A farmer for whom pretty much everything goes wrong is blinded while trying to blow up a tree. He's a fatalist, which exasperates his wife but means he's philosophical about it. The half-gypsy girl from down the road moves in as the family maid and reads him passages from Marcus Aurelius (another stoic); but when his dog is killed, he hands the farm over to his wife and her lover and walks off down the lane. The girl follows him...
The blindness, the sort of affliction that must have happened to a lot of men recently (in world war one), isn't fully convincing - he's still able to find his way across country and locate a haystack to sleep in - but what's really striking about this is the landscapes of a lost rural England, and the low-key acting. Silent movies sometimes involve immense histrionics, but Newall and Everest in particular pare their emotions back. No eye-rolling, no shouting; very stiff-upper-lip. The ending, man trudging off, woman silently following, reads like Chaplin, but less convincingly: The Tramp wasn't blind. Where on earth does Jess Falconer think he's going, and what's he going to do? Just as well there's a loving gypsy to help out.
The blindness, the sort of affliction that must have happened to a lot of men recently (in world war one), isn't fully convincing - he's still able to find his way across country and locate a haystack to sleep in - but what's really striking about this is the landscapes of a lost rural England, and the low-key acting. Silent movies sometimes involve immense histrionics, but Newall and Everest in particular pare their emotions back. No eye-rolling, no shouting; very stiff-upper-lip. The ending, man trudging off, woman silently following, reads like Chaplin, but less convincingly: The Tramp wasn't blind. Where on earth does Jess Falconer think he's going, and what's he going to do? Just as well there's a loving gypsy to help out.
