Mary, Mungo and Neil… Hippfest at Home, Hippfest 2025

As online presentations go, Hippfest at Home is perhaps the most successful in capturing the atmosphere and the feeling of actually being there. You have establishing shots of the live introductions shot from the back of the stalls showing the lovely old stage of the oldest cinema in Scotland, the Hippodrome (1912) and then the option of seeing the film and the musicians accompanying. As always, Alison Strauss leads from the front with such relaxed expertise and enthusiasm – this kind of impassioned poise is reflected across the whole team who love the films but also the audience and the combination is what makes this impossible festival work so well it is now in it’s 15^th edition.

The hottest ticket for this year was as Alison said, Mr Neil Brand who gave the most entertaining talk about his singular career from his first professional accompaniment – Buster’s Sherlock Jnr (1924) – to his most recent – in the most “meta” moment he had to improvise to a mystery film selected by Alison. Neil, always so eloquent and, damn it, charming, had my entire family rapt as Dad’s choice suddenly engaged them all – “ah Georges Méliès!” said the son lured away from his PS5 – “I really must see Nosferatu…” said the daughter and “so that’s my friend Netti’s old landlady!” said my wife watching Cecil Hepworth’s eldest Elizabeth aged two who we met in Camden in the 1990s in her 80s. Even Mungo the dog was of course transfixed by Rover, the Hepworth’s dog, who outwits a kidnapper by driving his getaway vehicle back home… something to aspire to young pup but not in my car!

Neil had updated a show and tell he’d previously performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and it was a story not just of his career and method but also silent film and its revival over the last few decades. He talked of his audition with the BFI and how his acting training had helped inform his response to Sherlock Jnr, a quite intimidating work from an actual genius who gave signals not just to his audience but also the players he knew would accompany his film. Neil recalls the exact moment when the audience’s reaction inspired him to follow Buster’s promptings in ways he hadn’t anticipated.

Neil Brand

Dullard that I am, I’ve mostly focused on the silent film live experience from the perspective of accompaniment and film without really understanding the impact the audience reaction to both has on the player and vice versa. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and this is a Mobius Strip of emotion and anticipation. Neil showed Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer and Billy Wilder’s People on Sunday (1930) and got the audience to score the mood by a show of hands during key moments. Not only were our anticipations split on the direction of Wilder’s smart scripting, but Neil was able to flavour the narrative in ways that reinforced the second-guessing. It was a virtuosic performance all round from a consummate communicator.

We had the wonders of  Méliès’ hand-coloured Impossible Voyage (1906), the dark-heart of the definitive vampire film, Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and finished off with a clever home movie called Early Birds which was a colour film from the fifties (? nowt on IMDN but it was Alison’s Mystery Film after all!) in which a baby escapes from his cot, totters along the hall, shuffles down the stairs and makes a mess in the kitchen. It was delightful and Neil talked us through his musical reaction to this most unpredictable of delights.

It was genuine family entertainment and all on Catherine’s birthday too – the best thing on telly!

Mr Brand and the Baby

The Pride of the Clan (1917), with Stephen Horne and Elizabeth Jane Baldry

 

There was also drama on a grander scale from one of the great originators of the art of film performance, Mary Pickford in Maurice Tourneur’s The Pride of the Clan (1917). This was a recording of the Friday night gala introduced by Alison and the doyen of silent filmography, Pamela Hutchinson both of whom looked like they’d just stepped off the Oscar’s red carpet. This film was also accompanied by the dreamy team of Stephen Horne and Elizabeth Jane Baldry who had previously accompanied the fabulous The Swallow and the Titmouse (1924) a film that really suits their combination of piano and harp.

Mary plays Marget MacTavish who takes over as Chieftain of the clan after her father drowns at sea. She’s about to marry Jamie Campbell (Matt Moore) and there’s some silliness with couples in the clan biting sixpence in half so they can hang it around each other’s necks – HG Wells should have sued! But it’s all in fun even when Jamie is revealed to be of noble blood and his birth mother tries to sweep him away to polite society. Yeah, good luck with that lady, this is Mary P you’re contending with…

Tourneur’s locations are well chosen to create a genuinely Caledonian feel and the FOMO was real as Elizabeth-Jane’s harp Oberon added further Celtic magic along with Stephen’ expert innovations as the silent film equation gained an extra element with the two telepathically in tune with audience and each other following Mary’s lead on screen. I saw this film in Pordenone but it was presented here in the way that only Hippfest can: the fifth element!

 

The Near Shore: A Scottish and Irish Cine-Concert, with Patrick Smyth

 

As someone who is more Irish and Scottish than English – what do you expect from Liverpool la’? – I was especially impressed with the selection of the five films that made up this Cine-Concert. These shorts were all from the IFI Irish Film Archive and National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive and introduced by Sunniva O’Flynn from the IFI – you cannot understate how international Hippfest is, with collaborators from Norway and Sweden, over to the Americas and beyond.

