A Tragedy of the Cornish Coast

The BFI has posted this orphaned film to their Youtube site. Wallett Waller comes to a Cornish fishing village to paint. When Dorothy Fane takes a fancy to the posh fellow, Oriell Farrell allows his baser passions to overcome him and he abducts the girl. Soon, however, Waller leads members of the Coast Guard in a valiant rescue.

In story-telling and acting, it is a standard work of the day. It is quite lovely for the bleak and bare landscape of the Cornish coast. However, the set design and composition are rather poor. While American and French film makers would design their sets and shots with the fields of vision they wished to emphasize in mind, British film makers in this era seemed to clutter the set and then choose whatever angle gave them the easiest line of sight, without any regard to composition .