I’M beginning to think there might be a case for bringing back silent movies. Don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s because I’m just finding modern films formulaic, cliched, gauchely didactic and out of touch.
I’m fed up hearing that same, chuggy, rhythmic string section for the action scenes. I think I would prefer a live piano or organ.
And then there are the agenda-soaked scripts. It feels like they’re manipulating our feelings with set-piece “dramatic” sequences that might have seemed meaningful in the writers’ imaginations but come out as tacky schtick.
Churchill? A phoney, romanticised, “character-acted” production. The Post? Do me a favour. The self-mythologising of the newspaper industry is beyond embarrassing. Perhaps when we see more films about brave bloggers with no resources operating outwith the hive-mind we might see the movie industry reborn.
Perhaps it’s because so much these days is not written by individual writers but by teams of same – committees effectively – reinforcing the group-think and earning brownie points off each other.
Am I hankering for a simpler past? Nope. I love CGI, up to a point. But it might make a nice wee change to experience something free of Tom Hanks’s drawl or Kristin Scott Thomas’s vowels. Or any voices at all.
Step forward the Hippodrome Festival Of Silent Cinema which unspools this week at Bo’ness which, for those who don’t know it, sits west of Edinburgh and east of Falkirk.
Indeed, the Hippodrome has been working away at this sort of thing for some time and has established itself as the go-to silent-era picture palace.
This week’s festival features gala screenings, new music commissions, workshops, talks and celebrations of stars whose faces told a story. Highlights include “swoon-inducing romance” from The Last Of The Mohicans (1920) with a new live score by multi-instrumentalist David Allison; Call Of The North, a celebration of the work of Scottish film-maker Isobel Wylie Hutchison, who filmed the landscapes of Alaska and Greenland; and Seven Footsteps To Satan (1929), billed as “Carry On Devil Worship crossed with The Rocky Horror Picture Show”.
Also on show are a celebration of the Glasgow comedian Billy Ritchie (think of it – a silent Glaswegian!), the 1923 German expressionist classic Der Schatz (The Treasure) and – wait for it – a triple-bill of Laurel and Hardy. Yay!
All human life is here – and it isn’t saying a word. Silent Cinema is golden, and it’s hats off to the Hippodrome for giving it a chance to shine once more.
The Hippodrome Festival Of Silent Cinema runs from Wednesday to Sunday.
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