a Brit, was featured in Alfred Hitchcock's Murder (1930).

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Stalked!, 25 October 2007
10/10
Author: movingpicturegal from Los Angeles

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.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Visually and technically impressive with solid narrative, 1 October 2007
Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK

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.

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Lively and Imaginative British silent, 2 November 2009
Author: JoeytheBrit from www.moviemoviesite.com

This was a surprise – Asquith has never been one of my favourite directors, and the subject looked as though it would lend itself to the melodramatic, but this film is put together with incredible verve and imagination. Asquith's enthusiasm is evident and he seems always to be constantly on the lookout for any shot or camera angle that will breathe life into the pedestrian plot – and nearly always succeeds. It's only in the last third of the story that the film begins to unravel a little and fall back on conventional techniques.

Most of the film concentrates on the slightly odd young barber who is obsessed with the manicurist in the salon where he works. At the outset of the film we know he has committed a crime because we follow his escape from prison and his arrival at the cottage where the object of his obsession now lives (with a baby and husband). Asquith relates all this with admirable efficiency and economy, and ingeniously connects the film's present to its past with the woman's startled cry of the man's name when she spies him in her cottage. We then see the events that lead to this situation, and they are as compelling as they are routine. Anyone who has ever felt the pain of unrequited love will sympathise with Joe (the barber) and perhaps understand the reservations that hold him back from connecting with the woman he loves.

The short running time is down to Asquith's economy of purpose – even though he does take a slight detour to show the winning over of a late 20s cinema audience to the talkies as Joe stalks his beloved and her new boyfriend. To illustrate the topics of conversation in the salon, instead of the mundane use of titles he shows images – of cricket games and tennis matches, etc and closes in on the rapidly moving mouths – to more succinctly deliver the message. When fellow workers argue over whether the woman will wed her new beau we see them both from opposite sides of the razor Joe is sharpening on a strop. Some of these touches are almost Hitchcockian and elevate the film to a level much higher than it really ought to be.

The film does lapse into typical silent melodrama in the last couple of reels, which is a shame, but the preceding hour is a gem of British film-making that is well worth seeking out.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
A barber, a manicurist & a client are on the razor's edge of a deadly love triangle., 30 October 2008
7/10
Author: (MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com) from United States

Anthony Asquith is best known for straightforward film-making in the so-called British literary tradition which served him particularly well in stage-to-screen adaptations of G. B. Shaw & Terrence Rattigan. Letting the writer function as auteur doesn't win you critical kudos, but films as fine as PYGMALION/'38 and THE BROWNING VERSION/'51 don't just 'happen.' Even so, it's fun to watch the young Asquith show off, even needlessly, on late silents like this & UNDERGROUND/'28, also out on DVD. You can all but hear him parsing the latest Russian or German import just screened at his CineClub. There's some strikingly fast montage work and psychological P.O.V. stuff (even a shock-flash of red tinting as in the original prints of Hitchcock's SPELLBOUND/'45), but the main influence is UFA studios with their posh camera moves, rich visual texture, expressionist acting, shadowy lighting & diagonal slashes The opening works best as Swedish actor Uno Henning (in his only British role, he's an intriguing mix of Buster Keaton & Conrad Veidt) breaks out of prison in search of revenge. The story flashes back to detail a rather commonplace love triangle that gives Asquith plenty of space for his set pieces (a visit to the cinema, a very close shave, et al.) which tend to run on a bit too long. But no matter, it's all ravishing to watch and if the characterizations never quite add up, the visual touches are worth the stretch.

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