It began with the earliest known film made by an Irishman, Royal Clyde Yacht Club (1899), which featured a race in the Firth of Clyde and then Ireland by Air – featuring Scottish aviatrix Winnie Drinkwater (1933) which also returned via the Firth with stunning views of my favourite Isle of Arran and a mist-covered Goatfell. Before that we saw shots of Galway – historical family location of The Joyces – and an Ireland still between the centuries with ducks and donkeys in the streets mixed with grand municipal buildings.

As a former Butlins employee – a Hi-de-hi-d for two summer seasons in my youth – I was impressed with Butlins camp photographer John Tomkins’ tow films – Butlins Holiday Camp and Rush Hour (1950s). Tomkins filmed the inmates, sorry holiday-makers, and then screened the films so they could see themselves at the end of the week. This is so much in the spirit of Butlin’s and I especially loved the one in which the children take over, robbing the redcoats blazers as they are frozen by some child’s magic… it was all, literally a dream.

Galway, 1933.

Finally, there was The Farm below the Mountain (1958), Scottish filmmaker Ernest Tiernan’s record of his travels with his young bride Kathleen to meet her family in rural Ireland… so familiar and in beautiful home-movie colour. We have something like this at home… maybe not so well shot!

The films were accompanied by renowned Irish avant-garde pianist, Paul G. Smyth who overlayed some lush textures on these films just out of memory and so full of human commonality. In the Hippodrome there’s no separation by time, we’re all connected as elements of the live cinematic mix, even from home we’re at the Hippfest home.

Until next year then and a visit in person, I think the family are convinced now! Thank you all for the wonder and the show.

 

Not missing out on Mary... Stella Maris (1918) with Meg Morley, Hippfest at Home ‘24

FOMOH… defined in Bo-ness as yon Fear of Missin’ Oot (On) Hippfest is high as I sit in South Cambridge 390 miles away from this year’s event but only inches away thanks to the streaming element of the festival, Hippfest at Home providing a sample pf the atmosphere and the cinematic treats being screened with accompanying piano-cam showing the players at work accompanying the silents and stirring the watcher’s hearts and minds.

Time flies and festivals fly even faster and there was, Alison Strauss the head of Clan Hippfest queuing up a vivacious introductory video from Pamela Hutchinson before introducing one of our finest accompanists, Meg Morley, who proceeded to enhance the extraordinary Stella Maris, one of Mary Pickford’s very best films and in which she gives Lon Chaney a run for his money playing two characters that look almost nothing alike.

She plastered her hair with Vaseline, smudged make up round her eyes to make them appear smaller, darkened her nostrils to make them wider and contorted her body to leave one shoulder higher and her back twisted... Pickford’s conviction and commitment to the roles is astonishing and , if you didn’t know she was both malnourished orphan Unity Blake and the titular bed-ridden privileged princess you’d struggle to recognise the most famous woman of the time…

The Mary we expect.

As Pam said, the dual roles gave Pickford a chance to draw on her impoverished, and abusive, past in deeper ways and with her great collaborator and a featured artist of this festival, Frances Marion scriptwriting, the two were able to create two unforgettable characters and to hint at real darkness. This is no Poor Little Rich Girl… Pickford was choosing her projects and her teams by this stage and this was a story she wanted to really challenge herself as well as the audience.

 

Based on the 1913 novel by William J. Locke, Stella Maris was directed by Marshall Neilan who Pickford compared the director favourably with DW Griffith, she always was a challenge, and felt that their shared Irish heritage helped him get the best out of her. As a result, this was the highest grossing film of 1918, on a level with say Barbie in tickets sold if not pink tinting and confused messaging. Stella Maris knows exactly what it wants to say about poverty and even the way wealthy women are treated by their so-called carers. By this stage Mary must have found much to identify with both her characters and that makes her choice of story all the more powerful and revealing.

 

Pickford is first seen as Miss Stella Maris a tragic young woman born into a wealthy family and yet in poor health: she cannot walk and is kept bedridden, well-protected from the horrors of outdoor life. She lives with her Aunt Julia Lady Eleanor Blount (Ida Waterman) and Uncle Sir Oliver Blount (Herbert Standing). Her favourite visitor is family friend, journalist John Risca (Conway Tearle) with whom she enjoys a fantasy existence of castles and kings. Interesting that she relies on a journalist to not tell her the truth…

The Mary we get.

