The Lonely Villa is a 1909 American short silent crime drama film directed by D. W. Griffith.
It is based on the 1901 French play Au Téléphone (At the Telephone) by André de Lorde.
[2] The Lonely Villa was produced by the Biograph Company and shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
[2] A group of criminals wait until a wealthy man leaves to break into his house and threaten his wife and daughters.
The Lonely Villa is notable for one of the earliest applications of “cross-cutting in a peril-and-rescue sequence”, a cinematic method used to create suspense.