Festival Director: Alison Strauss
HippFest, Falkirk Council’s world-class annual silent film festival based at the Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness, is back. Running from 18 to 22 March, the programme features a strong international line-up of movies. Every screening features live accompaniment by some of the most accomplished cinema musicians on the planet. The result is an exquisite combination of fascinating historic films and brilliantly tailored music.
The Wednesday’s opening film, The Outlaw and His Wife (1918) is an emotionally gripping melodrama set in Iceland but shot in Sweden and directed by and starring Victor Sjöström as a one-time thief dogged by his past. As David Cairns observes in his programme notes, the story seems to have been influenced by Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. The theft in this case is of a sheep rather than a loaf of bread. Cast out from society, the outlaw (Sjöström) and his employer-turned-wife (Edith Erastoff) have to fend for themselves in the hills, battling harsh conditions. Some scenes anticipate the director’s later Hollywood masterpiece The Wind (1928).
Also on Wednesday is Fante-Anne (Gypsy Anne, 1920), the first home-grown feature from Norway but notably starring Norwegian actor Aasta Nielsen in the title role. As with many of these old melodramas, it’s quite a slow-spooling tale of love blocked by circumstance. In this rather disconcerting storyline, Anne hopes to marry the man with whom she was raised as a sibling. But because she is ‘of unknown origin’ this cannot go ahead. Be prepared for wistful close-ups and impressive scenery.
Thursday sees the first known adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, directed in the USA by Alan Crosland in 1917 and running at just over an hour. It’s a lot of fun with a fast pace and shipboard scenes that are still gripping.
Also on Thursday and also a tale of contested entitlement, there’s The White Heather (1919). Lord Angus Cameron (Holmes Herbert) has secretly married housekeeper Marion (Mabel Ballin) and had a child with her but financial pressures lead him to attempt to get the marriage annulled and wed someone else. Marion’s supporters try to get her recognised by the court as Angus’s wife. The plot is fairly convoluted but engaging nonetheless, with one title card proclaiming: ‘It’s a matter of more than life and death – it is for a lady’s honour, her good name.’ At the climax, there are some truly remarkable underwater scenes featuring old-time diving gear.
On Sunday there’s a movie called Song, a British-German co-production from 1928 starring Hollywood’s Anna May Wong. It’s another tale of mismatched love but with the added attraction of being set in Constantinople and featuring various song-and-dance scenes. The opening sees Song (Wong) rescued from the clutches of two baddies by John (Heinrich George), then taken into his lowly abode – where they sleep separately – and included in his knife-throwing act. It’s colourful stuff and tugs at the heartstrings.
Also on Sunday is the closing movie, King Vidor’s brilliant The Crowd (1928), a searing critique of the dehumanising effects of working for little pay in a vast, regimented office. Lead actor James Murray, chosen from the extras pool, has such great comic timing and ability to perform a tragic role that he almost transcends the silent era and seems contemporary. This is surely one of the first movies to deal sympathetically with mental health issues, not least in an impressionistic sequence involving flashbacks and spinning numbers.
For those unable to attend in person, a selection of films will feature in HippFest at Home, an online offering open between 30 March and 6 April.
HippFest runs from 18 to 22 March at the Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness,
