Escape from Dartmoor (1929)

Originally posted to Facebook on 2/3/2019

Escape from Dartmoor was our fourth film from 1929 - a British thriller very much in the Hitchcock mode, but directed by Anthony Asquith.

In fact, based on the two Hitchcock silents we've seen (1927's The Lodger and 1929's Blackmail), this is a better thriller than Hitchcock himself was producing at this time; both of those films had excellent sequences, but also significant flaws, while this film is of a more consistent quality. It opens stylishly, with a man escaping from Dartmoor prison, and breaking into a house. From there the film flashes back to the events leading up to his imprisonment -- the origins of which begin with a love triangle made up of Uno Henning, Hans Schlettow, and Norah Baring. Henning and Baring work in a barber shop together, and Schlettow is a customer whom Baring seems to like -- which doesn't sit well with Henning. Tension and misunderstandings build steadily. In addition to the main plot, there is a very meta sequence in which the lead characters go to a movie theater transitioning to sound -- which the film posits is not popular with audiences. That judgment could not have been more wrong -- but the movie's strongest argument for silent film is not that scene, but the spare, efficient way in which it builds its story.

Of the three leads only Baring was English -- with Schlettow being German and Henning Swedish -- which of course mattered not at all in a silent. Schlettow is the only one we've seen before, appearing as Hagen Tronje in Fritz Lang's 1924 Die Nibelungen films, and also in a small role in the film we saw just previous, Pandora's Box.

Our next film is The Man and the Moment, our fifth film from 1929, our second partial talkie, and the second time we've seen Billie Dove. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT