A Cottage on Dartmoor

Made, like Hitchcock's Blackmail, in separate sound and silent versions, Asquith's simple, striking passion play offers a glimmer of visual Expressionism rarely seen in British cinema. (Regrettably, the National Film Archive print under review is the sound-cut minus sound.) Opening on a breathless dash over the sodden looming moors, it flashes back from the exclamation 'Joe!' to the city and an extended exposition in which the self-same barber suffers as his salon colleague Sally is willingly wooed by a ruddy-faced customer. At times the film's ardour is more intense than the speed of its storytelling, but it's eminently handsome, both in the simpatico performances and in Asquith's crisp, adventurous, Eisensteinian montage.