But John has a darker home life with an alcoholic and abusive wife Louise (an excellent Marcia Manon, clearly having a whale of a time) whose numerous addictions are laid out for all to see: the wicked witch of this story. Listless Louise only ever gets passionate about punishment but is switched on enough to scour the local orphanage for home help in the form of the energetic but under-fed Unity Blake. Face and body posture twisted out of all proportion; Pickford must have suffered for this role in ways that only Chaney would appreciate.

 

Unity fails to meet her new mistresses exacting demands and is savagely beaten only being saved after neighbours here her screams. The police arrive and Louise is imprisoned for her assault. Wracked by guilt, John resolves to look after Unity and brings her into his house where she is looked after by his Aunt Gladys (Josephine Crowell). This upper-class generosity only extends so far though and they all resolve to keep Unity’s existence a secret from the enforced innocence of Stella. Here it is interesting that Stella’s innocence is prescribed by her relatives whilst Unity’s is seemingly just her natural state… in spite of all that she has been through.

Doctors gather to see Stella and decide that her legs can be restored through a new operation. The months pass and gradually she returns to full health. Inevitably she encounters Unity in a stunningly well realised double exposure: this is the tricky part - acting with yourself. By this stage it’s not Unity’s tale that threatens Stella’s fairy-tale world view but the world itself as she sees squads of soldiers marching past her huge garden and the questions keep on coming…

The film doesn't hold back from showing the desperation and brutality

Meanwhile, Louise is released for good behaviour and sets back to her recidivist ways aiming to ruin her estranged husband’s budding romance with the beautiful and unsullied Stella. Yet Unity has also developed feelings for her saviour… There’s a startling moment when she caresses John’s coat on a clothing stand, wrapping its sleeves around her and relishing the imagined intimacy, made almost real by the texture and the smell…

I won’t give away the ending but this is one you should see if you’re looking for Mary Pickford’s best films and if you haven’t already watched her tour de force. It's clearly one of her more political statements as well given the disparity between the two main characters and the disappointments of the rich woman discovering the nature of a world she has been deliberately isolated from. It's almost a fable of Pickford's own journey... she wants to be allowed to be both the woman she was and the successful star; with due respect to all on this spectrum of luck and life.

Meg Morley accompanied with a heart-breaking emotional narrative of her own which hit so many sweet and sour touch points in its intimate entanglement with the two Pickfords. Wonderful skill and sensitivity, I only wish I’d been there to hear it live. Next year no FOMOH!!

 

 

The haunted queen… Prix de Beauté (1930), with Stephen Horne, 10th Hippfest Silent Film Festival

Don’t think I’m untrue, my only love is you… Don’t be demanding, be understanding… My only love is you.

In the post-screening Q&A, Stephen Horne revealed the moments when he could “hear” Louise Brooks’ voice in his head as he played for Pandora’s Box, piano screen right in NFT2 at the BFI lost in music, film and this vision with unexpected sound. Brooksie is indeed one of cinema’s greatest naturally occurring special effects and as Pamela Hutchinson said in the Q&A, the sheer physicality of her dancer’s control, coupled with extreme intelligence and beauty draws the audience towards her on so many levels. Acting as hypnotism, but also as Stephen says, cinema as a haunting.

Prix de Beauté goes from strength to strength every time I see it especially with Mr Horne’s uncanny sympathy with a film he first accompanied in Bristol in 2006. This was the 2012 Cineteca di Bologna’s restoration based on the sole surviving silent copy with muted sections included from the French sound version filling gaps here and there. It’s a far cry from the “talkie” version I first experienced and runs at 113 minutes versus the former’s 98; largely due to a normalised, slower pace. I did attempt to watch both versions at once for comparison but I soon got too engaged to bother. The two versions are different though as they were filmed separately with the sound version presenting a smaller frame as space was given over to the soundtrack so we not only see more get a longer film, we also see more in it!

The film’s development involved both René Clair and Brooks’ mentor G.W. Pabst – the former developing the script from the latter’s story with moments of pure cinema originating from both under the eventual direction of Augusto Genina. Clair’s brilliant closing sequence was envisaged as a silent and it’s impossible to imagine it working any other way now. Overall, Genina presents his own “cut”, a visually coherent film and one that has never looked better, highlighting the work of his ace cameraman, Rudolph Maté who had worked on Dreyer’s Joan and would go on to collaborate on Vampyr too.

Louise Brooks attracting attention

The opening section in the public pools has a documentary quality like People on a Sunday and Brooks is introduced feet – or rather feet, calf and thighs – first before blowing the audience away with vivacity and a smile to brighten even the darkest metropolitan day. There’s more exceptional footage at a fairground as Brooks’ character suddenly starts to regret passing up her chance to become separate from the common men pressing all around her. Amidst the smiles and tom-foolery Brooks’ face is a mask of despair as realisation drives even the faintest smile from her lips.

