Sprung

IN SPRING — Mikhail Kaufman’s Ukrainian city symphony — is sort of like brother Dziga Vertov’s MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (the third brother, Boris Kaufman, went to Hollywood and shot films for Kazan). It’s my Hippfest highlight this year thus far, though THE MAN WHO LAUGHS on a big screen with Meg Morley and Frank Bockius accompanying was epic and Run-Tin-Tin’s WHERE THE NORTH BEGINS was heaps of fun. This year’s dog theme was evidenced by Rinty in a blizzard, Zimba the dog as Homo the wolf, and scores of Ukrainian hounds — dogs on boats, dogs on balconies. I expect those dogs are quite old now, some of them.

Kaufman’s film is more people-centric than his brothers. The shots are consistently inventive and poetic, as are the connections linking them. The only disadvantage it has over MWAMC is that Vertov divides his film into chapters and tells you how many there will be, which helps when your film has no plot or characters. The audience can chart its progress and knows roughly how far in it is at any given time. But IN SPRING is so frenetic (but with beautiful modulations of pace) and is under an hour, so boredom is never an option.

Action is grouped by theme — snow, flooding, flowers in bloom — and sub-theme — dogs in the snow, babies. The sporting action might well have influenced Rienfenstahl’s OLYMPIAD, and it’s madder and better. The live score by Roksana Smirnova (piano)
& Misha Kalinin (guitar) swept things along, perfectly complimenting the rhythmic montage and spirit of optimism.

IN SPRING stars Kiev.

What Happened?

What happened is this — I hauled myself back to Bo’ness on Friday and saw Dreyer’s MASTER OF THE HOUSE (exquisitely played dry comedy) with John Sweeney on piano (also exquisitely played) and Reginald Denny in WHAT HAPPENED TO JONES, directed by William Seiter and accompanied (98 years later) by Neil Brand (piano) and Frank Bockius (percussion) which was a riot.

Young woman behind me started the show emitting occasional polite little laughs, purely social: as if she was aware the film was humorous and she wanted to show the right spirit. Half an hour in she was helpless with hysteria, trying to HOLD IT IN, for fear that she might be laughing more than the proper amount.

And then there was a party, with the result that, taking into account the difficulties of getting to and from Bo’ness at just the hour one would like, we’re missing a Charley Chase double bill this morning because it’s simply impossible, but we’ll be soaking up multiple shows today.

After thirteen years of Hippfest, Bo’ness has actually gotten even harder to get to. Nearby Linlithgow is dead easy to reach by train, but the buses from there are extremely intermittent and stop in the early evening, so without the festival’s marvelous shuttle bus, there’d be no way for the carless to escape at all. Still, this FORCED me to stay for the party.

WHAT HAPPENED TO JONES is available to buy in one of Masters of Cinema’s Early Universal sets.

Today’s treats include Rin Tin Tin in WHERE THE NORTH BEGINS and Conrad Veidt (and Homo the wolf) in THE MAN WHO LAUGHS.

Fiona has written the programme notes for Hippfest’s screening of THE MAN WHO LAUGHS and you can read them here. Do!

My talk with Chris Heppell on the mighty stage of the Hippodrome seemed to go well. Unfortunately I didn’t flag up here the fact that you have to book in advance to see the thing online. It’s up for 48 hours, but for reasons I don’t understand you won’t be able to access it unless you already booked. Also I’m not sure WHERE it is. But I’m going to ask if it can be made more widely available in future…