Monday October 4, 7pm, The Paramount, Seattle
"I never meant to do it."
A deranged man escapes from prison to seek revenge on the woman who put him there. Joe (Uno Henning) is a barber's assistant obsessed with manicurist Sally (Norah Baring), who has fallen for customer and local farmer Harry (Hans Schlettow). As their attachment grows, Joe becomes increasingly jealous and cuts the farmer's throat with a straight razor when he finally snaps.
Revealed in flashbacks, 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. When the crime is committed and blood is presumably spilt, a bottle falls from the manicurist's table, its liquid contents burbling onto the floor. Director Anthony Asquith reveals his characters with sparing light against shadows in the street, theater and farmhouse. The dark doings of Joe's crime by contrast, are all the more shocking in the brightness of the barbershop.
Brit-Noir
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 segment with synchronized sound in which Joe spies on Sally and Harry at the movies. Ironically, the group who would soon be thrown out of work by sound are featured in this segment, the theater orchestra. 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 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).
Anthony Asquith
Following his graduation from Oxford, Anthony Asquith spent six months as a guest at Pickfair, observing the minutia of Hollywood film production. A student of European and American cinema, Asquith became known for his technical brilliance in the nineteen-twenties with Shooting Stars (1928), Underground (1928) and A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929). As the son of British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith (1908-16), social connections provided opportunities but also welcomed detractors. He is most often criticized for never developing a distinctive style as did contemporaries Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell. Asquith is remembered today for Pygmalion (1938), The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and other literary adaptations, but his journeyman filmmaker's approach lent itself to a wide range of subjects. Attracting the finest actors and material available, his films reveal a consistently high degree of quality that made Asquith a stalwart of British cinema for decades.
"I never meant to do it."
A deranged man escapes from prison to seek revenge on the woman who put him there. Joe (Uno Henning) is a barber's assistant obsessed with manicurist Sally (Norah Baring), who has fallen for customer and local farmer Harry (Hans Schlettow). As their attachment grows, Joe becomes increasingly jealous and cuts the farmer's throat with a straight razor when he finally snaps.
Revealed in flashbacks, 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. When the crime is committed and blood is presumably spilt, a bottle falls from the manicurist's table, its liquid contents burbling onto the floor. Director Anthony Asquith reveals his characters with sparing light against shadows in the street, theater and farmhouse. The dark doings of Joe's crime by contrast, are all the more shocking in the brightness of the barbershop.
Brit-Noir
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 segment with synchronized sound in which Joe spies on Sally and Harry at the movies. Ironically, the group who would soon be thrown out of work by sound are featured in this segment, the theater orchestra. 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 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).
Anthony Asquith
Following his graduation from Oxford, Anthony Asquith spent six months as a guest at Pickfair, observing the minutia of Hollywood film production. A student of European and American cinema, Asquith became known for his technical brilliance in the nineteen-twenties with Shooting Stars (1928), Underground (1928) and A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929). As the son of British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith (1908-16), social connections provided opportunities but also welcomed detractors. He is most often criticized for never developing a distinctive style as did contemporaries Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell. Asquith is remembered today for Pygmalion (1938), The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and other literary adaptations, but his journeyman filmmaker's approach lent itself to a wide range of subjects. Attracting the finest actors and material available, his films reveal a consistently high degree of quality that made Asquith a stalwart of British cinema for decades.