Silent Films - BFI Mediatheque

As a media class we visited the BFI (British Film Institute) which is the home of the world's richest and most significant collection of film and television. The BFI National Archive preserves almost one million titles.
Here we researched as many silent films as we could in order to get a feel of how they're made and what makes them successful.

A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929)
This is a thrilling silent film directed by Anthony Asquith.
It follows the story of an obsessive Barber's assistant and his attempt to win over the heart of a customers' wife. The opening images are of a silhouette of a man running up and down hills and through countryside whilst fast paced piano and violin music accompanies the on screen images. This automatically gives a chilling feeling as he is clearly running to or from something and as the music gets faster and more high pitched the audience becomes uneasy.
Cleverly, there are minimal written screens used; the majority of the motion picture is narrated throught the tone and speed of its soundtrack. The most interesting scene for me was towards the end of the film where the madman is seen by the police and shot at, a cut away of waves crashing against rocks is used for dramatic affect.