Festival Director: Alison Strauss
Live new music is the kiss of life to silent movies that have languished in archives and attics for decades. HippFest’s roster of specialist composer-musicians provide sensitive and engaging soundtracks to films that are often – in story or visual terms, or both – hidden gems.
This year there was a serious push to bring the hybrid artform to a much wider audience. The silent film festival in Bo’ness near Falkirk extended the viewing window for its ‘HippFest at Home’ offer from two to seven days. So a week after the sixteenth edition of the in-person festival wrapped, a selection of seven events was made available to paying online viewers via the Vimeo platform.
Each film offered the choice of whether to view the musicians in vision or not, alongside the movie itself. Doing so gave a richness to the viewing experience and made it a good approximation of being at the live event. It operated equally well, though, if you filled the screen with the movie and just listened to the music.
Each screening included an introduction by HippFest Director Alison Strauss, recorded at the in-person event, further adding to the sense of involvement. There were useful features in the HippFest at Home digital welcome pack, also on the website where you could pick up a full set of excellent programme notes. These, and captions at the start of some films, told the heroic tale of how movies were restored and sometimes pieced together from partial prints found in different countries, with inter-titles initially in different languages.
Of the movies selected, two featured the child star Baby Peggy, a silent precursor to Shirley Temple, and surprisingly her performances were charming, not cringe-worthy. As the five-year-old title character Captain January (1924), she was being brought up by a lighthouse keeper who recovered her from a shipwreck as a baby. Stephen Horne (piano, accordion and flute) added greatly to the pathos of the piece. Baby Peggy had a lesser role in the Jewish romantic drama April Fool (1926) but was again being raised by a single dad. Meg Morley (piano) helped to bring out the emotions of this one.
There was a real treat for Hitchcock fans in the form of Saxophone Susy (1928), starting Anny Ondra (The Manxman and Blackmail) in a comic role, complete with hilariously silly dance numbers. These were given flight by Jane Gardner (piano), John Burgess (sax and clarinet) and Hazel Morrison (percussion).
The Bat (1926) was an entertaining ‘old dark house’ comedy-thriller, even if its storyline was baffling at times. An inspiration to Batman creator Bob Kane, this featured a ruthless thief in a bat costume and gorgeous expressionist sets and lighting. At one point Stephen Horne appeared to be playing piano and accordion simultaneously.
Other screenings included Fante-Anne and The White Heather (already discussed in the HippFest preview) as well as New Found Sound, an enjoyably eclectic selection of Scottish archive shorts accompanied by young composer-musicians from Falkirk District schools.
All in all, this was a superb programme enabling anyone around the world with a love of silent cinema to discover rare and beautiful material from a century ago, brilliantly augmented by new music. Importantly, HippFest really nailed the technical side of things, making it easy to access and a great pleasure to watch.
HippFest ran from 18 to 22 March at the Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness.
