With a red, white and blue “God Save The King” banner suspended from the balcony, you would be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled upon an Orange Lodge meeting. But no, this is the Bo’ness Hippodrome on the opening night of HippFest, Scotland’s first and only silent film festival which has defied the odds for nine years and runs until 24 March, with the royal bunting in honour of George V who occupied the throne when the country’s oldest surviving purpose-built cinema was opened in 1912.
Another royal makes a comic cameo in the shape of the cave-bound Robert The Bruce whose inspiration from a tenacious spider encouraged the titular hero (David Hawthorne) of the festival’s opening night premiere to seek vengeance on the duplicitous baddie the Duke of Montrose (Simeon Stuart) and his snarling sidekick James Grahame of Killearn (Wallace Bosco) whose trickery resulted in the following wail of woe from Rob Roy: “Nae hame, nae land, nae siller, nae name.” (A precursor to The Proclaimer’s “Bathgate no more”?)
Bolstered by a commissioned score by the multi-instrumentalist David Allison who last year wowed audiences with what one reviewer called a “glorious live accompaniment” and “stunning soundtrack” for Last of the Mohicans, this 1922 swashbuckler written by Alice Ramsey and directed by former clown and acrobat William Kellino really does live up to the festival’s tagline “Where movies and music come alive!”
But the film begins not with a burst of life, but a shocking murder when the Ronseal-named Sandy The Biter (Tom Morris as an aged cattle thief, think Hannibal Lecter meets Steptoe) sinks his fangs into the arm of an innocent shepherd’s boy before stilling his pulse with a blade in the heart.
When news reaches Rob Roy – who is found spearing a whopper of a fish under a picture-postcard waterfall romantically framed by cinematographers Basil Emmott and A. St Aubyn Brown – he along with his “henchman” and “devoted slave” Dougal (Alec Hunter) take an oath of vengeance which when successfully executed results in his elevation to clan chief.
Arriving in Stirling to forge an alliance with Montrose, he falls head over heels in love with “the lovely Helen” (Gladys Jennings) whom he woos in true Romeo and Juliet fashion by camping outside her window in the hope of stealing a glance and winning her heart. Both of which he accomplishes before dancing with her at a Capulet-like ball and eloping to his home turf in Inversnaid.
Unfortunately, the Duke, for whom Helen was “at once his torment and his joy”, is royally peeved and sets in motion a chain of events which leads to a decade of incessant strife for Rob Roy and his growing legion of hungry mouths and penniless followers. But thanks to the old maxim “One good turn deserves another”, revenge is enacted – from beyond the grave!
In her introduction, Alison Strauss, Director of HippFest and Arts Development Officer (Film and Media) for Falkirk Community Trust, made reference to the fact that when the film premiered at The Salon, Glasgow in October 1922 a procession of over 200 wounded soldiers brought Sauchiehall Street to a standstill.
The same can’t be said for the winding streets of Bo’ness, but the large and appreciative audience were nonetheless thoroughly entertained. Not only by the film which is gloriously, if unintentionally, funny – Sandy The Biter deserves a spin-off, and the Duke and his sidekick’s Dick Dastardly grimaces are a joy to behold – but equally so by David Allison’s terrific live score, which combines pipes and drums and flutes and strings to create a contemporary soundtrack which hints at but far from replicates the tartan and twee romanticism of the Highlands.
On a side note, an introductory extract from a short promotional film about Falkirk in the run up to the 1938 Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow was utterly charming, showcasing several landmark buildings including Callendar House, the Steeple and the Old Parish Church where the body of William Wallace’s right-hand man, John de Graeme, is buried. The inscription on his tombstone a fitting description of the heroic Rob Roy: “baith wight and wise”.
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