Stars, volcanoes, crimpers and goats. Hippfest 23 Day Five

The lights go out one by one and as they do Stephen Horne synchronises a pure note as if the chimes of midnight are running us slowly towards tomorrow and Annette Benson, silently ignored by Brian Aherne in his director’s chair turns and walks shamefully across the massive studio floor, trudging through pools of light as Stephen’s flute, with regretful reverb, highlights her ultimate exit from the life she had and lost…

 

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been quite a few days and, almost as soon as it began it ended, sweeping by in a rush of high-quality organisation, beautiful cinema and music and the warmest of welcomes on the East Scottish Riviera… But what a way to finish?! Farewell Annette, Brian and Mr Donald Calthrop, Falkirk and the Forth, see you next year!

 

Shooting Stars is some film and, as the BFI’s Bryony Dixon reminded us in her introduction, not only was this 25-year-old Anthony Asquith’s first film, but it was also one her scripted so tightly that the nominal director A.V. Bramble was more an administrator of his vision. Asquith made certain to hire the best cinematographers available in Henry Harris and Stanley Rodwell – the expertise he wanted to ensure the success of a production that in his script notes he explained “…will depend to a great extent upon the excellence of the photography… The most modern form of technique is involved.”

 

He also insisted on the film being shot at Cricklewood so the enormity of his vision could be fully realised as we’re treated to incredibly complex shots as the cameras fly down and across the action on the floor and on different sets high and low in this magnificently textured space. This is top-end, late-silent sophistication and not without intrinsic purpose for a plot absolutely reliant on this sense of space; the proximities of heartbreak in the Middlesex dream factory.

Donald Calthrop and Dorothy "Chili" Bouchier

This film gives a lie to the myth of British cinematic incompetence, perpetuated by our own snobbery as well as the crushing competitiveness of Hollywood and, yes, he’s on a level with Hitchcock for much of this film, A Cottage on Dartmoor and Underground. Here Asquith – already seeped in film culture – takes aim at the darker and dafter side of the business and creates one of the first domestic films about film: a narrative that manages to be both effective as satire and affecting as a story of love gone awry.

 

This film opens with an outrageous overhead tracking sequence that you could have easily belonged in a German studio rather than one in Cricklewood. The stars of the film are the stars in a film – Prairie Love - a western, the least likely genre you’d expect from the hapless English to make a success of; a cliched clunker. We find star on the rise, Mae Feather (Annette Benson) being filmed in a blossom tree cosying up to both a white cove and her real-life hubbie, Julian Gordon (Brian Aherne) on a wooden horse (and wearing the most outrageous cowboy chaps). The bird pecks Mae’s lips, she shrieks and lets it fly and then chaos breaks loose as the scene is ruined, the crew stand down and the camera follows the chao looking down on the stage from on high then tracking the pursuit of the dove and the characters as they move around the studio cleverly revealing the set up.

 

Mae pauses to watch a comedy being filmed, women in swimming costumes a la Mack Sennet bathing beauties, including the especially eye-catching Dorothy "Chili" Bouchier as one of the girls cheering the Chaplinesque figure of Andy Wilkes (Donald Calthrop) as he makes a fool of someone’s fleshy husband… There’ll be more of that to come as we learn of his affair with Mae who, improbable as it may seem, prefers him to a man who looks every inch – at least six feet of them – the British Gary Cooper. Maybe she’s short on laughs or just finds handsome boring.

 

The marital betrayal and the offer of work in America, with a strictly no-scandal clause, build up the odds as Mae makes a drastic decision and the tone darkens… I hadn’t seen this film since the Restoration Gala at the 2015 London Film Festival and it’s a richly rewarding rewatch especially with the uncanny accompaniment from Stephen Horne who as is his practice, follows every nuance of the narrative in ways that seem to defy the laws of physics but not musicality.

 

Enrique Riveros and Brita Appelgren

His Majesty the Barber (1928) with John Sweeney

 

An altogether lighter tone was struck in the preceding film which I’d missed live at Pordenone 22 (ta C-19…) but seen streaming and had been longing to see in cinema and with accompaniment from Mr Sweeney. Not to be puritanical but you really can not beat seeing a silent comedy in the company of others and will live music; especially when, like me, you’d forgotten the series of twists that come at the end of this hairdressing hilarity.

