‘Wakes’ here is the Lancastrian term for the week holiday for mill workers in such films as Singing as We Go (1934). The Giornate week in Pordenone has some parallels: away from home: away from work: and away from the usual constraints of daily life. So it was appropriate that the midweek event at the Festival was the fine British drama from1927 Hindle Wakes.
The film is adapted from a pre-war Manchester stage drama set around mill work and life in a Lancashire town. There were four adaptations on film; the earliest is lost and I reckon this is the best of the surviving ones. Fanny Hawthorn (Estelle Brody) goes to Blackpool for Wakes Week and has a fling with millowner’s son Alan Jeffcote (John Stuart). The repercussions affect both families but Fanny emerges as a young women with her own mind and her own autonomy. She is one of the most attractive heroines of 1920s British Silents. And the film’s director and craft people offer an exemplary production. Basil Emmott, uncredited, contributes to fine sequence actually filmed in Blackpool.
The musical accompaniment was composed and led by Maud Nelissen. And we enjoyed this fine score thanks to the support of the Kinothek Asta Nielsen, who, apart from their work on this outstanding diva have presented us with key contributions by women to early cinema. The film screened was a new 35mm print from the British Film Institute; it was generally very good with some some variations.
It is a long time since I watched a film directed by Maurice Elvey; he made a number of fine film dramas in the 1920s and some excellent later sound films. Definitely an omission that should be rectified very soon.
itp Global Film 