A Cottage on Dartmoor
Oct 04, 2010
(Anthony Asquith, UK, 1929, 87 min)
Hitchcock wasn't the only silent-era British director to make audiences claw their seats in suspense; Anthony Asquith, later known for classics like The Importance of Being Ernest, whips up a psycho-noir to make the Master smile. A lovelorn barber's assistant tries to court the shop manicurist, but he quickly devolves into obsessive rage. Asquith tosses in bomb-bursts of rapid-fire editing and off-kilter cinematography, and the pay-off will stop you dead. The British film critic Raymond Durgnat declared that Asquith, with this film had "out-Hitchcocks Hitchcock, before Hitchcock became Hitchcock." Hang onto your seats!