Hindle Wakes

In a Lancashire mill-town, probably Bolton or Oldham, but here called Hindle, Fanny (Jenny in later film versions) Hawthorne scandalises her family by refusing to conform. The play has always been a favourite and this version of it is terrific. It has a modern feel, some of the shots in Blackpool are brilliant (the rides in particular), and the new soundtrack by In The Nursery, although perhaps a bit too contemporary, somehow fits (and makes a difference from the dreadful Hammond organ scores than accompany some silents). In the cinema the ballroom sequences were augmented by special lighting effects which worked well, but on video it shines as a good British silent (hooray!) well done, well acted, well written.

A stunning masterpiece from the silent era. The plot tells of the development of true financial and sexual independence amongst the working mill girls of Lancashire. Ok it's funny in places by our standards now, but so far ahead of it's time. The latter part of the film depends on dialogue. Now to do that and do that well in silent movie takes talent.

I'm not asking anyone to go and see it. If you do, In The Nursery have put together a new soundtrack for it that captures the essence of the film perfectly.

HINDLE WAKES (1927) Maurice Elvey's version of the controversial story set during a workers holiday week in Lancashire. Several other versions followed but this is apparently the most notable. Often cited as the start of the British cinema's characteristic strain of social realism which pervades so many later films - Powell & Pressburger providing the main creative island of respite - this one has some convincing opening shots documenting the workers in their mills and then off to Blackpool for their holidays. WAKES' story is mostly the familiar, melodramatic one of poor girl 'led astray' by rich man and suffers from a long middle section containing all the expected moralistic, and now dated, chest beating about the perils of natural fun outside marriage. What entirely redeems the film from this fossil nose dive is the character of the heroine, Fanny (Estelle Brody, later to appear in TV's THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, of all things) who ultimately is entirely unrepentent towards her days of sexual indiscretion in Llandudno, and even dismisses the affair as just a "little fancy" before leaving home to seek freedom elsewhere. Slightly shocking, when seen in context of the times, even today.

The twenties version of the once sensational Stanley Houghton play must be considered central to it's makers' work and the British film of the pre-WW2 era. Both director and producer filmed it twice, Elvey shortly after the first stage performances in 1918 and Saville after the coming of sound. Mc Kinnel as the mill owner, who originated the part in the theatre, is in all of the productions and John Stuart played this son in the twenties and thirties films.

The work was notorious for showing a mill girl heroine, for who casual sex was as normal as it was taken to be for men - one of the most intelligent representations of the then celebrated "Single Standard."

Until we get a look at his first try, we must take Elvey's twenties version as the most important. It is remarkable that Elvey regulars Humberstone Wright and Marie Ault register more effectively than Saville's imposing Edmund Gwenn and Sybil Thorndyke doing the parent rôles with sound. The scene in Blackpool's Tower Ballroom is a quite hallucinatory climax to the extraordinary, protracted Hindle Wakes holiday sequence which outclasses similar material in the King Vidor THE CROWD.

Indeed the Elvey HINDLE WAKES may be considered the best English silent film surviving, more imposing than the Asquith and Hitchcock films that have been thrust at us down the years. With his recently recovered LIFE OF David LLOYD GEORGE this marks Elvey as the most important English film maker of the period and one of the most important in Europe. We can only wonder about an industry and its commentators who did so little to nourish his output and allowed him to die in obscurity.

Has anyone seen his Berlin and Hollywood work?

... shame the new (year 2000) soundtrack was so intrusive. The idea of a pop group putting a new soundtrack isn't new - it was done before with Metropolis, but at least that had several different artists contributing. This has just one group with just one or two recurring themes which sometimes overwhelm the feel of the scenes. It would perhaps be better to get a proper cinema organist or pianist to add an AUTHENTIC or period feel to silent movies of this type. But the film was good, if a bit long, and interesting for its views of a working Lancashire Mill before we closed them all down. What a shame the producers felt the need to add incongruous sound effects to the mill scenes. This barbaric practice is bad enough on war documentaries. Apart from anything else, it's distracting. Film restorers should realise the difference between re-working and restoration.