HippFest, the world-class jewel in the crown of Falkirk Council’s cultural offer, is a silent film festival in the Forthside town of Bo’ness, west of Edinburgh. There’s a handy shuttle bus service, to and from Linlithgow station. The events are, of course, anything but silent. The sublime live music on offer, sometimes part-improvised, sometimes in dramatic new scores for small ensembles to play, makes pre-talkies cinema one of the richest artforms you can experience.
The 15th edition of HippFest got under way with a community screening of The Constant Nymph (1928), an Ivor Novello melodrama, at the Barony Theatre, headquarters of the local am-dram company. Festival stalwart Mike Nolan was at the keyboard and did a fantastic job of accompaniment.
Based on a controversial bestselling novel and risqué West End show, the film was partly shot on location in the Alps and follows the romantic fortunes of a composer (Novello) and the teenage daughter of his mentor, who dies. The movie was directed and edited by Adrian Brunel, and introduced here by Josephine Botting, from the BFI’s National Film Archive, whose PhD thesis was devoted to the film-maker.
That said, the focus of this screening was on the shared script credit for Alma Reville, better known as the wife and close collaborator of Alfred Hitchcock. There will be a rare outing for Hitchcock’s directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden (1925), on which Alma also worked as assistant director and editor, on 21 March. This, and most of the festival’s other screenings, will be held at the Hippodrome, Scotland’s oldest purpose-built cinema, in the town centre.
The Finnish film Before The Face Of The Sea (1926), which has English intertitles, is showing on 19 March. It features impressive location work, beginning as a three-men-in-a-boat yarn before turning increasingly dark and mysterious when one of the lads decides to stay on a remote and barely inhabited island. There’s fog; there are flashbacks and ghostly apparitions. This is a beautifully restored, sepia-tinted slow-burner.
With Reindeer And Sled In Inka Lantä’s Winterland (1926) is also showing on 19 March. It does what it says on the reel tin, exploring the lifestyle of the Sámi, nomadic reindeer herders in northern Sweden. Reminiscent of Robert Flaherty’s much better known Nanook of The North (1922), this film is an ethnographic study in scenes that blend genuine documentary with reconstructed elements added for drama. It’s bleak and captivating in turns, with a content warning for some scenes of animal slaughter.
The Swallow And The Titmouse (1920), showing on 22 March, is another leisurely, watchable melodrama shot on location, this time along the canals of Belgium and France. The title refers to the names of twin barges which take supplies of construction materials to areas devastated by the recent Great War. The lives of the master, his wife and her sister are upended by the arrival of a new pilot, in a plot that also involves the shipping of contraband diamonds.
HippFest runs until from 19-23 March 2025.
The Reviews Hub Score
Fascinating
