Bo’ness welcomes patrons in person again for the 12th Hippodrome Silent Film Festival. Running from Wednesday 16th to Sunday 20th March, HippFest 2022 combines screenings of much-loved favourites, restored classics, and new discoveries, with live musical accompaniment for each film screened. There is also a programme of events and talks to provide background and context to many of the films screened. Those keen for perennial favourites like Keaton, Chaplin, and Laurel and Hardy will of course be well catered for. But there are plenty other screenings that deserve your attention.
The opening night has a restoration world premiere of The Loves of Mary Queen of Scots. Fay Compton takes the title role in this ambitious costume drama from 1923, which takes in all the infamous events in Mary’s life. Performing live are Wendy Weatherby (cello, voice), Frank McLaughlin (guitar, pipes), and David Trouton (piano), with internationally acclaimed storyteller Andy Cannon providing historical context during reel changeovers. To whet the appetite, earlier on the same day is a talk by Donald Smith, ‘Queen of Hearts: Mary Queen of Scots in Popular Culture‘, which examines the Mary Stuart of history against the many depictions of her down the years.
Marjory Kennedy-Fraser was a key figure in Scotland’s Celtic revival. From 1905 the singer and composer began collecting Hebridean songs. It became a passion and several of the films she made on the islands are presented in Journey to the Isles: Marjory Kennedy Fraser on Thursday 17th. The film will be backed by Marion Kenny – one of Scotland’s leading storytellers; and award-winning musician, singer and songwriter Mairi Campbell, spinning the words and music collected by Kennedy-Fraser, to the images she filmed.
Attention on Friday 18th turns to the legendary nurse Edith Cavell. In the afternoon is the talk ‘Wartime Propaganda and Peacetime Diplomacy: Edith Cavell on Film 1915-1928‘. Delivered by Dr Lawrence Napper, this will examine the way her murder at the hands of German occupiers in Belgium was used for propaganda purposes by the Allies. This is followed by Herbert Wilcox‘s Dawn. The great theatre actor Sybil Thorndike takes the title role in this 1928 biopic of Cavell, which was hugely controversial on its release. The live score is provided by Stephen Horne (piano, flute, accordion), and Frank Bockius (percussion).
The filmmaker F.W. Murnau is best known for Nosferatu and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, but directed an impressive 20 films before his early death in 1931. His penultimate film City Girl (1930) is shown on Saturday 19th. The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand perform the Scottish premiere of their new score for the film. Also screening is The Fall of the House of Usher. More than three decades before Roger Corman began his Edgar Allan Poe cycle, Coeur Fidèle director Jean Epstein put his own surreal stamp on Poe’s iconic Gothic tale. Stephen Horne (piano, flute, accordion) and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry (harp) will premiere their musical collaboration on this title, to be reprised at the Barbican, London in April.
Sunday 20th rounds the festival off with a trio of lesser-known gems. A String of Pearls by Li Zeyauan is one of the earliest surviving Chinese feature films. John Sweeney provides a live piano score to this cautionary tale based on Guy de Maupassant‘s short story The Necklace. Three icons combine in one in The Unknown. Todd Browning (Dracula, Freaks) brings his morbid sensibility to this grim tale of a murderer (horror legend Lon Chaney), who pretends to be an armless knife thrower at a circus to avoid detection. He falls in love with his glamorous assistant Nanon, played by none other than Joan Crawford in an early role. The piano score is by Jonny Best. Finally, Paul McGann narrates Marcel L’Herbier‘s French drama L’Homme du Large to close the festival. The modern fable is accompanied by John Sweeney (piano) and Frank Bockius (percussion).
Hippodrome Silent Film Festival runs from Wed 16 to Sun 20 Mar 2022. More details can be found at hippodromecinema.co.uk/silent-film-festival/