It’s hard to resist drawing parallels with the star’s own situation in this film: she’s followed onto a train by press and paparazzi after winning the chance to represent France at the Miss Europe pageant and subjected to male attention at every stage. Her big break finds her conflicted between opportunity and loyalty to her man, Andre (Georges Charlia), a choice that made the actress burn a fair number of bridges, in actuality. Lucienne gets and accepts a chance in a talking picture whilst in real life America Brooks was turning down offers from Wild Bill Wellman to star in a thing called The Public Enemy (Jean went with that one…). Louise was just 23 when she made this film and it was to be her last starring role in a feature: mid-life redemption and eternal fame all lay ahead, but first she had to get lost for a while.

Brooks once described herself as an actor who largely just played herself and that’s enough if you’re picked for the right roles and well directed. But she does have to work a bit harder than Lulu as Lucienne Garnier, a sweet secretary who dreams of bettering herself through her beauty: you can’t imagine LB being so naive. She larks with her modest boyfriend – a typesetter at the newspaper where she works as a typist – and he is already jealous of the attention she attracts from other men at the pool and everywhere else. Andre doesn’t like beauty contests and Lucienne can’t even bring herself to tell him that she’s entering.

Standing by her man Andre

Executive types look at pictures of the contestants and one stands out: no one’s going to complete with that hair, those eyes… Whisked away to San Sebastien in Spain, Lucienne is soon competing in the beauty contest (actually filmed in Paris with thousands of extras). The documentary feel is again present with candid shots of the public mixed in with key players from high society (and low morality) including a maharajah (Yves Glad) and Prince Adolphe de Grabovsky (Jean Bradin).

Naturally applause is loudest and longest for Lucienne who easily beats Miss Germany and Miss England to take the crown. Now its cocktail parties and offers of jewels and riches from her betters – Lucienne sails through as if it’s one childlike adventure: never has the Brooks smile been so much in evidence. But Andre has been in pursuit and unwilling to upset him more, Lucienne decides to go back to Paris.

Prince Adolphe advises that Andre will never understand her and we get the feeling he has a point. Shadowy days in a meagre apartment lie ahead for Lucienne and she is as imprisoned as their pet budgie ironing and cooking for Andre. He tears up her fan mail and bans all talk of Miss Europe but the fresh Prince tracks her down and makes her a fateful offer.

Jealousy

Then comes the funfair and those moments of doubt all leading to a change of heart and that stunning closing sequence. That may be the best part of the film but Louise Brooks is so much more powerful in silence and without the clumsy dubbing; she’s a spectacular – haunting - vision and one that is almost hard to watch… and ultimately, she just doesn’t need words.

Stephen Horne’s experience with the film showed with a subtle and forceful score featuring piano, flute and accordion. It’s fascinating to hear him play for a film he knows this well and to hear him maintain the freshness of improvisation with such practiced and hard-hitting emotional content. No musical spoilers: but you really must hear this show yourself and a closing sequence that is so perfectly timed as the piano brings dark discord and the flute lifts us high with Lucienne’s light and laughter as she watches herself on screen singing the lines above... 

Clair’s next film was to be the excellent Under the Roofs of Paris whilst Pabst went on to film The Threepenny Opera and a remake of L'Atlantide (featuring Brigitte Helm) the restoration of which is due a release.

For Brooks, this was to be her last major role. For those in the business who she hadn’t already alienated, she served out a few more roles, most notably in God’s Gift to Women but blew her last major chance with Public Enemy… Would she have made more of the opportunity than Jean Harlow? Hard to say; there was a potentially great actor in Brooks but as Pamela Hutchinson indicated, she just wasn’t going to sacrifice herself to this career. During filming Brooks infuriated her director by staying out late and having too good a time. Genina was convinced that this was preventing her from becoming “the ultimate actress” and he was probably right but, I doubt anyone could make Louise Brooks do much she didn’t want to do.

Festival director Alison Strauss pointed out that the French title contains a pun; it is not only the prize for beauty but the price. 

Alison's introductions have been a great feature of Hippfest Online as she highlights some of the many attractions of this part of Scotland. For this film she was at the futuristic Falkirk Wheel, the world's only rotating boatlift; something else I have to see in 2022!

The Q&A with Alison, Stephen and Pamela is available to watch on the Falkland Community Trust YouTube channel and it's an excellent mix of silent film musicology, scholarly Brooksology and unexpected hauntology...

 

This restored version of Prix de Beauté is out now on a two DVD set featuring three more of Genina's films, Goodbye youth! (1918) and it's remake from 1927, as well as The Mask and the Face (1919). You can order it through Amazon of direct from the Cineteca Bologna’s CineStore.