 

As its title suggests, here we have a perfectly ordinary tale of a man who may, or may not, be an actual barber and who is operating as a street hairstylist in complete ignorance of a royal heritage that might immediately make him question his choice of career. Sounds plausible doesn’t it but director Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius has some form in this arena having produced the marvel of mirth that is A Sister of Six an extraordinarily silly film that featured Britain’s Queen of Happiness (no, not Camilla Parker Bowles but Betty Balfour!).

 

The film was a coproduction between Sweden and Germany not to mention Tirania, that ancient state nestled in the lower regions of the Ruritanian Alps in which it is set. An outstanding international cast includes Swedes Julius Falkenstein (known from films by Lubitsch, Murnau, and Lang), actress-director Karin Swanström (whose last directed film was the marvellous Girl in Tails (1926), and the teen Brita Appelgren, who, born in December 1912. must have been just 15 during filming; a scandic Loretta Young in looks and youth.

 

Karin Swanström and Hans Junkermann

The romantic hero/barber/potential Prince Nickolo was played by the Chilean actor Enrique Riveros who was much older at 21 and bizarrely touted as the Swedish Valentino. The German, Hans Junkermann plays the key role of André Gregory, the local barber and is the centre of much comedy as well as the underlying plot. He’s the former hairdresser of the Tiranian King who’s baby son and rightful heir, was placed in his care after a revolution. He has kept this even from Nickolo but now the moment of truth approaches and affairs of state and the heart collide in the most wonderful of ways.

Li Lili born Qian Zhenzhen in Beijing

 

Volcanic Passions aka Loving Blood of the Volcano (1932) with Stephen Horne

 

The “europudding” was preceded by a Chinese concoction performed with great gusto and culminating in the best fist fight climbing up a volcano that I’ve ever seen. Mr Horne is the man for protracted pugilism though with a wealth of experience including the extraordinarily vicious Behind the Door (1919). The film is not without its charm and power though – far from it! - and there’s an extraordinary motivation for the hero Song ke (Junli Zheng) when a local warlord, Cao Renjie (Congmei Yuan), lusting after his younger sister, ends up murdering her father and brother after she opts to jump to her death rather than become one of his concubines.

 

Director and writer Sun Yu’s film plays like a cowboy drama in a country dominated by such men in the period between colonial subservience and communist rule. Culturally it shows far more Western influence than you might expect, Sun having studied theatre and film in the USA at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia in the 1920s. There is also the Dietrich-like presence of the legendary Li Lili, in the first of her dozen collaborations with Yu. Lili plays a show girl in a bar, strutting around in confident style showing a sexual confidence and level of agency that marks her out as a real star.

 

Junli Zheng with his cinematic siblings playing Cat's Cradle

Song ke travels away from his family devastation a man obsessed with ridding the world of all monsters such as Cao. He’s miserable and turns to drink, especially in the Coconut Grove Tavern, where he is known as “the man who never smiles”, he needs to get together with Olga Baklanova from The Man Who Laughs perhaps but instead he meets Willow Blossom, a beautiful dancer recently employed there.

 

Willow reminds him of his home – same name – as well as his sister which makes his growing affection for her rather unusual… but they are the same sort of beautiful, independent women so let’s forgive him. As his heart starts to soften old enemies resurface and the fight of their lives is about to begin.

 

It’s pure entertainment and very well made, and it’s always such a treat to see such gems screened and given serious attention. The Li Lili fan club starts here!

 

G.O.A.T.

Angora Love (1929) and Bacon Grabbers (1929) with Meg Morley and Frank Bockius

 

The first of these was Laurel and Hardy’s final film before they went on to conquer the world of sound as well as silence. The boys are adopted by a four-legged friend who really gets their landlord Edgar Kennedy’s goat and it’s a tour de force of comic violence. As with all their best work the two are seemingly incapable of letting things go and rather than just hoping on a bus – there are 50 Ways to Leave Your Goat after all… they try and live with it without letting the landlord know. It’s a bad plan and we loved seeing it go wrong.

Mr Kennedy is back again this time improbably married to a young Jean Harlow and owing money on a radio he bought on the HP. Stan and Ollie are trainee repo men sent to serve papers for reclamation by the Sherriff’s Office.

 

Things do not go to plan completely unlike this festival which was the epitome of a good time as organised by The Queen of Scottish Silents: Alison Strauss. I’ve manged events and teams in my career but I’ve rarely seen a more effective and happier crew than this one. You guys deserve all the awards going and thank you, by the way, for the one you handed to me for these reviews. It’s been my pleasure, absolutely!

 

See you in 2024!!

 

The light goes down on Bo'ness for another year...