A Cottage on Dartmoor

Anthony Asquith's tale of love and revenge, played out against the bleak Dartmoor landscape

In a small-town salon, a young barber, Joe is trying to court the beautiful manicurist Sally and asks her out. She rejects him in favour of the security of an older, wealthier farmer. In a jealous rage Joe slashes the farmer with a razor and is sent to prison for attempted murder. He escapes over the moors to find Sally, who does not know if he has come to kill her or ask her forgiveness.

Directed by Anthony Asquith, A Cottage on Dartmoor is a tale of love and revenge, set on the bleak landscape of Dartmoor. Overlooked by critics more eager to heap praise upon his contemporary, Hitchcock, (who made Blackmail the same year), Asquith's films display similarly inventive story-telling and technical artistry. Steeped in the work of the Soviet avant-garde and German expressionism, Asquith adopts these styles whilst instilling the film with a particularly British sensibility. One of the very last silent films to be made in Britain, A Cottage on Dartmoor has been restored from film materials preserved in the BFI National Archive. This little-known gem is presented here with a specially commissioned score by Stephen Horne.